Beyond Belief What's Holding You Back - Nir Eyal

19:21Nir Eyal:My first assignment was, is talk therapy more effective than the placebo effect? I mean, all talk therapy, all talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance of commitment therapy, you know, the classic Freudian on the couch, tell me about your mother and your dreams and all that. Is it any better than the placebo effect? And the answer is, not really. It's a big controversy right now. Yeah, not really. And there's been extensive research. It's not conclusive, right? Science is never conclusive. There's no such thing as one of the things that drives me crazy when people say, science says, right?

19:57Nir Eyal:There is no science says. That's not how science works, right? But to the best of our knowledge today, it doesn't look like it does much better than a placebo effect. That being said, that doesn't mean it's not effective. It means that the placebo effect is hella effective. Gotcha. But the placebo effect is crazy powerful, that when you think that you should get better, expectation, the power of belief, you do. And so the lesson here is that, again, beliefs are tools, not truths. That does it serve me to believe that I'm a victim? Maybe, sometimes, could be. Does it not serve me to think that I'm a victim?

20:38Nir Eyal:Does it empower me to believe that I have post-traumatic growth versus post-traumatic stress? Now, the problem is, and I have to have a quick disclaimer here, is that there's a lot of bad therapy out there. Just because someone hangs up a shingle and says, hey, I offer therapy, you know, if they don't give you an offboarding plan, this kills me. You know, people go into see a therapist and this therapist says, oh, this person is a very consistent patient. And all they do is sit here and talk to me. And there's no threat of, you know, severe type of illness like schizophrenia or something that actually, you know, could require a lot of work.

21:09Nir Eyal:This is fun. You know, this is easy. I make a lot of money, especially with children. That's why therapists love working with children. because they're easy patients. A lot of bad therapists just want you to come in and vent and talk about your problems. But without turning that into action, what are you learning? What's the off-boarding plan, right? If you come to a doctor and say, hey, I broke my arm, and they say, well, this could heal within a year or 20. We don't really know. Like, you should get a second opinion, right? And so a lot of therapy, I think, a lot of therapists, there's a lot of great therapists out there.

21:39Nir Eyal:There's a lot of therapists out there that kind of milk the hell out of their clients because they don't turn those beliefs into something that actually creates behavioral change.

21:49Charles:Also, there's the idea of chat GPT or AI becoming your therapist as well. And I've always told people about it. I'm like, listen, I think therapy, it's a gift. It's a gift you give yourself. Always check in with yourself. And to your point, is there an off-boarding process? Chat GPT or AI might not be the best thing either in that situation, unless you have a thing that it's backed or based on. And this is, we talk about AI I does not mean artificial intelligence. It means always incorrect. So you have to be careful when you're playing with that ballgame. So when you're doing this and you're labeling things and you're saying, okay, this is a tool, right?

22:22Charles:This is not a truth. My beliefs are a tool and it might be based on something that did not even happen in any way, shape or form. And you have that awareness. Can you recode new belief systems or new beliefs to get to the result you want? Because is the goal, like we always talk about, there's a journey. journey it's important but there's also your goal and and if if i got a plane and i sat next to you i said nears god i'm so excited i wonder where we're going you're like i'm sorry what was that what knowing where you're going is mission critical and everything that i've ever done can you recode beliefs or re-implement and pick different tools and use them a different way to get to rock and roll and the example i give on that is my grandfather was very very handy and a hammer and he sat there with a i don't know what it is sorry grandpa i know you're not with us but he carved in the top of a hammer a slot and i never understood why he did that until i saw him put a nail down and tap it in so he would hold the nail for him because he always had his hands so he found a way to change the tool since we're calling beliefs tools in this situation so we could influence a tool to create a better result is there a way that we can do that

23:32Nir Eyal:absolutely absolutely i love the the hammer analogy by the way because it's not like you would say, you know, your grandpa never said, Oh, this hammer, this is the one and only true tool forevermore. No, he sometimes use a hammer, sometimes he used a saw, sometimes he used a wrench, whatever required the right tool, he would find the right tool for the job. So there's no reason to carry around this old broken hammer for 20 years. If it doesn't work anymore, you can set it down and find a new tool. And that's exactly what we can do with beliefs. The problem is, for many people i'll tell you for me i had this requirement of truth i needed it to be true and sometimes that can actually hurt us it certainly hurt me because there's a lot of of things that i couldn't see because i was so convinced about the importance of truth because i thought that belief meant facts and they don't especially in interpersonal relationships i'll I'll illustrate here.

24:26Nir Eyal:So for my mom's 74th birthday, I was in Singapore. She was in Orlando. And for her 74th birthday, I wanted to make sure that I got her some nice flowers. And that's not easy to do from Singapore. So I had to like go on Google and find all these florists and look at the ratings and reviews. And then I had to call them to be like, okay, yeah, but can you really get it there in the Florida heat? Like we'll arrive on time and all that. And I stayed up till 1am. I put in the order. I was so proud of myself. I went to sleep knowing, hey, Nir, you're a good son. You did a great job. I call her the next morning for her birthday to check on, you know, wish her happy birthday and see if the flowers arrived.

