Nir Eyal: Fix the Mindset Sabotaging Your Success in Business and Life | Human Behavior | E391

15:07Nir Eyal:So to answer your question, beliefs aren't magic. Beliefs change behavior, and that behavior becomes our biology. And that is the case when it comes to our physical bodies, for our businesses, for our relationships, in all facets of our life.

15:21Hala Taha:So to your point, beliefs can help us and hurt us. So how can we tell if a belief is useful to us or not?

15:29Nir Eyal:So we want to look at those areas of our life where we feel the muck, right? That New Year's resolution that you've had for years and years that keeps coming back. That relationship that annoys you and somehow, you know, you can't repair for whatever reason. It just keeps being an annoyance. The little things in life that frustrate you. Anywhere that you're not being your full self, you're not living to your full potential. And what's fascinating is that everybody has these limiting beliefs. Everyone has them because they're hidden. Because at the time, these limiting beliefs, they feel like facts and we don't recognize them for what they are.

16:07Nir Eyal:They just feel like they're absolutely true. That person is just that kind of person. That business opportunity can't possibly work. I'm the kind of person who can't. Oh, here's the most common one I hear. I don't have time. I'm too busy. I hear it all the time. What is that? Just a limiting belief and it's not always serving us. So what we want to do is to look for the areas where we're stuck, not necessarily find more information, but actually assess for ourselves, take out those limiting beliefs, look at them and figure out, are they serving us or are they hurting us? Now, the hard part is that we can't see these for ourself because they're hidden, right?

16:43Nir Eyal:Because we think they're facts. It's almost like your face, that we all have faces, but you can't see your own face. The only way you can see your own face is to take a look at the mirror. And that's not always comfortable because sometimes you see things you don't like. Maybe you have a pimple or whatever. You have a hair where it shouldn't be. Sometimes you see things you don't like. And so we resist looking at those limiting beliefs. Why? Because we have what's called a psychological immune system. We resist anything that might change our beliefs because our default state is passivity. We like sticking with our old beliefs.

17:16Nir Eyal:Why? Because then I don't have to do anything. That business can't possibly work. Impossible. These leads are crappy. There's no way anybody could succeed. Well, if I believe that, it instantly becomes true. I don't have to do anything about it. And so it's only if we want to reach our full potential, we have to unpack those limiting beliefs, take a good hard look at them, and figure out how we can change them to serve us.

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21:09Hala Taha:That's B-I-T defender.com slash profiting. And something that you do really well is that you always give us frameworks to align around. And you've got this, I think it's called the motivation triangle that has three sides. Talk to us about all three sides. I know you mentioned it earlier, but like go a little bit deeper. And then I wanna get into the three powers of belief.

21:33Nir Eyal:Sure, yeah. So we talked about how you need to know for motivation to persist, you have to know the behavior, right? What it is you're going to do. the benefit, why you're going to do it, and then the belief underlies it all. So it's a triangle where the base of that motivation triangle is, of course, belief. And so you have to believe in the benefit coming, and you have to believe in your ability to do the behavior. Now, how do you do that? Like, how do you pick good beliefs? You know, we've all heard, just believe, that's the key, just believe in it. Well, where's that magic button that I can just alter my beliefs?

22:03Nir Eyal:Right, it's not that simple. And in fact, we know that positive thinking, that just, you know, manifesting and visualizing, if you do it wrong, it can actually be harmful. We can talk about how to do this right versus how to do it in a way that actually saps your motivation. But the right way to do it is to leverage what I call the three powers of belief. The three powers of belief are the fact that our beliefs shape what we see. This is called attention. They shape what we feel. They literally shape, they decide our internal states, what we feel inside our bodies. So that's the power of anticipation.

22:39Nir Eyal:And then finally, and most importantly, our beliefs define what we do. We call this agency. So those are the three powers of belief, the power to change what we see, what we feel, and what we do.

22:49Hala Taha:So I run a team of about 60 people all over the world. I didn't get to introduce myself from an entrepreneurial perspective when we first hopped on the call. And as I was reading about this motivational triangle, I kept thinking, man, how do I instill more belief in my team so they get their projects done? How do I, you know, use belief in our performance reviews and try to understand if the team actually believes that it's possible to do what we're doing? Otherwise, we're not going to achieve whatever we want to achieve. So what's your advice for people who are trying to motivate themselves, but also trying to motivate others in terms of how to use this new concept of belief or ensuring that people also believe in what they're doing?

23:30Nir Eyal:We underestimate this greatly as entrepreneurs because we think we have to be very logical and fact-based. And that is important, of course. We have to speak from a place of honesty. But when we don't really know, okay, we can't predict the future. We don't know what's going to happen. This is where what we call company culture really matters. What is company culture? Company culture is just a codified set of beliefs. Okay, this is what we do here. This is what gets you promoted. This is what gets you fired. This is what we value. This is what we would like to see around here. This is how we are going to succeed.

24:02Nir Eyal:This is how we're going to fail. So we don't want to do this. we want to do that. Is any of this a fact? No, it's just a belief. It's our best guess at, hey, we have to have these standards or we want to do things this way or this matters here and that doesn't. This is based on the company and it's not universal. That a company that has one set of values, if you transfer it to an industry, it might work in one industry, but it won't work in a different industry. So it has to be a lock and key of the right company culture with the right beliefs for each and every company. Now, if you don't think of that company culture, if you aren't consciously aware of those beliefs, you're going to get a bunch of crappy default states that are not going to help you succeed.

24:45Nir Eyal:You're going to get just the collective background of whoever you hire, right? This is why founders have such a profound impact because, of course, people look to the founder. They look to the founder's beliefs, and there's no better example of that than Steve Jobs. In his biography, Walter Isaacson talked about how Steve Jobs used to have a reality distortion field, meaning he would see a future that nobody else could see, right? We call this founder vision. That is nothing more than a belief. It's not a fact, right? Steve Jobs didn't always predict the future correctly. Many times he was wildly off, but he always had this vision, And that vision wasn't based on fact.

25:25Nir Eyal:He didn't know the future. He chose a set of beliefs that motivated everyone at Apple. And that's what every single founder has to do with employees. So your most important job is to build a vision for where you're going, to help people see that possible reality. And this is the second power of belief, the power of anticipation. Based on what we see, it defines what we will do.

25:48Hala Taha:That makes a lot of sense. So when somebody is saying like, you know, I lost motivation, what is actually happening? Like what belief is being impacted when someone's like, man, I just feel so unmotivated. I have no motivation right now.

26:01Nir Eyal:Well, it depends which of the three is missing. So is it that you don't know what to do? That's almost never the case these days, because if you don't know what to do, just Google it, right? Ask Chachi PT. You'll figure out what to do. That's not the barrier anymore. It used to be, not anymore in the information age. Then you've got the benefit, right? Maybe I know what to do, but I don't really care about the reward. That's not meaningful for me. Maybe it's not enough of a reward, so never mind, I won't do it. Those are kind of obvious. The missing element, when people say, yeah, yeah, you know, I really do want to get healthier, and I know I need to go to the gym, so there's the behavior and the benefit, but I don't really want to, it's because of some kind of underlying limiting belief.

