How Your Beliefs Shape What You See (And Hold You Back) | Nir Eyal

People who consider themselves lucky see literally with their eyeballs more opportunities. You don't have to change your mind. But what you can do is to say, you know what, that pair of sunglasses that I've been wearing, I'm sick of those sunglasses. Let me try and look at the world through a different pair of lenses. Figure out what are those limiting beliefs that are keeping us from what we really want and then replacing them with what I call liberating beliefs. My family came to America when I was three and by the time I was six, they had been scammed out of every dollar they had. So your brain is constantly one step ahead based on what it thinks is going to happen. And how does it know that? Based on what happened in the past. And then I came across this study that blew my mind. Learned helplessness is this concept that over time if nothing you do works, you learn to be passive. Turns out it's exactly wrong. It's to demonstrate that if the power of the mind can exclude pain, can change through its belief what enters conscious awareness through the power of attention, what else can we do? Each of us creates our own simulation. And how can we show this? It's called the coffer illusion. It's the same image. And you tell me whether you see rectangles or circles. I know where you're born. Hey everyone, welcome back to the No Thyself podcast. Our guest today is a best-selling author who teaches and sits at the intersection of psychology, technology, and unlocking human potential. He is somebody that is a really eloquent teacher uh exploring habit building, the distracted mind, beliefs, and the invisible forces that are shaping our life often unbeknownst to us. Nariel, thank you for being here. >> My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Andre. >> What is the difference between fact, faith, and belief? >> Okay, so a fact is an objective truth. It's something that is true whether or not you believe in it. So the world is more like a sphere than it is flat. Sorry, flatearthers. doesn't the earth doesn't care what you think. You just lost all your flat earth audience. >> I wonder how many there are. >> Probably not that many. That's a fact. Okay. Now, on the other end of the spectrum is faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. Uh what happens in the afterlife? Uh God rewards the righteous. These things don't demand evidence. In between fact and faith is what we call a belief. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. And what's so amazing about these beliefs that I think most people don't realize is that we can choose them. That beliefs are not the same thing as facts and faith that beliefs are not truths. They're tools. And so just like a carpenter wouldn't say, "Oh, this is the hammer. It is the one and only true tool." A carpenter says, "Okay, sometimes for the job the tool is a hammer. Sometimes it's a wrench. Sometimes it's a saw." And the carpenter would use the right tools for the job. We can do the same thing with our beliefs. But of course, that's that's not obvious to us that we have these hidden limiting beliefs that we all carry around. Everyone I've ever met has them. And we can't see them in ourselves, but we can often times see them in others. We can, you know, see definitely see them in everyone we are close with. And yet we these aren't obvious to ourselves. And so what's critical, it turns out, in terms of enhancing human performance, happiness, well-being, sense of peace, is to figure out what are those limiting beliefs that are keeping us from what we really want and then replacing them with what I call liberating beliefs. >> Going from limiting to liberating. >> Exactly. And the difference is is super important. A limiting belief is something that saps motivation that uh uh increases suffering. Whereas a liberating belief is something that supplies motivation and decreases suffering. >> How important is it to for us to understand that distinction between those three and how it changes how we live our life? >> I think that uh the majority of our personal, interpersonal, and even political problems come from the fact that we don't differentiate between these three things, fact, faith, and beliefs. that far too many of what we think are facts turn out to be nothing more than beliefs and we hold on to them with this utter conviction as if it is true because to us the way the brain sees reality is filtered from our beliefs. Now what how does that happen? We know that the brain is taking in at every given second 11 million bits of information. 11 million bits. So the light hitting your eyes, the sound of my voice into your ears, the ambient temperature of the room, this is creating 11 million bits of information. To put that in perspective, Andre, that's reading war in peace twice every second. Okay. Tremendous amount of information. The brain can't consciously process all that information. So what it does, it can only actually consciously process about 50 bits of information. 50 bits of information is about one sentence per second. Okay? So your conscious mind is processing only about 0.000045% of the information coming into it. And so how does it deal with that information? It does it uses what's called predictive processing. Your brain doesn't see reality as it is. That's impossible. It can't. So it's actually creating a simulation of reality. So your brain is constantly one step ahead based on what it thinks is going to happen. And how does it know that? based on what happened in the past, based on what we call your priors, your prior beliefs, your prior understandings, your prior experiences in the world that shape this tiny keyhole of attention that you can pay that you can see reality through that is filtered through our beliefs. And so if we know that the brain is creating our own personal simulation of reality filtered by these beliefs, you better pick the right ones because that determines whether you have a more accurate view of reality or a distorted view of reality. Do you think that you can see reality as it actually is? >> No. Impossible. Because the reality you see already happened. Your brain is still processing it. So, it has to keep ahead of what reality actually is by creating the simulation in your mind. It's not like the matrix where we all live the same simulation by by aliens. It's that each of us creates our own simulation. And how can we show this? We can