25:05Nir Eyal:And she thanks me for the flowers. And she says something like, hey, I got the flowers. Thank you so much. Wanted you to know that they arrived half dead. Don't order from them again. To which I kind of lost it. I reverted instantly from 48-year-old or 47-year-old, whatever I am, into a 15-year-old. That I instantly reverted into this petulant teenager and I blurted out, well, that's the last time I buy you flowers. And that went over about as well as you'd expect with my mom. Because why? I was operating through this prior belief. The keyhole of attention that I was looking through was that the belief was my mother is judgmental and too hard to please.

25:55Right?

25:56Nir Eyal:Because wouldn't a mother just say like, wow, thank you for the flowers and not complain about them? That's what a nonjudgmental mother would do, right? And by the way, she's always like this, right? This is the way she is. Like she does shit like this all the time. She's so judgmental. And then I did the work. Now the work comes from this woman by the name of Byron Katie, who I greatly admire her work. And she basically channeled thousands of years of this process, all the way starting from Aristotle actually, where she gives us these four questions that I described in the book as well. I modified them a bit, but basically the questions start like this.

26:27Nir Eyal:Number one, so the first thing you do, you write down your belief. My mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Then you ask a series of questions. So this gets to your question of how do you actually change these beliefs? So number one, the first question is, is it true? Is it true? My mother is judgmental and too hard to please. Is it true? You've heard the story.

26:46Charles:Obviously, right? Like what a stupid question. my mother is judgmental and too hard to please. I just told you what happened.

26:51Nir Eyal:Now, here's a second question. Is it absolutely true? Emphasis on the word absolutely. Is there any chance, even a half a percent, that that might not be true?

27:07Charles:Maybe.

27:09Nir Eyal:I guess. Okay, maybe she wasn't. She did say thank you. right so maybe maybe there's a chance that she's not too judgmental okay fine maybe there was another interpretation okay third question the third question is who am i when i believe this who when i who how do i behave when i hold on to this belief well when i believe my mother is judgmental and too hard to please i think i i don't act very nice to her i'm short with her i i say things i didn't i later regret like i'll never buy you anything ever again and then the Fourth question, who would I be without this belief? And I know that if I didn't believe my mother was judgmental and too hard to please, that I'd be happier, I'd be more patient, I'd be more myself versus my teenage psyche.

27:51Nir Eyal:And then with those four things, you establish, one, there's a chance that your thing that you thought was the truth, clear as day, black and white, might not be true. And that when you believe that thing, it doesn't serve you. And not believing it would make you much better off. And so now comes the most important part. now comes the turnaround and this is how you change your beliefs the turnaround is when you experiment with believing the exact opposite my mother is not too hard to please could that possibly be true my mother is not too hard to please sure yeah she was just trying maybe she was just showing me care and affection and she didn't want me to get scammed okay yeah then i guess that might be true another turnaround turnaround to the self as byron katie calls it I am too judgmental and hard to please.

28:40Nir Eyal:Could that be true? I am too judgmental and hard to please. How could that possibly be true? Well, I did have a script of exactly how I expected her to behave. I had the exact words in my mind of how I wanted to be thanked. So who was being judgmental? Who was being hard to please? I was. Now, does that matter if it's true? Is she judgmental? Am I judgmental? Who cares, right? That's where I was telling you earlier about how I struggle with fact. And I was trying to prove, no, she was being judgmental. Not me, she was being judgmental. Was that serving me? Because that belief chained me, imprisoned me to require her to change for me to be happy.

29:19Nir Eyal:Impossible. Not going to happen. Rather, by collecting a portfolio of perspectives, by forcing myself through this process, through this turnaround process, to see things from other points of view, whether they're true or not, doesn't matter. Allowed me to say, you know what? this belief imprisons me, limits me, this belief, whether it's true or not, now I can do something about it, right? If I choose to adopt the belief that I was being judgmental and too hard to please, I can do something about that. That's my control versus expecting her to change. So that's how we begin to change these beliefs.

29:55Nir Eyal:We do these turnarounds in various assets of our life and then prove to ourselves again and again through repetition, through ritual, that those beliefs might also be true.

30:07Charles:So it's fascinating. We just sit down and, you know, we had this on our trip where there was a certain situation that happened with the car and everyone was really upset with the car. Very nicely rented car, but it smelled really bad. Everybody was having this moment. I was like, come on, what's our goal? He said, okay, this is our goal. I said, is this conversation and what we're doing right now effective on getting us to said goal, to what it is? And then I said, no, I said, cool. And how do we work as a unit, as a team, to fix that going in and having, is it true? Is it absolutely true? It's something you have to do on your own.