26:39Nir Eyal:Probably something like exercise sucks, right? Exercise hurts. Exercise is suffering. Take it from a former fat person. I used to be clinically obese. I would tell myself stuff like that all the time. I don't have time. This is painful. I don't like it. I'm not athletic. What are these? Are they facts? No, they're just limiting beliefs.

26:59Hala Taha:Okay, so let's go over the three powers of belief, and we can start off going deep on the first one, which is attention. So the power to see what you believe. So you talk about perception in the book, and that essentially you even go as far as saying as you believe that we're basically living in a simulation because our reality is just based on our perception. Help us understand what you mean by that.

27:28Nir Eyal:Yeah, and this is probably one of the most important things if you want to change your life is to realize that you do not see reality as it is. It's impossible. The human brain absorbs about 11 million bits of information per second, 11 million bits. That's about the equivalent of reading war and peace every second twice. Okay, it's a tremendous amount of information. What does that information look like? It's the light entering your eyes. It's the sound of my voice entering your ears. It's the ambient temperature of the room. Your brain is processing all that information. You're just not conscious of it because your conscious awareness can only process about 50 bits of information.

28:08Nir Eyal:Okay, 50 bits versus 11 million bits. That means you are aware of only.00, 0045 % of the information available to you. So because the brain just can't handle all this information, it has to do something about it to help us function in a world where we have so much information entering our brains, it takes a shortcut. And that shortcut is to leverage our beliefs. So we see reality not as it is, we see it through this tiny keyhole of attention that is dictated by our beliefs. And that kegel of attention determines what we can even see as possible, not only in present reality, but also in the future.

28:47Nir Eyal:I'll give you an example. Do you like riddles? Yeah. Okay, let me give you a riddle. So there's a father and a son who are driving in the middle of the night on a deserted country road. There are no lights around, completely pitch black. And all of a sudden, a deer jumps in front of the car. The car smashes into the deer. It's a terrible car accident. The father is killed instantly. The son is in critical condition and must be rushed to the hospital. When the son gets to the hospital, he's placed on the operating table. The surgeon barges into the operating room, takes one look at the child, and says, I can't operate on this boy.

29:30Nir Eyal:He's my son. How can that be? Do you know the answer?

29:36Hala Taha:No.

29:37Nir Eyal:Okay, think about it. I'll say it one more time. I'll say it a little faster this time, but same basic story. Father and son on a dark, deserted road. They're driving father and son together in a car. All of a sudden, a deer jumps in front. They smash into this deer. The father is instantly killed. The boy is rushed to the operating room. On the operating room table, the surgeon barges into the operating room, takes one look at the boy and says, I can't operate on this boy. He's my son. Now, just don't feel bad if you don't know the answer. 83 % of people don't get this puzzle. 83 % of people don't get the answer.

30:14Nir Eyal:Do you have a clue?

30:16Hala Taha:I don't know. It's a stepfather or something.

30:19Nir Eyal:That's an answer. That is an answer.

30:21Hala Taha:But that's

30:21Nir Eyal:not the answer. Can you think of any more? The answer is...

30:25Hala Taha:Oh, it's his mom.

30:28Nir Eyal:Bingo. You got it. You're in the minority of people who got the answer. That's exactly right. Very good. 83 % of people can't figure it out. They can't see the possibility that the surgeon was the boy's mother because typically 80%, statistically, 80 % of surgeons are men, 20 % are women. That's a reality, right? That's a fact. But we can't see it. We can't even imagine that possibility because of our prior beliefs, because our prior experiences. So when you think about something as simple, and once you know the answer, like duh, of course it's the boy's mother, obviously. by the way, men and women, if you don't get this, if you're listening, don't feel bad.

31:06Nir Eyal:It doesn't mean that you're sexist or anything. The same proportion of men and women don't get this puzzle, so it doesn't mean that. It just means that your prior beliefs have a tendency to predict future events. So if you've seen that most surgeons are men, you will predict that most surgeons will be men in this scenario that I just outlined. So why is this so important? Think about what this means for you as an entrepreneur. that if you can't even imagine a potential future, if you can't see a reality, you can't work towards it because you don't believe it. So what great entrepreneurs are able to do, they suspend reality.

31:41Nir Eyal:I mean, think about how ridiculous it is. When you started your company, right? And you probably told people about the company. Did anybody say, no, I don't think that's going to work. I think it's a bad idea. Did anybody do that to you?

31:50Hala Taha:Yeah, especially people who were closest to me, actually.

31:54Nir Eyal:Right, right. What did they say to you?

31:57Hala Taha:Um, you know, keep your stable job. This is so risky. Um, you know, that it's just risky.

32:06Nir Eyal:Right, right. Cause it probably is not going to work. They could envision how it could work. What are you going to do a podcast and load your video? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure. Good luck with that one. Right. Uh, because for them, they couldn't see what you saw because you believed not only in your abilities, you believed in this opportunity and that shaped your reality. You could see something that other people just couldn't see.

32:27Hala Taha:Yeah. And isn't it true that not only like does it impact our beliefs, but actually visually how we see our reality? I know that there was this checkerboard analogy where basically you just see what you, what you're anticipating to see, not necessarily what is reality.

32:44Nir Eyal:Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. So if you, if you go on Google and type in checkerboard illusion, what you'll see is that there's two squares, square A and square B, and square A looks much darker than square B. Very obvious, right? And everybody who looks at this says, yes, absolutely, square A is definitely darker than square B. But if I put a strip of the same color overlapping square A and square B, you'll see that square A and square B are exactly the same color. Now, that's very interesting. It's kind of an optical illusion. What's crazy is that even when you agree with me, yes, square A and B are the same color, when you look at it again, it still looks like they're different colors.

33:23Nir Eyal:So your brain is lying to you, is literally lying to you and not allowing you to see the truth. Even when you know the truth, it won't allow you to see reality as it really is because of your prior understandings, because of your prior conditioning. And so this is why, how the power of attention changes so dramatically what we are actually able to see in our environment.

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37:30Nir Eyal:we need to have practices in place that constantly remind us that we're wrong, that we need to have what's called intellectual humility, that if we want to get the best out of ourselves, we have to see reality not only as it is, but as it could be. So we need strict practices in place to force us to see these opportunities, to see what's available to us. And so this gets us into the subject that we call entrepreneurial alertness, entrepreneurial alertness, that we know that successful entrepreneurs, they're not necessarily lucky innately. They make their own luck. They make their own luck. It's a beautiful study where they took people who were self-identified, people who call themselves lucky or unlucky.

38:13Nir Eyal:Okay, it was a label they assigned to themselves. They believed, is it a fact? No, they believed they were either lucky or unlucky. Then they gave them a very simple task. The task was, we want you to look at this newspaper and simply count the number of images. One, two, three, four, how many images are in this newspaper? Okay. People who believed they were lucky, it took them about 11 seconds. People who believed they were unlucky took them two and a half minutes. Why the gap? The gap occurred because on page two of this newspaper, one of the pictures, one of the images that they were counting said there are 48 images in this newspaper.

38:55Nir Eyal:Collect your prize. the people who saw themselves as lucky saw that opportunity. They could read the image because they were seeing something that the unlucky people couldn't imagine existed. They couldn't see it. It was right there in front of them, but just like you can't imagine that the surgeon was the boy's mom, people couldn't see what was right in front of them, the same exact image the unlucky people couldn't see. It took them two and a half minutes versus 11 seconds. This is exactly what happens to us every day Because if you believe opportunities won't happen to you, if you believe they will happen to you, you're right.