when we show people what's called the coffer illusion. Uh it's the same image, literally the same image. And if I show it to you and you tell me whether you see rectangles or circles, I know where you're born. I can tell based on how you answer that question. Either you you will see circles or you will see rectangles. You can look it up, you know, type in coffer illusion on Google. And I can tell >> on screen right now, >> fantastic. Well, it turns out, okay, if you're looking at on screen that if you were born in an industrialized country, you most likely see rectangles. But if you were born in a pre-industrialized country, you most likely see circles because of your prior experience. Whether you you grew up seeing hard edges like we do in industrial societies or more organic shapes. Uh I can show you uh another illusion called the checkerboard illusion, which you can hopefully see right now that I you can look at it and you will see that square A is darker than square B. Hey, it plain as day. Absolutely. But when I show you the truth of the matter and I I connect those colors together, you can see that they're actually the same color. Now, the really fascinating part is that even when you know the truth, even when you have seen and you agree with me that these squares are the same color, if you look back at image one, you still think they look differently because your eyes are lying to you. Because processing doesn't happen in your eyeballs. Processing happens in your brain. And so these are just some examples of how we think we see reality and we absolutely don't. And we can prove this time and time again. >> To me, this is one of the most important topics to explore because we have these strongly held assumptions about what life is, who we are, how we should engage with life and reality. So much of which has been embedded in our minds without us having conscious awareness of it. These millions of bits that we have access to in every given moment that we're only actually perceiving consciously a small percentage of then go on to shape our perception in so many ways. You know, the person wearing yellow sunglasses doesn't actually see yellow snow. >> It's that it's become the way in which they view the world. >> So, congrats on writing your new book, Beyond Belief. One thing you say is that what you believe shapes what you see. >> What you see shapes what you do. So can you walk us back through the the thread of causality and do you believe belief then is the origin or is there something deeper that is really at the at the core of how we're shaping our perception? I >> I think it is these priors these beliefs that uh are your operating system. So before the personality types, before the big five, before all that, I think that there is this this layer that dictates from the from what the research literature shows us uh dictates not only how you see reality but also how you feel reality. It literally shapes the experiences in your body uh to to a very large extent, which is something that people have a a tough time understanding. Like my my experiences are real. I feel what I feel that can't be influenced by what I believe and nothing could be further from the truth. Uh I one study that uh or one example that blew my mind um is hypnosed which I'm a pretty skeptical guy. I I need to see the studies. I need to see the research. I I need to see the video to really prove that that this kind of stuff really happens. And anyone can pull up these videos. I've seen this specific one myself. This this guy by the name of Daniel Gistler. And Daniel was a commodity is a commodities trader. Very numbers guy, super analytic and doesn't believe in in in anything he can't, you know, touch and feel. And uh in his early 50s, he uh breaks his ankle. He had a a freak accident and he had to get some pins put in his ankle. And then a few years later, he has to have them taken out. And in the meantime, he came across this technique called hypnosed. And hypnosed, it's it's not magic. It's not like stage hypnosis. It's not an act. It's just the process of teaching your brain to focus on different bits of information. So again, there's 11 million bits out here entering your your brain, but you're only processing 50 bits of information. So he could learn how to pick and choose those 50 bits of information. And so what that gave him the power to do was that when he went inside the operating room, and I've seen the tapes, I wouldn't I wouldn't believe unless I had I'd actually witnessed this. He went through a 55minute operation where scapel was cutting through flesh where metal was screwed out of bones, taken out of his body completely under hypnosed with zero local anesthesia, zero general anesthesia, all through the power of his mind. So why do I say this example? It's not to convince anybody to do hypnosed sedation. That's I'm not an advocate for that necessarily, even though many people see remarkable results. Tens of thousands of people have done it in Europe. Many hospitals in in uh Switzerland and France do this. It's to demonstrate that if the power of the mind can exclude pain can pay can can change through its belief what enters conscious awareness through the power of attention. What else can we do? Right? All the things that block our path all the pain all the suffering that leads us to quit our goals. Whether it's quitting that business we want to start uh giving up on that relationship uh uh giving up on that goal that we that we have for ourselves. It's because of pain that that's the primary block. And so the path forward is with persistence. So if we can unlock that capability that we all have within us through the power of beliefs, what what what can't we accomplish? There's so much we can now do. >> How do expectations come into this? I saw you refer to in your book the wine study. Uh there's many different examples of this, but I'm curious how what we are expecting to experience colors how we feel about the experience. >> Yeah. So you've got how uh beliefs shape what we see. That's called attention. We have how beliefs change what we feel. That's called anticipation. And we have how beliefs change what we do. That's called agency. And when it comes to anticipation, it's also fascinating um how these expectations of what we think is going to happen, our beliefs around what we think will happen next, back to this predictive processing of that's how the brain perceives realities by what it expects, it will create