30:40Charles:So having those tools that you could do it as outside of a group and do it on, on yourself, exceptionally powerful, but having someone who's done the work as a whole, having that level of EQ, when you're in a moment and you're spinning out and you are your 15 year old self again, you're like, cause again, we are, we are from the same tribe. So I get it. So going into that environment and having that conversation what's a shortcut that you could do to reset your mind when you're in the middle of it when all of a sudden it onslaughts you and you're like oh my god mom you know what i'm never buying you flowers again and battle or i'm gonna go hunt down that florist and burn down their building and you're having that moment how do you give yourself the ability to off gas and get through it through aggression or depression or joy or sadness or just overwhelmed or anxiety or whatever the laundry list of things that may be going on because you're a human being and you am so i am you just are at that moment are there ways that you could sit there and kind of shortcut the system for lack of a better term we talk about it control delete it when you lock the system and you get that reset is there any way that you know with what you found out to kind of as your beliefs are influencing your reality because they're not

31:54Nir Eyal:real how do you how do you reset from that yeah so one of the uh one of the things that really changed my life in the process of writing this book is that i did something completely out of character that if if you would have asked me before i wrote this book that this would be the result i would say absolutely not i started praying now i don't believe in the supernatural i haven't prayed since i was like six years old and uh i used to pray because when my parents first came to America, they got scammed within a year or two of living in America as new immigrants. They barely spoke the language.

32:26Nir Eyal:They got scammed of their entire life savings. And they were like on the verge of divorce and they used to fight all the time. And that's when I started praying. And then when I grew up, I stopped talking to God or what I thought was God because who the heck was listening? Nobody was listening. So I stopped praying. And then I came across the power of placebos and tangentially the power of prayer. And there's an incredible literature around the power of these rituals, even if they're secular. So having, it turns out like, so as part of the book project, I went to speak to five religious leaders.

33:00Nir Eyal:It sounds like a joke, right? A rabbi, a priest, an imam, a swami, and a monk walk into a bar. I talked to these five religious leaders and I asked them all the same question. Can you pray even when you have doubts about God? And they all gave me their answers. Now, the reason I mentioned this story is because the imam gave me a very interesting answer. It's that in Islam, and I'm not a Muslim, but I learned something from each one of these religions. He talked about how the power of prayer is forced repetition of these mantras, these prayers that center you. So that in Islam, you have to pray five times a day.

33:41Nir Eyal:And why do they do that? Because at five times a day, you're constantly reminding yourself of principles you want to remember. So for me, I adopted that. Now, I didn't adopt it in the way he does, but I adopted that principle in a secular manner. So for me, I have certain mantras that whenever my blood is boiling, I try and remember. You know, like last night, actually, I had a little tiffed with my daughter. That's not gonna escape. We're gonna have disagreements. But I tell you what, within like 20 minutes, we solved it. Whereas I think a few years ago, it would have been maybe a multi-day affair.

34:17Nir Eyal:In this case, we got through it very, very quickly. And I think the thing I constantly remind myself after doing this research is this mantra that I repeat to myself. Well, actually, let me ask you the question first that led me to the mantra. The question I asked myself was, how do you measure love? How do you measure love? When someone says, I love you very much, what does the very part mean? And why do I love this person more than that person? what is that that more that measurement of love and my assessment was that my answer and this is my mantra love is measured by the benefit of the doubt love is measured by the benefit of the doubt that's what i personally repeat myself whenever i feel my yeah absolutely love is love is okay yeah

35:03Charles:definitely walk me through love is measured by the benefit of the doubt what do you mean

35:08Nir Eyal:so there's a thing called the fundamental attribution error the fundamental attribution air says that we judge others by a different metric than we judge ourselves. So when someone cuts you off in traffic, that jerk, right? What an asshole, right? We don't think, oh, they might be rushing to the hospital because they have a sick parent. When we cut someone off in traffic, it's because, you know, you don't understand I'm in a big rush, right? So we'll make up excuses and we'll say why we need to be understood when we make a mistake. When other people make a mistake, we judge them differently. Now that changes based on how much we love somebody.

35:39Nir Eyal:So when my daughter was first born, you know, kids are a lot of work. They cry all the time. They poop, they pee, they throw up. They're a lot of work. And they don't give you anything, right? They certainly don't buy you flowers like I did for my mom. They don't give you anything. And yet when my daughter was born, yeah, exactly. But I remember the day my daughter was born and I held her in my arms, I loved her more than anything in the world. And that was because with babies, we give them all the benefit of the doubt. We know that when they cry, they don't cry to annoy us. Is it annoying? Yes, but that's not their intent.

36:15Nir Eyal:They cry because that's the only tool they have. So the lesson for me was that we're all big babies. We just got older. We are all operating under the tools that we have. So when my mom acted the way she acted, or my daughter does things as she grows up, or my wife does something, or that guy in traffic, we're all just operating with the tools we have. Because love is measured by the benefit of the doubt. So how much I love somebody is determined by how much benefit of the doubt I give them. And so it could be a stranger, certainly with someone I love. I can love someone as a human being, my fellow mankind.

36:51Nir Eyal:But certainly with my family, the people we tend to, when I observe different friends, it's interesting, they tend to be worst to the people that they're closest to. That's the people who we tend to be mean to. More than, you know, like when a stranger, or oh, you have to act respectable. But when it's somebody who's in your family, you can say horrible things to them. And it should be like that, right? That we should recognize that love is measured by the benefit of the doubt, which means we have to give them grace. And so to answer your original question of how do you center yourself? How do you get back to that place where you're yourself?

37:21Nir Eyal:That's that regular mantra that I constantly repeat to myself. Love is measured by the benefit of the doubt.