39:29Nir Eyal:You see reality differently. And so we have to institute these practices, and there's a few that we can all implement, that force us to provoke luck. That in fact, luck isn't chance. It's something we manufacture for ourselves.

39:42Hala Taha:What are some ways that we can try to create more luck in our lives?

39:46Nir Eyal:Okay, so the first thing you can do is to show extreme amounts of gratitude. Extreme amounts of gratitude. So this comes from Tina Selig at Stanford. And she has this practice, she shared with me, where she has a stack of thank you cards and she has this daily habit of whenever anyone does something nice, makes her feel good, makes her feel appreciated, just has a pleasant sensation, she wants to thank them. Whether that's saying it out loud, whether that's writing a little thank you card, whether that's sending an email, never ever miss an opportunity to say thank you, to show gratitude, right?

40:20Nir Eyal:whether it's someone who serves you at a restaurant and does a nice job, whether it's your child that you thank them for being extra polite to you, or whatever, your spouse giving them an extra hug, or an employee or a colleague, always be gracious to people and show them how appreciative you are. Now, why is that good? It's not just good karma. Turns out that you are provoking luck. How does that happen? Imagine, when you send someone a handwritten thank you note, which takes maybe 30 seconds, when that thank you note lands on their desk, and just so happens to land next to a business opportunity that they're thinking, well, who would be someone I should share this with?

40:57Nir Eyal:You're top of mind. So you're kind of pollinating opportunities. You're creating these opportunities. You're provoking luck. So that's one thing we can do. Another thing we can do that we have to get into the habit of doing is intentionally exiting our comfort zones, finding ways to do things that are a little weird, a little uncomfortable, because it turns out that motivation is in large part about discomfort. It's about overcoming something that's difficult because what spurs us to action is that we want something and wanting itself hurts, right? So the more we can get comfortable with the pain of doing something, the better we become at it, the less resistance we have, right?

41:36Nir Eyal:It's just like practice. The first time you learned to ride a bike, it was very difficult, you kept falling over, it was so hard, and then it became easy peasy. First time you learned to drive a car, first time you learned to do anything, it's difficult until it's not. And so what we find in the research is that people who consistently push themselves out of their comfort zone, they take opportunities that maybe were a little uncomfortable, they talk to people that was a little bit uncomfortable, they do things that push themselves slightly out of their comfort zone again and again and again. Turns out they not only provoke luck, they become more lucky, they start seeing opportunities where they didn't before.

42:09Nir Eyal:For example, oh no, I can never just walk up to a stranger and have a conversation. I just did this on the plane right over, I'm in LA, I just took a flight from Spain and I had a conversation in the flight, in the galley, right, where they had little snacks and drinks. I talked to this wonderful lady who lives in LA. We had this great conversation. Now we exchange information. We might do some business together in the future. That would only happen if I was pushing myself, if I was looking for opportunities to push myself out of a comfort zone. That was something I wouldn't do before is just talk to a random stranger for an hour and a half on a flight.

42:40Nir Eyal:That's super weird and uncomfortable. But you know what? It provokes luck. It makes those opportunities. And then the next thing, this is probably the most important of the three, is to relish failure opportunities. That people see failure as a sign that they're doing something wrong. And that's not the attitude of successful people. That in fact, successful people relish those opportunities, right? So, hey, I'm making my sales calls. Not a lot of people said no, but oh man, I've got more to do. And look how many no's I got. That means the next one might be a yes. So for example, if I told you whatever goal you might have, if I, you know, I tell you I traveled into the future and I know that you have only five more failures before number six is going to be a success.

43:24Nir Eyal:If you're looking for love, go on five more dates, six one, you're going to find your soulmate. Five more leads and the sixth one, you're going to close a deal. Whatever it is, if I knew five more failures and then you're going to have the sixth one is going to be a big success. Would you avoid failure?

43:39Hala Taha:No, I'd run to.

43:41Nir Eyal:Yeah, exactly. You look forward to it. Come on, let's fail so we can get to the success. Well, that's reality. And if you believe that, it becomes your reality. If you believe that failures are an opportunity, you're going to try more. You're going to persevere. You're going to stay more motivated. And guess what? You're going to get lucky more often.

43:57Hala Taha:I know that you give a case study of the lady who launched SolidCore. And she had exceptional entrepreneurial alertness, and it allowed her to see opportunities where most people wouldn't see an opportunity there at all. Can you tell us about that story?

44:13Nir Eyal:Sure. Anne Malum. She's an amazing story. She's an amazing example of the power of beliefs and the power of attention specifically. So she was in Philadelphia. She was working for some job she wasn't too happy with. And one day she ran by this homeless shelter, this homeless mission. And then she ran by by it again. It kind of became part of her routine. And for years, she would just run by this homeless shelter and didn't do anything about it. Like many people today, you know, we see someone suffering just the way it is, right? Someone's on the street, it's probably a drug problem, nothing you can do.

44:48Nir Eyal:Okay, I, you know, that's someone else's problem. Well, one day, one of these men at the homeless shelter makes a joke and says, is all you do run all day? And she jokes back, is all you do stand in there all day. And then they start having a little rapport. And the next day, they have a little bit more of a conversation. And this is something she would never did before. She would never have this conversation with a person at a homeless mission. And then they started forming a bit of a relationship. And then after a few days of this, she stops in her tracks and she asks herself, how come I'm the runner and they're homeless?

45:21Nir Eyal:Why can't we all be runners? And so she has this crazy idea of what would it be like to run with homeless men? And that's exactly what she does. She forms a group called Back on My Feet that teaches unhoused people how to get back on their feet, how to get their life back in order, first by starting with physical fitness. Now, she's not trying to fix homelessness as a systemic issue. We're all very aware that homelessness is not fixable just with running shoes, that it involves unaffordability of housing, it involves mental health issues. There's lots of issues to homelessness. But she wasn't worried about all that.

45:58Nir Eyal:She just wanted to help people in this one mission in her neighborhood. She wanted to do something for them. So she looked for agency, the third power belief, something that she could actually do something about. She used the power of attention to notice potential in these men, that she saw something that everyone else discounted, this potential. And then she anticipated that they might change. And so what did she do? The first session, they got together, I think it was about nine guys, and they went on a little jog. It turns out that that little bit of hope that they saw that, hey, I could do something.

46:31Nir Eyal:I can set a difficult goal and do it. And day after day, they started to change. They would talk to each other about what they're going through. They would be a little bit more vulnerable. They would exchange different opportunities. And this organization now, several years later, is still up and running. I think it's in eight different cities. And they have run together collectively millions of miles together. Now, that experience that Ann had, where she saw potential where others did not, transferred into her next act. When she went to Los Angeles and she saw a little fitness studio and she thought it was super cute and pink and very LA and so she got inspired and she took elements of that fitness studio and her next venture was to start a fitness company where it was called SolidCore, where she opened up these studios that nobody saw an opportunity to open and she sold that company a few years later.