37:28Charles:It's interesting because the different filters we use. George Carlin said, who's no longer with us, he said it really well anybody driving faster than me is an asshole and anybody's driving slower than me is an idiot and

37:41Nir Eyal:fundamental attribution error right there there it is

37:44Charles:so we use it all the time and then I like how you said how we give benefits of the doubt to strangers but we don't give it to our loved ones I also think there's a possibility I'd love to hear your feedback that we fail to do that for ourselves sometimes give ourselves the benefit of the doubt on both of you more than anybody

38:02Nir Eyal:so true

38:03Charles:you know there are times where we'll get so mad at a waiter who takes you know an extra three minutes to get us our food like oh my god i just took just a sandwich why didn't you bring me to and we're just internally just like exploding but we'll let ourselves off the hook when we're forward to 10 minutes late getting out of the door so having that the grace on both sides and understanding you know we are perfectly imperfect in our beings and who we are and how we show up so when we have these belief systems and we're there's a difference between people who are radically successful and there's people who difference who are not really successful have you found this belief structure because you know as we know there are patterns that get you hooked to things and there's patterns that get you unhooked to things and those patterns and how you can weaponize and say hey you know what i could sit there and i can play this game or tiktok or whatever it is all day long or i could redesign that and i can recode that into healthy habits versus what we have deemed as unhealthy habits based on dopamine hits there's ways to recode that if you haven't read near his book go read his other books the new one that's coming out when you come into this have you found success for individuals who are ultra successful for be it health wealth relationships their belief systems versus the ones who are not like okay we know that if you believe the earth is flat and that a 6-3 orange baby is a good human being you're going to result in xyz versus if you believe abc you're gonna end up over here are the beliefs that you

39:31Nir Eyal:have found that that are just not these are things that are core for success without a doubt without a doubt um there's a one of those things is that people who are successful entrepreneurs have a different way to see the world. They literally, not just figuratively, they actually see the world differently. They see the$100 bills that are on the ground that other people don't see. I mean, if you think about it, starting a business is nuts. Basically, what you're doing when you start a business, you're saying, everybody else is an idiot because they don't see this opportunity that I see. Because if they did, they would do the business.

40:11Nir Eyal:But clearly, everybody else is an idiot. I'm smart, and I think I'm going to succeed. so you have to see that opportunity and and you know uh they say about steve jobs uh walter isaacson put this in his autobiography of steve jobs he said that people said about jobs that he had a reality distortion field around him that he would will things to exist and that's actually the big lesson of beyond belief is that that people who believe in a reality that is different from what exists are the ones who make reality as they see it. And that's the change makers. That's the super successful people that they can see this different reality.

40:48And so one of those traits has to do with making your own luck.

40:54Nir Eyal:That people think that there are lucky people and unlucky people. And, oh, look, that guy, all this great stuff happens to him. What a lucky guy. Turns out that statistically, lucky things don't happen to some people more than others. That over the course of a lifetime, pretty much everything kind of averages out. It's just that lucky people take advantage of those opportunities differently. I'll illustrate the point. There was a study done where they took people who they asked, do you think you are a lucky person or do you think you are an unlucky person? And they asked these two groups of people to take like a pamphlet and circle all the E's in the pamphlet.

41:29Nir Eyal:Very boring task, kind of a mind numbing task. Just circle all the E's. And if you did that, you got some kind of monetary prize at the end. now the unlucky people did the task very diligently the lucky people were the ones who noticed that inside this pamphlet both groups got the same exact pamphlet that they had to circle inside the pamphlet there was a little ad that said the experiment is over if you're reading this collect your reward the lucky people the ones who were self-identified lucky saw that at a much higher rate than the people who set self-identified as unlucky like they literally saw opportunities that the unlucky people didn't see.

42:09Nir Eyal:That's a fundamental difference, right? That these entrepreneurs are ones that see opportunities that other people just don't see. Another attribute of more successful people has to do with the locus of control. That there's a difference between what's called an external locus of control and an internal locus. Have you heard this? We've probably heard a similar concept before, no? So this is a very, very powerful idea. The idea is that people put themselves into, tend to see the world one or two ways. An external locus of control, a person who has an external locus of control, thinks that things happen to them.

42:44Nir Eyal:My life is a product of society and my parents and my past trauma and all the things. That's an external locus of control. The things that happen to me happen to me because of external circumstances. Then there are people who have what's called an internal locus of control. They believe that things happen to them because of what they do. Now, by the way, here's what we know. People with an internal locus of control do better in every conceivable metric. They make more money. They have more friends. They contribute more to society. They live longer. They're healthy. All the good things happen to people with internal locus of control.

43:17Nir Eyal:What's super interesting, that's kind of surprising, or kind of interesting, What's really surprising is that even when people have objective reasons to be pissed off, they're low on the socioeconomic totem pole, they are past victims, terrible things have happened to them. Even when that's true, having that belief, again, beliefs are tools, not truth. Having the belief that you have an internal law of control still makes you more successful. That to me is amazing. But even when you have all the justification to say that life screwed me, you still benefit from thinking I have agency. I have an internal loax of control.