47:22Nir Eyal:What was interesting about this, she sold it for over$100 million and what's fascinating is she totally called her shot. The day she started the company, she wrote down on a piece of paper, I will sell this company for$100 million and that's exactly what she did. Now, was that a fact? No, it was a belief and I'm sure she had all kinds of other predictions that she didn't tell me about that maybe she didn't accomplish. That's not the point. It doesn't matter if it's true because beliefs are tools, not truths. Because writing it down and saying, I will do this, allowed her to see it. It became a possibility.

47:55Nir Eyal:And when you can see it, you can do it. And so she's a wonderful example of how these beliefs can become a reality based on your beliefs, on your perception.

48:05Hala Taha:That's such a good story. It's such an inspiring story. I know that you have a whole chapter in your book about relationships. And initially when I saw that, I was like, how do relationships really relate to belief? But then I soon understood that really you're also perceiving people and making judgments on people. And a lot of these judgments will stick on people. It's like, you know, the concept of first impressions. You know, you meet somebody for the first 20 seconds and that's the impression you have indefinitely with that person, no matter what they do or how they change. So help us understand relationships, perceptions related to relationships, and how we can make sure that we're also seeing people in their reality or in reality.

48:50Nir Eyal:Absolutely. So I'll start with a little story, a personal story. It's a little difficult to relay, but I think it conveys the point that this happened with my mom and talk about relationships and difficulties. So my mom, a few years ago, had her 74th birthday and I wanted to do something nice for her. I wanted to get her some flowers. And I was in Singapore at the time. She was in Central Florida where I grew up. And it was a bit of a challenge to get her flowers for her birthday. I had to stay up late and talk to the florist and figure out when it arrived on time and make sure that the flowers wouldn't wilt by the time they arrived at her house and all that.

49:23Nir Eyal:I went to bed at one in the morning. I patted myself on the back. I said, Mia, you did a good job. You're a good son, right? You did a nice thing. I woke up the next morning. I called my mom on her birthday and I said, hey, mom, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers? I said. And she said, yes, I did. Thank you very much. but you should know the flowers arrived kind of half dead. You shouldn't order from that florist anymore. To which I got very offended and I said something to the effect of, well, that's the last time I buy you flowers. And that went over just about as well as you'd expect. And so after the call, my wife turned to me and she said, do you want to do a turnaround on this?

50:03Nir Eyal:A turnaround. And I said, no, I do not want to do a turnaround. I don't want to do your touchy-feely, hocus-pocus, you know, mumbo-jumbo. I need to vent because venting is what we've been taught to do, right? When somebody makes you mad, you're not supposed to keep your feelings to yourself. You're supposed to let them out. You're supposed to vent. You're supposed to tell people how you really feel. Well, it turns out that's not true, that venting is one of the worst things you can do because venting does nothing more than cement this effigy that we build of people because we don't see people as they are.

50:35Nir Eyal:We see our beliefs about people We don't accurately, especially people you know the best in your life, that's so like him or she always does that. We see people as we believe they are, not as they truly are. And we see this all the time. People who, the longer they stay married, the worse they treat each other. When they first fell in love with each other, they treat each other nicely. Or maybe they, I've seen this with some of my friends, they treat strangers super well, but the person they love more, they're supposed to love more and be more loyal to than anybody else in the world, they treat poorly because they don't see that person anymore.

51:05Nir Eyal:They see this patina that they built over the years because of their beliefs. So anyways, I knew that that venting was not going to be helpful. And instead, I did a turnaround. Now, what is a turnaround? This technique comes from Byron Katie, so she deserves credit for it. And she developed these four questions that help us evaluate the usefulness of our beliefs. And it turns out that this practice is actually thousands of years old. It goes back all the way to Aristotle. So she gives us four questions. The first question is, is this belief true? Okay, so I wrote down my belief. My belief was, my mother is too judgmental and hard to please.

51:39Nir Eyal:And that was my belief. In that instance, my mother was clearly too judgmental and hard to please. Are you going to back me up, Paula? Is that right?

51:46Hala Taha:Yeah. Okay. Maybe, maybe. Come on. I was absolutely convinced, right?

51:53Nir Eyal:Yeah. And that's why I didn't want, you know, to do this exercise. I wanted someone to acknowledge that I had been wrong. That like, who says that to their son? Who gets them flowers?

52:00Hala Taha:She should just be thankful and say thank you. Yeah, exactly. Just be thankful.

52:04Nir Eyal:So, okay, question number one, easy peasy, right? Obviously. Is it true? Yeah, it's true. She was clearly, she was in the wrong, I was in the right. But here's the second question. Second question is, is it absolutely true? Is this belief that my mother was too judgmental and hard to please? Absolutely true. Is there no possible interpretation? Absolute means 100%, without exception, every single time, there's no possible way she wasn't being too judgmental and hard to please. well I'm honest with myself I mean maybe maybe I could come up with a reason maybe she was trying to just help me right but she didn't want me to get scammed by this florist okay maybe there's another explanation okay reluctantly I agreed the third question third question is who am I when I hold on to this belief who do I become what do I act like how do I feel and by the way if this doesn't resonate with your mother you know this is a business podcast think Think about it with your employees, your boss, your coworkers.

53:02Nir Eyal:You can do this with any relationship, or any challenge for that matter. So the third question is, who do I become when I hold onto this belief? When I believe that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, I'm short-tempered, I'm not very kind, and frankly I'm not myself. I regretted what I said to her. Now the fourth question. Who would I be without that belief? Well, if I had a magic wand and I could tap my brain and all of a sudden this belief would dissolve, I'd probably be nicer. I'd be more myself. I wouldn't be embarrassed by something I said and later regretted. So what we establish with just four questions is that that belief may not be true, it wasn't serving me, and I would be better without it.

53:46Nir Eyal:So now it cracks open a possibility because remember, our immune system, our psychological immune system, hates changing our beliefs. and the beliefs that we think we are most certain about, particularly about other people, that's just the way they are, those are the beliefs we most need to examine or even more so beliefs about ourselves. Those are the really, really hard ones to change. And if you feel resistance, if you say, well, no, that's not something I want to evaluate. I don't want to think differently. That's probably the beliefs you need to be most conscious of that you most need to explore.

54:15Nir Eyal:So now we do a turnaround. Okay, a turnaround, the idea behind a turnaround is not to change your beliefs, not to change your beliefs. to collect a portfolio of perspectives. A portfolio of perspectives. Because right now I only have one belief. My belief was my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. It's the only perspective I had. Now what you do is you do a turnaround to create more potential beliefs to see if any of those might be more helpful. Because remember, beliefs are tools, not truths. So we don't want to just use a tool just because that's what we've always used, right? A carpenter doesn't say, oh, I've used a hammer before, so everything I do I have to hammer.

54:49Nir Eyal:No, sometimes you use a screwdriver, sometimes you use a wrench, Sometimes you use a saw based on the job, which one is helpful. So to do a turnaround, we ask ourselves if the exact opposite could also be true. So what's the exact opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please? My mother is not too judgmental and hard to please. Could that be true? Could be true. Yeah. Like maybe she was just trying to be helpful, right? It could be that maybe she wasn't being too judgmental and hard to please. Okay, that's perspective number two. Let's go deeper. This is called a turnaround to the self.

55:23Nir Eyal:Instead of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, could it be true that I am too judgmental and hard to please? Could that be true? Well, in my mind, I had rehearsed that when I did this nice thing for her, I expected her to give me effusive praise. I wanted her to tell me how nice I was that I did this for her. And when that praise didn't come, I lost it. And I lashed out. So who was being judgmental and hard to please?

55:53Hala Taha:I kind of was, wasn't I? Yeah.

55:55Nir Eyal:Right? And now there's a fourth perspective. I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. That when I put on all this effort and things didn't work out exactly as I planned, I took it to mean that I was incompetent, that I was a bad son, that I wasn't capable of doing this very simple task of ordering her some flowers. And so what had happened, this is called a misattribution of emotion. We do this all the time, that we feel something, and as soon as we can see someone dependent on, that's the person who's causing that discomfort. But really, it came from me, because I felt bad that I had messed up somehow.

56:31Nir Eyal:So I was being too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. I can't help it if the florist delivers crappy flowers. It happens. Okay, I won't order from them again. But I lashed out at her because I felt bad about what I had done, that I took blame, that I didn't deserve to take. So which one of those four perspectives is the truth? Which one is a fact? None of them. All of them. It doesn't matter. Because beliefs are tools, not truths. The one belief that I had, that my mother was too judgmental and hard to please, that only had one solution. There's only one way out of that. She had to change so I could be happy.

57:09Nir Eyal:Not gonna happen, okay? That happens all the time in business, right? That jerk said this and this, how could they do that? Well, what you're essentially requiring is that they have to do something so I can be happy. If you hold your breath, you're gonna suffocate. That doesn't happen very often, right? Rather, with those other three perspectives, whether they were true or not, gave me more peace, allowed me to be myself. I could act the way I was proud of as opposed to a way I regretted. And that's the goal. Is it true? It doesn't matter. What matters is does it make me better? Does it make me treat others better?

57:43Nir Eyal:That's how we use these beliefs in our relationships.

57:45Hala Taha:I think that's really powerful, especially for entrepreneurs, whether you're dealing with employees or, you know, another business partner or even your spouse. So I just want to recap that to the audience. So when you when you do these turnarounds, you want to think to the opposite, to the other and to the self. Those are the three kind of perspectives that you want to think about. So you have a portfolio of perspectives. That's that's what a turnaround is.

58:09Nir Eyal:Exactly. So the opposite is is the exact opposite is true. My mother is not too judgmental and hard to please. to the other, I am too judgmental and hard to please and to the self, I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. And then you could do variations. It's not gonna all be the same. I literally do this type of exercise six, seven times a day whenever someone annoys me or I'm feeling like I'm not being myself or I'm saying something that I might later regret. Now I catch myself and I can act with more patience, with more calm, more rationally than just letting my feelings control me through my beliefs.

58:42Hala Taha:You have this second power of belief called anticipation. And we touched on it a bit, but I want to go deeper in terms of how brand is impacted by anticipation, like what we can do as entrepreneurs to build a brand where people expect certain things and will pay more for it and things like that.

59:02Nir Eyal:Absolutely. Yeah. So one of the most fascinating studies that I came across was a study that found that wine, well, let me set up this. I'll tell you all about it. Okay. So they took people and they put them into an fMRI machine. And the fMRI machine measures blood flow in the brain. Okay? And when they were in this machine, they gave them a squirt of wine. They said, this is a cheap bottle of wine, $5 bottle of wine. Okay? Tell us about it. What do you think of this$5 bottle of wine?

59:29Hala Taha:Uh, you know, it's a little harsh on the finish. I don't know. It's okay. Okay, great.

59:33Nir Eyal:Now we're going to give you an expensive bottle of wine. You ready for it? Okay. And they're sitting in the fMRI machine. They get this little tube that squirts an expensive sample of wine in their mouth. And now they report, oh, you know, tell us what you think of this wine. Oh, this wine is very complex. It has hints of oak and cherry and, you know, all the things that wine snobs say. Of course, the trick here is, you know, there's a trick. There's always a trick. It's the same wine. The only thing that was different was that they told them one was cheap and one was expensive. Now, not only did people report that the expensive wine tastes better, right?

1:00:07Nir Eyal:That's not that surprising. their brains actually experienced the wine differently. So we could see areas of their brain activate differently, showing us that they actually did perceive the more expensive wine as tastier. They weren't lying. They weren't making it up. They actually were experiencing it differently. And this is where people really misunderstand the point of advertising. People think advertising is just to build awareness. Okay, hey, come to Joe's cafeteria or come to my dry cleaner, whatever. Like, come to my consulting business. That's not the only reason we advertise. That advertising, in fact, shapes the experience itself.

1:00:50Nir Eyal:Why do you think Coca-Cola, why have we all seen thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of ads for Coca-Cola? How many times have you seen an ad for Coke in your life? Again and again. We know about Coke. Why do they keep advertising it to us? Because they are building an experience once we consume it. When we think we're supposed to feel a certain way when we consume a product, we actually do because we expect it. So this is this loop that first you have a belief. What is that belief that you have about this product? What do you anticipate to happen? That's the second step. Then you feel that thing that you experience and then the most important step, you confirm it.

1:01:28Nir Eyal:So when wine people get together and they talk about, you know, what do they do? They like to drink with each other and they talk about tasting notes and they read what editors think and they get all these, they are actually shaping the experience in real time and confirming it for next time. And so that loop, we can use that for all kinds of products and services and we shouldn't take it for granted. You know, we, we, we, we shouldn't discount the amazing impact that expectations and anticipation can have on our customers, actual experience with our product or service.

1:01:57Hala Taha:So what are some actionable things that we can do when we're developing our brand to kind of play into this anticipation belief? Like, what do we, like, is it the way that we price it? Is it like our messaging? Like, what do we do?

1:02:10Nir Eyal:All of that, all of that. Don't just chase the competition. That's the worst thing you can do. People do this all the time. Well, what's everybody else doing? Let's do that too. And we think that our competition knows something we don't. No, they're just as blind as you are. What you really want to do is to consciously be aware of what do we want our customer to anticipate? And then incept that feeling. We know that when, there's a couple of great examples. We know that when people were given a putter, golfers were given a putter, that they were told this putter was used by a very famous golfer.

1:02:41Nir Eyal:I don't know who they told them, somebody famous, Tiger Woods or something. They said, Tiger Woods used this putter. They golfed better. They actually did better. Fewer strokes on the golf course because they believed that there was some kind of anticipatory response to this special type of putter. So it turns out we really do act differently based on how we anticipate a product will affect us.

1:03:05Hala Taha:And this placebo effect also transcends to our own health, right? You were talking about us actually believing if, you know, we will live longer if we believe that, you know, it's possible to live longer, that aging isn't a negative thing. We actually live longer. Also, same thing with illnesses.

1:03:23Nir Eyal:We live longer seven and a half years. Yeah, with illnesses, with steroids. and it turns out when they did a study and they gave men a steroid, they said, hey, here's a steroid pill. It's an amazing new drug and if you take this pill, you're gonna build lots and lots of muscle. They gave them this pill. They gave a control group, nothing, and they put them on a workout regimen. It turns out that the men who took the steroid gained more muscle despite the fact that it was a placebo. It was completely inert. There was nothing in the steroid and yet these men got stronger. They actually built more muscle mass.