43:52Charles:Yeah, there's a Latin expression that I will absolutely destroy. So for those of you who speak Latin, I apologize. But it's outfacium, which is I either find a way or make a way. And this idea of I'm going to figure it out. And sure, there's the life's happening to me versus life is happening for me and all of that. but every successful entrepreneur i know every billionaire that i know there is this steadfast outdid to him outfasio i'm gonna figure it out it doesn't matter how i get there and when you look at someone's like hey we had this huge debate earlier on in one of the calls i was on this morning that one of my one of my employees is what's the difference between employing an entrepreneur and i said well entrepreneurs employees will sacrifice abc for security entrepreneurs will sacrifice security for ABCDE, whatever that is.

44:38Charles:And she says, well, I can't, I could never get rid of my security. I need to know that I have a paycheck coming. And I'm like, that's why you work for me. And that's why you're not an entrepreneur. And she goes, well, I want to be an entrepreneur. I said, well, I want to be better than Michael Jordan, but I'm six foot 204 and I can't dunk. There's just, there's certain realities. There's certain, this is what you got, kid what you're telling me in your book is that belief system outside of some physical things like i'm not going to beat michael phelps in the pool unless i'm in a speedboat or a jet ski it just it is what it is there's certain limiting physical things that i can't do because i'm not seven feet tall right it just is it is i think what you're telling us in your book that's come out is you can rewire these beliefs that if you have a internal locus controller versus an external control you can rewire that so if i know that people who live longer lives are people who are fundamentally racist in other words if it's not if it's white they don't stick in your mouth so no sugar no carbs stuff like that just it just don't stick white shit in your face that's the nice thing to say it eat organic stuff so if i know that but i'm coded that i adore sugary sweets and bad for me food and fry food and i know that i just i fundamentally know i know the research is there i know i should do intermittent fasting with a mediterranean-based diet i should eat more protein i get it but i'm stuck with this belief system that that we already know now will change my behavior just like in success just like in business just like everything else if we know that it's i need to do this and i know i need to do this and i have this belief that's in my way again how do we is it that same process do we sit there and we walk it through what is the truth what is really true is that what we do to recode that or how do we get people to pivot

46:25Nir Eyal:yeah we examined the source of the suffering the source of the suffering is always the judgment okay that's always the source of the suffering you know the sugar example about how much I can't lose weight because I have a sweet tooth that's a belief

46:44Charles:that's a belief

46:45Nir Eyal:you've taken on that lens and of course you will prove it as true all the time you know that belief but but the belief that stuff that that uh the discomfort is bad like there's a there's some unbelievable research around um uh that i talked about in the book around not only the placebo effect but around hypno sedation have you ever heard of hypno sedation it's it's unbelievable it's you know i i thought it was complete woo nonsense i've seen the tapes i've seen the video and i interviewed this guy daniel gissler who was this uh this derivatives trader and he was you know very buttoned up not like the opposite of anything woo woo and this guy he had a freak accident he broke his tibia and his fibula and he had to have these these metal screws put into his leg and then a few years later he has to have them removed he decides to take a course on hypnosedation kind of he saw some youtube videos and that led to this course.

47:40Nir Eyal:And this guy went through a 55 minute operation where they were slicing his skin open, wrenching metal from bone without anesthesia of any kind, no general anesthesia, no local anesthesia. I didn't believe it unless I've seen the video and tens of thousands of people have done this. How, how is that possible? It's possible because of the power of beliefs that he managed to to have incredible control over this keyhole of attention and then change his interpretations of the information coming into our brain. Remember, 11 million bits of information, only 50 bits are processed through conscious control.

48:24Nir Eyal:We can choose what we then pay attention to. So if, you know, I really can't lose weight because I have a sweet tooth, you're describing your pain, right? It hurts. I don't like that feeling of not getting the thing I want. I want to eat the cake, damn it. And I can't resist it. Why can't I resist it? I have a sweet tooth. So I made up a belief in order to justify not feeling bad. Well, I totally get it. We all do it. I used to be clinically obese. I've been there. I'm still there. And I constantly have to fight that limiting belief. Because if Daniel Gisler can go under surgery without anesthesia for 55 minutes where they're yanking metal screws from his bone without anesthesia, what does that say about...

49:03Nir Eyal:I'm not saying you should do that, but I'm saying, what does that say about the power of mind to resist all kinds of pain points like how many things in our life do we not do because it hurts so many yeah i also think there's this idea you

49:14Charles:know one of my one of my friends he's billionaire and him i sat down and i said walk me through how you're not afraid of this he was oh i'm terrified i'm like i'm sorry he was i accept that i'm going to be terrified i'm just going to choose what i'm going to be terrified about i'm not going to stop that's his human behavior it is what it is i know i'm going to get upset i'm going to be joyful i'm be happy. I know that I am hard toaded as a human being because I'm nothing more than a bald pink monkey. That's just who I am. He goes, I'm going to be terrified. And I know that. I can't stop that. I'm just going to change what I'm terrified of.

49:45Nir Eyal:But he does, and he doesn't, he doesn't think that that discomfort is necessarily a bad thing. I think we are so conditioned.

49:51Charles:In any way, shape or form.