1:03:56Nir Eyal:How? It's not magic. It's not that the brain made the muscle. You know what happened? They worked out a tiny bit harder. They actually did something differently. So placebos aren't magic. Placebos don't cure disease, right? They don't cure sickness. Sickness is a physical malady. They change the perception, right? The illness. Sickness is in your body. Illness is in your brain. And so placebos are incredibly effective at shaping our experience. And we can leverage that power of placebo, right? If a placebo steroid can actually build muscle, maybe it's a good investment to buy a little bit more expensive running shoes if you're trying to take up jogging.

1:04:32Nir Eyal:Or maybe, you know, taking that vitamin C is not really going to cure your cold, but it might actually cure some of the symptoms. It might make you feel better, even if it's a placebo effect.

1:04:41Hala Taha:What's the danger of labeling ourselves having a certain mental illness or sickness? Like, let's say a lot of people are on this kick of, I have ADHD, right? What's the problem with having these identity beliefs?

1:04:55Nir Eyal:Okay, so now we're into the power of agency, the third power of belief. And one of the best demonstrations of the power of agency is what happens when we sap our agency through what we call a nocebo effect. So we have placebo effect. Placebo effect comes from the Latin, I will heal. A nocebo effect is I will hurt. It's the opposite of the placebo effect. And to demonstrate this, let me tell you about Mr. A. Mr. A, there was a study where he was anonymized. Mr. A had a breakup with his girlfriend. He took it really hard. And he took a bottle of antidepressants and he swallowed all the pills and he wanted to commit suicide.

1:05:32Nir Eyal:The last minute after he swallowed the pills, he decided he wanted to live. He rushed over to the neighbor's house. The neighbor rushes him to the emergency room. This is not a riddle, by the way. There's no riddle. It is a study. It's really happened. He's rushed into the emergency room. He collapses on the floor. And the last thing he says before he passes out, he says, I took all my pills. I took all my pills. The doctors and nurses rush him into the operating room. They connect him to the heart rate monitors. His heart rate is plummeting. His blood pressure is dangerously low. He's passed out.

1:06:01Nir Eyal:And they look at the pill bottle and they try and figure out what did he take? What medicine did he take that caused him to have these overdose symptoms? And it doesn't say what medication he took. It just says it's an antidepressant, but it doesn't say what type of medicine. What it does have is a phone number because Mr. A was in a clinical trial for these antidepressants. And so it didn't say what the medicine was. They call the phone number. They say, what was in this medication? We need to treat this person. He's just had an overdose. They look it up on the computer and they see Mr. A was in the placebo group.

1:06:33Hala Taha:That in every medical trial,

1:06:35Nir Eyal:you have the medicine, the actual active ingredient, and then you have to have the placebo group to see if the medication is more efficacious than the placebo, right? That's the only way you get a medicine approved. It has to be better than a placebo response. Well, he had taken an entire pill bottle of nothing. There was nothing that could have caused that physical reaction. And yet here he was sweating and convulsing, low blood pressure, low heart rate, passed out. Why? It wasn't the pills. It was his mind. That he had the message that he had done something that should cause these symptoms, and that's exactly what happened.

1:07:09Nir Eyal:Within 15 minutes, Hala, they told him, hey, you were in the placebo group. There's nothing in these bottles. Within 15 minutes, his heart rate stabilized. his blood pressure back to normal, and he was revived, he walked out. Now, that's what happens when we take these pills that we think are gonna have some kind of magical effect on us, and oftentimes they do have an incredible physical effect. Turns out we have these psychological placebos, these non-medical placebos, when it comes to our labels. That when we label ourselves as, well, I'm not a morning person. I'm too old. It's too late. I can't do that.

1:07:48Nir Eyal:I'm a Sagittarius, I'm an ENTJ, I'm a whatever, when that becomes our label, it also can become our limit. Because, and I have ADHD, I've been diagnosed with ADHD, and here's what I used to do all the time. Every time I was distracted, and look, everybody gets distracted. You don't have to have ADHD to get distracted. Everybody these days gets distracted by one thing or another. But every time I got distracted, I would say, oh man, that's my ADHD again. And people say something similar, even if you don't have a, I'm having a senior moment, or I'm not a morning person, or whatever the case might be.

1:08:21Nir Eyal:We say these things to ourselves. And what happens instantly when I refocus my attention in terms of my limitations? They become true. Because now I'm not thinking about the thing I was actually working on, I'm thinking about my limits. And I'm conforming to those limits. So that's where we have to be very, very careful. Not that there's anything wrong with these diagnoses, obviously, ADHD is real, it's something that we have to manage, We have to find ways to overcome, which is what Indistractable is all about. But having that as a map is very useful. So if you have a diagnosis, if you have a label that says, okay, I have this thing that makes what I'm trying to do a little bit more difficult than for the average person, now it's a map.

1:09:02Nir Eyal:That can lead me to behavioral tactics that I can change. It can help me navigate my path to changing my behavior. Wonderful, it's a map. When it becomes an identity, that's when we get into trouble. because it's unnecessary, right? We think it's a fact, but it's nothing more than a belief. And so to constantly reinforce our limitations, we are putting ourselves in a cage of our own creation. So having a diagnosis as a map to guide us, very helpful. Having an identity around our limitation can be very harmful.

1:09:34Hala Taha:Yeah, and I can imagine that if you go around saying you have an identity, other people will start telling you you have that identity too. I'm always late, right? Like I'm always, I'm somebody who's like always running behind, always late. And because people know that, like they'll tell me I'm late, even if I'm on time, you know, they have to mention how I'm usually, oh, you're early, but you're usually late. Right. So you can't even win in those instances. Right. So it's important not to let other people label you. Yeah.

1:10:01Nir Eyal:Yes. I would strongly invite you get rid of that label and don't let people tell you that anymore because you will conform to that label.

1:10:10Hala Taha:Yeah.

1:10:10Nir Eyal:Rather, you can use a liberating belief. You can turn it around. I'm not someone who's, how could it be who you are? Is that your biology? No, it's made up. And in fact, the more you believe it, the more it becomes true. But you can also believe a liberating belief. You can also believe a different belief that can help you modify your behavior in different ways. But you don't want to keep reinforcing this limitation.

1:10:34Hala Taha:Well, Nir, I'm really excited about your book. It comes out in March. So I think everybody should go grab a copy of Beyond Belief. Before we go, I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one can be related to everything that we just talked about today. So what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

1:10:59Nir Eyal:Okay, I want you to tell yourself that you are, two things. Number one, that you don't perceive reality as it actually is. to have more humility. So that's something you can practice every single day. You don't see things clearly, and that's a good thing because acknowledging your uncertainty gives you more intellectual humility to see other perspectives. That's one thing you can do every day, be more intellectually humble. The next thing you can do is to realize and to reinforce that you are far more capable than you think you are. You have not even touched the surface of your potential, just like those rats who gave up and died after 15 minutes and then something was unlocked and they could persist for 60 hours, the same secret is within you.

1:11:46Nir Eyal:You are capable of far, far more than you believe.

1:11:49Hala Taha:I have to say, like, this made me realize, like, I've really got to look at my beliefs, my team's beliefs, and make sure that, like, everybody is able to, you know, believe in things that even might not seem so possible. And having that belief itself is going to give us the stamina to achieve the goals that we need. So I feel like that was like the main. You want to do one right now?

1:12:08Nir Eyal:Do you have a few minutes? We can, we can tackle one of your limiting beliefs if you want. Do you tell that to yourself that, that I am always late? Is that one of your beliefs?

1:12:16Hala Taha:Oh, that is definitely like, if I could think of like one, my most negative thing that like I believe or that my, you know, boyfriend and sister and everybody believes about me is that I'm always late.

1:12:29Nir Eyal:Okay. I'm always late. You want to, you want to try it?

1:12:31Hala Taha:Yeah, let's do it.

1:12:33Nir Eyal:Let's do it. Okay. So I'm, I am always late. Is that something you do believe about yourself? yes okay all right so first question is it true you kind of answered that yes yeah i think it is

1:12:43Hala Taha:i think it's true in a lot of instances in a lot of instances yeah okay second question is it absolutely true no because it's like not like i'm always late like i'm not late to meetings i'm not late to like you know i'm not always late i'm just okay yeah yeah i'm not always late all right

1:13:03Nir Eyal:Beautiful. Very good. Question number three. Who are you when you hold on to that belief? What do you feel? Who do you become when you think to yourself, I am always late? How does that affect you?

1:13:13Hala Taha:It makes me nervous, anxious, because it's like I stress over not being late because I don't want people to keep saying I'm late. So it makes me more anxious, which actually slows me down. Okay. And I would say that it makes me feel, you know, I'm a very accomplished person. So it makes me feel like less accomplished or smart enough, you know, if I can't even be on time. Right.

1:13:39Nir Eyal:Wow. Okay. So it makes you feel unnecessarily incompetent. It makes you feel inferior. It surprisingly takes time. It slows you down. Right. The thing you need least if you're running late is to actually be slowed down. Amazing. Amazing. Look at all the negatives that come from this label that you've attached. Okay, now let's say, okay, I have a magic wand. I can wave it over your brain and poof, that belief is gone. You never, ever again think I'm always late. How does that feel? What would you be? Who would you become?

1:14:11Hala Taha:I would feel clear headed to manage my time, hopefully in a way that I would be more on time. Or I wouldn't give my excuse of like, I'm always late. So I could just be late. You know, they expect me to be late anyway. or something like that.

1:14:29Nir Eyal:Interesting. Wow. Did you hear what you just said there?

1:14:33Hala Taha:Yeah. That I'm like adapting to what everybody's telling me I am. There we go. Maybe I won't be late anymore. Talk about anticipation.

1:14:43Nir Eyal:The power of anticipation. People expect you to be late. Yeah. And so you're thinking in your head, well, people aren't expecting me to be late. So I'll just go ahead and be late. And now everybody says you're always late. and then you start believing I'm always late.

1:14:57Hala Taha:Yeah.

1:14:58Nir Eyal:It's an invention. It's not true. It's just a belief and it's a limiting belief because all those bad things we just talked about. Okay, so we've determined maybe it's not true. We've determined you'd be better off without it and that your life would be much, much better if you didn't have it anymore. Okay, so now let's do some turnarounds. Okay, what's the opposite of I am always late?

1:15:23Hala Taha:I'm on time. I'm always on time.

1:15:25Nir Eyal:I'm on time. Okay. How could that be true? Give me some examples of how that's true.

1:15:29Hala Taha:I'm on time for meetings. I'm on time for interviews. I'm on time for speaking engagements in front of 7 ,000 people. I'm on time for, you know, webinars that I have to present. Like, I'm on time, especially when it matters.

1:15:45Nir Eyal:Ah, okay. I'm on time, especially when it matters. So you went, okay, so now you had a previous belief that was, I am always late. By the way, that's an identity. I am are some of the two worst words in the English language because whatever follows I am, you will become, right? I am always late. I am too skinny. I am too old. I am too fat. I am whatever. That becomes your reality. It becomes the truth. Okay, so you went from I am always late to I'm on time when it matters. Is that what you said?

1:16:19Hala Taha:Yeah, I'm on time when it matters or when I'm getting paid or when it's work related. I'm usually on time.

1:16:25Nir Eyal:Okay, fantastic. So now you have two beliefs, which is true, which is false. Who cares? Which one is more motivating?

1:16:31Hala Taha:I'm on time when it matters.

1:16:32Nir Eyal:Which one reduces suffering?

1:16:34Hala Taha:I'm on time when it matters.

1:16:36Nir Eyal:Okay. Is there another turnaround you might be able to do from I am always late? Is there another turnaround?

1:16:43Hala Taha:Maybe like I care about other people's time or something along those lines or like I'm caring about other people's time or I don't know I don't know I don't know another one I'm late I'm not on time for people who don't matter that's kind of nasty is it could it be true I think it's more of like for if I can just speak like without in the I am it's more about like for me I'm so busy that like I don't want like if some like to me if I'm 10 minutes late for a dinner reservation with my friends like that's not a big deal because it's like it's just a fun thing and we're going to dinner we don't I don't understand why I have to how it has to be like military or gotta start at this time I don't function that way because to me it's not work it's fun so it's like I'm yeah yeah because it's not important you said earlier that you're always on

1:17:41Nir Eyal:if someone you really admire, if you speak in front of 7 ,000 people, you're on the dot because it's important. So maybe there's a revelation here. You don't want to, and I can feel the resistance. By the way, this is psychological resistance. It always happens.

1:17:56Hala Taha:Because I don't want my friends to think that they're not important, right? They are important. It's more of like, I don't align to being so military about fun plans because then it's not fun anymore. Like if I'm rushing to get there, then I'm anxious and I'd rather like take my time and come in a good mood, you know? So that's kind of it.

1:18:17Nir Eyal:Okay, okay.

1:18:17Hala Taha:Yeah.

1:18:17Nir Eyal:Super interesting. We've uncovered a new limiting belief. Because people are telling you it's annoying them that you're not on time. Yeah. This is causing suffering.

1:18:28Hala Taha:It is.

1:18:29Nir Eyal:Right? And so in your head, look at what's happened here. Your brain so wants to fight this belief that you might be hurting people and causing suffering that you've created a new limiting belief that it's no big deal. When really what you just told me is you're only on time when it matters. So when you're not on time, it's because their interests don't matter. Just sit with that for a second.

1:18:58Hala Taha:Yeah. Well, that's not nice because I love my friends.

1:19:03Nir Eyal:Of course you do. Absolutely you do. And what is the whole point of looking at limiting beliefs? And the reason you say it's not nice is because your brain now has created a new belief so that you can keep thinking you're nice and your behavior is okay, even when you know you're not behaving in a way that's nice. because if you are telling in your life, hey, it's kind of hurting me that you don't think I'm important. They see this. They know that you're on time for a 7 ,000-person event. And so your brain has manufactured a belief that what's the big deal? It's a casual event. I don't want to be stressed.

1:19:41Nir Eyal:So you be stressed. So you miss me. So you think that you're not that important. So again, what's true? I don't know. That's not the point. The point here is to reduce suffering. And so if this is a constant thing that nags at you, that you think, you know what? I built a huge business. I'm doing amazing. I have so many friends. But this is an area of my life that's not that great. Like, I wish I could fix this. It could be something worth exploring to think, is that belief serving me? Is it worth serving me that it doesn't hurt anybody when I'm late? What's the big deal? That could be a limiting belief.