49:52Nir Eyal:Exactly. Well, I think that's a very counterintuitive notion because pain is there to get you to stop doing something, right? That's why we have physical pain that's why we have emotional pain to say hey pay attention this is something you should avoid but it's like the people who are incredibly successful in every field are the ones who learn that pain is a signal pain isn't damage like i did extensive research on exactly on chronic pain on how people you know create this chronic pain and not that it's fake it's real chronic pain is real pain. But the way it's created in us is by constantly focusing on the fear of damage, right?

50:33Nir Eyal:Like when I used to have back pain, and the traditional advice is, okay, you got to ice it, you got to lay down, you got to heat it, you got to do this, you got to just just, you know, you got to go, you got to stop the pain, stop the pain. And we used to have these charts, they don't do it anymore. But they used to have these charts, say, how bad is your pain? And so what are we doing? We're constantly paying attention to how bad is our pain, focusing hyper focusing on pain pain pain pain is bad pain is bad stop the pain that's not true that is not true because pain doesn't happen here it doesn't happen here pain happens here doesn't mean it's fake it's real but all where else could pain be it's completely in our heads so this you know billionaire entrepreneur doesn't surprise me he still gets the same signals the rest of us gets he still gets the terror he still gets that same but he interprets differently he's not judging it as bad he's judging it as exciting as exhilarating as uh opportunity he's seeing it differently he's experiencing it differently through the power of beliefs right the power to change what we see

51:28Charles:feel and do that's exactly right meaning behind it and you know i have friends of mine who are operators with special force operators and they always say that success is completely correlated

51:37Nir Eyal:to the amount of discomfort you can tolerate that's it and for how long i that's another trait by the way is is persistence so we where we start our conversation was around motivation and that's that's really at the core of this uh i'll tell you one one of my favorite experiments that i talk about in the book have you ever heard about the kurt richter rat experiment it's it's one of my faves so uh kurt richter back in the 1950s he uh he takes some some uh some rats he has wild rats he has these domesticated lab rats and he's doing experiments on how long rats can swim in water so he takes wild rats he takes these lab rats he puts them in water yeah

52:15Charles:okay so that is it please felicit yeah yeah so the first the first part of the experiment so a lot

52:20Nir Eyal:some people have heard the experiment they know the ending about how the rats swim for a long time but there's another part of the experiment a lot of people don't understand is the difference between the wild rats and the domesticated rats the wild rats were natural swimmers they're more ferocious they're stronger you know higher muscle mass they're grittier they're more aggressive all the tough aspects that you would think and yet when he put these wild rats inside these cylinders they swam far less far uh far shorter less help me with the grammar here for less time uh than the domesticated rats than the the nice cushy lab rats the nice cute white ones they swam the white the lab rats swam way longer why why would that be well it turns out that even though that the wild rats were grittier and stronger and meaner and tougher they they gave up faster they gave up faster, especially when they were under stress, when they were handled by humans, when they're they that's when they really gave up.

53:17Nir Eyal:And the theory was that Richter concluded was that the lab rats, the domesticated rats had experience with humans handling them. And they knew that salvation might be possible. They had this belief, it wasn't in their bodies, it was in their brains, that something might save me that that human hand might scoop in from that cylinder of water and and save me. Now here's where it gets really interesting. He saw that the wild rats could only last for about 15 minutes in that cylinder. They would swim, swim, swim, 15 minutes, they'd give up. But then Richter took those wild rats, he reached in, he scooped out the wild rat, he dried them off, let them catch their breath, and then put them back in the cylinder.

53:56Nir Eyal:And he did this a few times. And these rats went from swimming for 15 minutes to how much longer? I'll give the listener a minute to guess how much longer. They didn't swim for twice as long, not for 30 minutes. They didn't even swim for an hour longer, not 60 minutes, which would be amazing, right? Think about all the things in your life that you give up on. Imagine if I could give you some kind of treatment that would quadruple how long you could last, right? That would be incredible. But they didn't swim for 60 minutes. They swam for 60 hours. They went from 15 minutes to 60 hours because they knew that salvation was now possible.

54:32Nir Eyal:They had hope that something might come in and say so to answer your question successful people they're not the smartest they're they're not the best right they're not the strongest they're the most persistent yes that's the that's the critical difference they don't freaking give up because they have different beliefs that get them to keep trying and trying you talk to anybody who's successful in business they've failed more than people who think they're losers right you've seen it yeah absolutely over

55:00Charles:and over and over again we again we talk about you know i'm thinking about the operators that i You know, people will go into it. A buddy of mine, his name is Mark Devine, SEAL commander. And people would have to walk up to him all the time. Even when we're out there, oh my God, you're this person. How do I get through hell week? And he goes, you're not going to get through hell week. If your question is, how do I get through this very short process of this six month evolution, you're going to lose. The ones that get through it are the ones who have the beliefs, to your point, of everyone here, all these cadres, all the instructors are looking for the person who's going to help save them one day.