1:20:20Nir Eyal:I don't know. It's just worth exploring.

1:20:21Hala Taha:It's helpful for me to tell everybody in my life too, like, hey, I'm working on this. Like, don't call me a late person anymore. Because even when I do good, I get told like, oh, you're early. What a surprise.

1:20:31Nir Eyal:Like, you know what I mean?

1:20:33Hala Taha:So it's like, it's also important for people in your life to know like, hey, I'm working on this so that they don't come back in that way.

1:20:41Nir Eyal:I think that's great. It's another limiting belief though. Why? Because if that doesn't happen,

1:20:51Hala Taha:then i'll be resentful yeah then i have to do my own turnaround you're offloading it's it's

1:20:57Nir Eyal:because you keep telling me i keep telling people stop calling me late can't control that yeah you can control is your interpretation of that right what you can control what is in your control is being on time which it sounds like you're you're you're working on which is fantastic that's something that's important to you it's one of your values to be seen as someone who has personal integrity, right? If I show up on time, I deliver the goods on time, I pay my bills on time, I'm reliable, I have integrity, that's you, I know you, that's you. This is one weird quirk about your behavior, but 99 % of you is someone who lives with personal integrity.

1:21:31Nir Eyal:You would have gotten this far if you didn't have personal integrity. So it's this weird little quirk. But asking others to do something, to change, and making that dependent on why I can't change unless they do, that's going to be a long road. Yeah. this is so helpful is it so what what can you do differently you think i think what i can do

1:21:52Hala Taha:differently is in the moments where i know that i need to be somewhere like dinner reservations right like that's like my the biggest thing that i'm like late for is like i'll come 15 minutes late to dinner or something like that tell myself like this my relationships are just important as work and so i need to treat this just as important as a work thing so i don't let them down i don't let me down. And also, so I start to establish this new identity of somebody who's on time. And even if it means that they're surprised, if I surprise them enough times that maybe they'll stop believing that I'm somebody who's not on time.

1:22:28Hala Taha:And I'll also believe in myself that I'm more on time.

1:22:32Nir Eyal:Beautiful. And here's what's going to happen. The more you do that, at first people will say, oh my God, look at you. You're on time. Wow. Good for you. They'll dig into you. And you know what you're going to be able to say is, yeah, yeah, I've been hearing that a lot lately. Thanks. And you say that two, three, four times. Yeah, I've been hearing that a lot that I'm on time. Thanks a lot for acknowledging that. And then they're going to stop saying it. Because over time, you're going to prove it to yourself that this is something that you do. And they're going to stop saying it because now it's not funny anymore, right?

1:23:06Nir Eyal:It's not interesting anymore because now your behavior has actually changed. And the most important thing is you're going to teach your brain a new belief. that I'm not always late. In fact, I'm pretty much always on time. It's not the majority of instances. Almost always I am on time.

1:23:22Hala Taha:It's such a great exercise for anybody who has any sort of limiting belief, whether it's, you know, you believe that you're always late or everybody has different limiting beliefs. So I love that we went through this exercise.

1:23:33Nir Eyal:Well, thanks for being so vulnerable and being a good sport around this. Of course, of course. I really appreciate it.

1:23:37Hala Taha:I feel like my whole audience knows this has gotten brought up more than one time.

1:23:41Nir Eyal:And they want to see this. It's really important that successful people show that we all have these limiting beliefs. I mean, I wrote the book for me. You know how many limiting beliefs I have? Oh my God. You'll read all about them in the book. So many limiting beliefs. But our default state is always to go into what we know, what's comfortable. That's where we are safe. Because changing is hard. It means that we have to do something differently, that we're not perfect. But that's how we grow. That's how we get better.

1:24:06Hala Taha:Totally. So my last question to you is, what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond things that we talked about today, beyond business even. Just what is your secret to living a successful, profiting life?

1:24:20Nir Eyal:I think it's self-examination. I think it's the secret to a profitable life is a life lived with minimal regret. I don't want to get to the end of it. I don't want to live a day. I don't want to live a week, a month, a year, certainly not a lifetime, saying, I could have done that thing. I could have changed that. I could have treated people better in some way, and I didn't. I don't want regret in my life. I mean, we're going to all have regrets, right? We make mistakes. But to know about something that I can change and not change it when it's possible, that's a missed opportunity. So to me, profiting in life is about living a life that is full of joy, is full of companionship, is full of helping others, and limiting as much as possible the regret we have.

1:25:04Hala Taha:That's beautiful. Nir, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

1:25:09Nir Eyal:Thanks. Yeah, so my website is nearandfar.com. That's spelled like my first name, N-I-R-andfar.com. And we have a special gift for listeners. We have at nearandfar.com forward slash belief dash change. That's forward slash belief dash change. There's a five minute belief change guide that you can use every single day that gets you on this pattern. Again, this is a practice, it's repetition. That's how you change your limiting beliefs. And that's absolutely free. You don't have to buy a single thing.

1:25:34Hala Taha:Amazing, we'll put that link in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

1:25:39Nir Eyal:My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

1:25:41Hala Taha:Yeah, fam, I really loved this episode. Nir always comes with the fire. He does such great thinking, and he just always gives us something to really noodle on and really change our perspective. And today, he gave us a deeper understanding of what truly drives performance. Information is abundant, especially in 2026. Advice is endless, but execution is rare. And the gap between knowing and achieving, it all comes down to belief. So here are three things I want you to actually take into your life and your business moving forward. First off, use NIRS motivation triangle. The next time you procrastinate on a sales call, a workout, a launch, pause and diagnose why.

1:26:22Hala Taha:Define the behavior clearly. Define the benefit clearly. Then examine the belief under it. Do you believe the effort will actually pay off? Do you believe you can execute? If you catch a sentence like, this won't work, or I'm not ready, that's the actual obstacle that you're facing. Replace that belief with a belief that supports your action before you go on to touch your to-do list. Secondly, run the turnaround exercise the moment that you feel triggered. Let's say a teammate frustrates you or a partner disappoints you. Write that belief down. Maybe it sounds like they don't care or they always drop the ball.

1:26:57Hala Taha:Then ask if that's absolutely true. Notice how you show up when you hold on to it. Then deliberately test the opposite. Turn it towards yourself. Ask where you might be contributing to this problem. It's not about blame. It's about agency. And that shift alone can change how you lead and how you build trust with others. Third, stop turning labels into limits. Nir said it all too well. A diagnosis can be a map, but the moment it becomes your identity, it becomes a cage. Start noticing the phrases that shrink you, like, I'm always late, or I'm not a morning person, and then swap those beliefs out for ones that give you ownership and get you moving again.

1:27:35Hala Taha:Yap Bam, you are so much more capable than you think. The persistence you admire in others is not reserved just for them. It's unlocked by what you choose to believe. And that choice is available to you right now. I believe in you, Yap Bam. All right, gang, thank you so much for spending your time with me today. It genuinely means the world to me. And if you haven't already, you guys can go subscribe to our YouTube channel. It's growing super fast. And I love connecting with you guys personally, so you can find me on Instagram at yapwithhala or just link up with me on LinkedIn and search Hala Taha.

1:28:08Hala Taha:Until next time, this is your host, Hala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.