55:33Charles:that's their feeling they're trying to figure out if my life's on the line i need to it's this person someone i would be willing to make sure that i got home to my kids and then the second thing is is this person willing to die and most favorite my favorite example about all this is this one guy was going through training and he got to the swim portion and he had to tie five knots underwater and he had already failed this multiple times and this was his last time and he's down there and he's already option depleted and he's tied for the knots and he drowns he absolutely blacks out and he drowns and there's this whole concept in seal training make you make you drown proof which basically means we've drowned you before you know what it's like it's okay we'll pull you back out of water we'll resuscitate you so this guy completely drowns pull them out of the water they run cpr and they bring them back and first thing out of his mouth it's like i didn't tie the last knot because he knew that if he didn't tie the last knot he was out that was it those are the rules he goes i didn't tie the knot did i pass and the cadre goes dude the test isn't can you tie knots underwater the test is are you willing to die to complete this to execute whatever this is so yeah you passed dude he's good he's like oh okay and the ones who were willing who got through it well the ones like i'm just willing to die here because they knew two things those two things and i think redesigning your beliefs it's not an easy thing to do you know as we go through this what are the things that shocked you the most in your studies and when you went through this process where you were like, I can't believe this is a reality.

56:59Charles:Because we know the rat story. You put them in, you take them out for five seconds, they put them back in, they swim for 60 hours. That's the thing I interrupted. But one of the other examples when you sat down and you're like, outside of prayer, that you're like, I wish someone could do this right now. If anyone's listening to this podcast, you're like, whatever you're doing, just go do this, whatever that one thing is.

57:19Nir Eyal:Yeah. Oh, there's so many. I mean, literally, because beliefs shape your reality, They shape what you see, feel, and do. I mean, there's a section on relationships, how to repair relationships, how to have better relationships. There's a section on how to make money, how to see business opportunities, how to extend your lifespan. I'll tell you the thing that really blew my mind. That your beliefs, this is something you can do right now. Like literally right now, I'll change your life. Studies have found that positive beliefs about aging are correlated with the lifespan increase of seven and a half years.

57:56Nir Eyal:That is more than changing your diet, than quitting smoking, than managing your cholesterol. Positive beliefs about aging. Now, it is true that correlation is not causation, but that's not the point. The point is that when you have positive beliefs about aging, what happens? So a person who has limiting beliefs about aging, how many times have you heard someone say, even at my age, I'm not that old, but I hear my friends who are younger than me even saying, I'm having a senior moment. I'm having a midlife moment, right? When you say stupid shit like that, you are training the brain to notice those things.

58:32Nir Eyal:And over the years, saying it day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, your body responds accordingly. Because I can't do that. I have a 40-year-old back, a 45-year-old back, so I can't do that. And if I can't do that, well, guess what? Your body starts to decay. And if you start to decay, you can't go to do the things with your friends. And now your friends aren't involving you in the physical activities. And now wouldn't you know it? 40, 50 years later, you do have a seven and a half year shorter lifespan, all starting from these beliefs about that started years and years ago, decades ago.

59:02Nir Eyal:So that's something you can flip a switch right now, is to have positive beliefs about aging, that age that you can get better, that you can improve at any age. That's a switch you can you can flip right now. And there's that's just the beginning. There's another here. Can I give you one more that we used to believe that the placebo effect was something that required deception, right? So that like, you know, in order to show that the placebo effect work, you had to have a double blind study. And, you know, that meant that the patient was blind to the placebo, that the person doing the study was blind to who was getting a placebo.

59:37Nir Eyal:And there was a lot of deception around that. And then there was a researcher by the name of Ted Kapchuck at Harvard, who wanted to test this theory. And he studied IBS patients. And he gave IBS patients what's called an open label placebo. He called them in. He said, hello, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so. I am going to give you a treatment for your IBS. Now, this treatment is a placebo. It is a completely inert substance, and here comes the important part, that has been shown to be effective for some people. Wouldn't you know it?

1:00:09Charles:It was.

1:00:10Nir Eyal:It was effective even though they were told it's a placebo, it still worked. In fact, Ted told me that even after this IBS study, several of the patients in the study came back to him and called him and said, hey, Dr. Kapchuck, can I get some more of those placebo pills? It gets better. If you go onto Amazon right now, search for placebo pills, you will find placebo pills for sale that are called placebo pills and they work they work now they don't heal they don't heal but they absolutely will they they change the the perception of your symptoms insomnia adhd depression anxiety all of these things have been shown to be highly responsive to placebo so a lot of things that i used to make fun of you know my my uh my wife's family is chinese and so like my they're they're into traditional chinese medicine you know the herbs and the feng shui and a bunch i used to make fun of that stuff all the time.

1:01:07Nir Eyal:I don't make fun of that stuff anymore. Right? Because again, I release myself from this noose of everything having to be true all the time. Correct. But rather, if it works, who cares if it's placebo? It's not as long as it's not costing you a ton of money, as long as it's not hurting you in some way, because it's some kind of, you know, poisonous substance, do it. So does the vitamin C actually, you know, cure your cold? No, but it actually definitely will change your perception of those symptoms. So that's, again, something you can do right away. You can start taking placebo pills and it probably will work.

1:01:39Charles:I love that we're now selling placebo pills.

1:01:42Nir Eyal:At least though it's honest, you know what pisses me off. It's at least when being honest, you know, like, you know, like I don't know what you're selling on your show, but you know, I hear a lot of podcasters that are selling. Awesome. Thank God. Because if I'm called to do one of these podcasts where they're selling, you know, these stupid fucking green drinks and all this bullshit and they're, you know, and they act like it's, you know, that's going to make you healthy. Meanwhile, you're not going to the gym. You're eating like crap. You're drinking every night. The AG1 is not going to do shit for you, okay?

1:02:11Nothing.

1:02:12Nir Eyal:Other than the placebo effect.

1:02:14Charles:Now we're going to go.

1:02:14Nir Eyal:Yeah, that's okay. I'll take them.

1:02:17Charles:Neera and I have not seen any changes for ourselves for AG1. It's a great placebo or whatever it is. It's a great placebo.

1:02:27Nir Eyal:Exactly. So I don't have any problem with the honesty around it. I think that's what we need. That makes me comfortable with saying, you know what? Do the ritual. Do the prayers. Do the potions. As long as it's not harming you, it will have. Here's another thing that blew my mind. Did you know the placebo effect is actually getting stronger? That drug companies, check this out. Drug companies are having an increasing problem because when you want to prove that a medication is efficacious, you have to show that it's more effective than a placebo. It's not good enough if a new drug is effective.

1:02:57Nir Eyal:It has to be better than a placebo. but pharmaceutical companies are having a big problem because the placebo effect is getting stronger and stronger and stronger why because more people are expecting placebos to work because they hear they're effective that would be a nice thing because whenever you see the ads on

1:03:17Charles:tv you're like take this pill it'll cure your headache side effects anal leakage your head will explode you'll die your dog will catch on fire i'm like oh my god okay so this brings up a

1:03:28Nir Eyal:very interesting question. I think that we should not tell. So when I go to the doctor and I have to get some kind of medication or something, I tell him, don't tell me the side effects. Do not tell me the side effects because of the opposite of the placebo effect is the nocebo effect. I'll tell you another amazing study. Patient A barges into a hospital, has a pill bottle in his hands, spills it to the floor, collapses. The words out of his mouth says, I took all my pills. I took all my pills. Packed out. They put them on a gurney. They measure his blood pressure. It's dangerously low. His heartbeat is rock bottom.

1:04:02Nir Eyal:This guy has clearly overdosed on something. They don't know what. They pick up the pill bottle. It sells, call this number. They call the number. They say, yes, this medication was part of a pill trial that this guy took all these pills. It's part of a pill trial. And they say, well, what was it? What was in this pill? He said, that was a placebo. they tell the patient that that he took an inert substance 15 minutes later he's completely revived his heart rate is normal his blood pressure is normal everything's back to normal so this is called the nocebo effect this is actually even more dangerous this is what i'm really worried about in society placebo effect would be nice i think we are prescribing placebo or nocebos on a mass scale, on a massive scale.

1:04:51Nir Eyal:And we need to be very careful about that because it's kind of what we talked about in the very beginning about your great question around identity. Your labels are your limits. Right. So if we tell people that you have XYZ diagnosis and we medicalize otherwise normal human behavior, that can have a very serious nocebo effect because we will conform to those beliefs as well.

1:05:12Charles:And we'll force other people to do this. I know someone I deeply care for, self-diagnosed I'm going to pronounce a pronoun self-diagnosed for ADHD.

1:05:22Nir Eyal:Yeah, that's the worst.

1:05:23Charles:That's the worst of all worlds.

1:05:25Nir Eyal:And there's so much bullshit about this self-diagnosis going around. At least you can say, okay, get a proper diagnosis, even though today I've never actually met anyone who's gone for an ADHD diagnosis who doesn't get one. Everybody gets one.

1:05:36Charles:It's like when I watch a commercial on TV or at WebMD, I'm like, oh my god, I'd read there.

1:05:42Nir Eyal:You've got all those things.

1:05:43Charles:Of course. this individual went through and hunted down therapists until this person found a therapist that said you're right you do have a dhd here's the pill and i was like oh my gosh it's it's heartbreaking there's so much value here and here you know i could talk about this for days and days and days i know you just released a book where can people get it where can people get a hold of this how do they get a hold of you to jump on the conversation and have these because i'm blessed because I get to talk to you. We get to have conversations when it's not recorded, which are far more blunt than these are.

1:06:18Charles:Where could people jump on? How do they track you down? What's the best way to get ahold of you?

1:06:22Nir Eyal:Absolutely. So my website is nearandfar.com. It's spelled like my first name, N-I-R-andfar.com. And the book is called Beyond Belief and that's available wherever books are sold. And there's a special bonus. We have a 30-day belief transformation journal. It's 120 pages. It's absolutely free if you buy the book. Anywhere you buy the book, You come and give us your little order number at nirnfar.com and you can get that Beyond Belief Belief Transformation Journal absolutely free.

1:06:50Charles:And Nir, I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

1:06:54Nir Eyal:My pleasure. This is a lot of fun.

1:06:56Charles:That's a wrap on another episode of The Proven Podcast. Your success isn't about willpower. It's about design. Stop blaming distraction. Start building discipline into your systems. While others scroll, you could be compounding focus. Remember, if your habits aren't intentional, your results were never proven.