a reality that's not even there. Uh and the studies are are tremendous. um uh the wine study you mentioned where they took participants and they put them in an fMRI so they could scan the blood flow in their brain and they gave them the first wine and they said this is a cheap wine. We want you to taste it. Tell us what you think of this wine. They gave them a little uh squirt of the wine. They said okay. You know the participants said it's it's all right wine. Uh tastes okay. A little flat but yeah it's all right. Then they said okay here's the next wine. It's a very expensive bottle of wine. We ready? Yes. Okay. They give them a little squirt while they're in the fMRI machine and they say, "Well, what do you think of this wine?" "Oh, this wine is much much better. It has hints of oak and I can taste the cherry and you know what what wine snobs say." You know, they elaborated on how tasty the wine was. And then of course the trick here is that it's the same wine. But the fascinating thing is not only did the participants say the wine tasted better, we could see what was happening inside their brains as they experienced the two kinds of wine. And what was happening was that the wine they expected to taste better because it was expensive actually tasted better in their brain. They weren't lying. They weren't just telling the the study um participant or the the study authors what they wanted to hear. They were telling them what they were actually experiencing. That the pleasure centers in their brain lit up, so to speak, because they expected them to. And so they actually yielded more joy, more more pleasure from the more expensive wine simply because they expected that there's a correlation between expensive wine and better taste. And so and and we see this time and again and again. We see it on the positive, right? products. The reason that products are advertised is not just to spread awareness, but to incept the enjoyment of the product before you even experience it. So when you hear that a certain thingamajig that you buy might have certain results, you are prompting the expectation and then it will likely more likely actually occur and make you feel the way you expect to feel. This is you know classic placebo effect can also go in reverse that if you expect something to be uh not as enjoyable or or or painful then that's also going to happen. And so of course if you expect people to be untrustworthy you're more likely to to see scams. If you're if you expect people to be unkind you're more likely to to see them treating you poorly. Uh and so this is all based on these expectations even so far as to color the opportunities we see as possible. And this this is mind-blowing that we know that that you can actually manufacture luck that people who consider themselves lucky see more opportunities like literally with their eyeballs see more opportunities. There's a beautiful study where they asked people who were self-identified as lucky people and people who were self-identified as unlucky people. So someone who says, "Oh, I'm unlucky or yeah, I think I'm very lucky." And they asked them to do a very simple task. The task was look at this newspaper, flip through, and count the number of images. That's it. Just count the number of images. The unlucky people took about 2 and 1/2 minutes to finish the task. The lucky people took 11 seconds. Why? Because on page two of the newspaper was one photo that said, "There are 43 photos in this newspaper. Collect your reward." The lucky people saw it and read it. The unlucky people sat there 1 2 3 4 and they just counted for two and a half minutes. So they literally saw a reality that the unlucky people didn't even see. And so this happens time and time again. There's there's so many amazing studies that demonstrate this principle. >> So then how do we extrapolate that into some sort of change in our day-to-day life? For everybody that's listening right now that has these two examples of these studies that you referred to. All right. Well, we have so many different beliefs that are shaping our expectation. And therefore we're deriving meaning and coloring our experience in so many different ways. In many ways the quality of our life is is very directly uh correlated to what we expect from it. So uh so take walk us yeah where do we go from here for somebody that wants to see how how they can take that analogy and those studies and incorporate it into their life. The best thing to do is to realize that much of the suffering in your life comes from these beliefs. And so if there is an area of your life, I call it the muk, right? The the goal that's you've had for years and years, the um New Year's resolution that you've had for for forever, the relationship that still annoys you and is unfixed and and you can't seem to repair it. Wherever you have those areas of your life with these persistent problems that bring you suffering, that's where we want to look for the limiting beliefs. That tends to be what what's blocking you from making progress uh from easing your suffering is some kind of underlying limiting belief. So that's the first step is to identify that area that's troubling you and then follow a process because limiting beliefs are like your face that you can't see your face. Right? Now you can't see your face, right? The only way you can see your hands, you can see your feet. You can't see your face. But we all have our faces. The only way you can see your face is if you look in a mirror and you have to do some reflecting. And so there's a process to uncover these limiting beliefs, examine them, not necessarily change them. It's not about belief change per se. It's about asking ourselves, does this belief serve me or hurt me? And the only way to know that is to try on other beliefs. And in that process, we do what's called a turnaround. This comes from the amazing work of Byron Katy. And I'm a big fan and her process actually, you know, the more I research, there's actually quite a bit of scientific research now that that backs up her her process, these turnarounds. And it actually goes back all the way to Aristotle. It's it's very there's a direct line from what what she's channeling. It's a 2500 year old technique of intentionally looking at a different belief. And people hate this. Absolutely hate it because our psyche is built in with this psychological immune system. It's called an immunity to change. So just like your body rejects foreign bodies, right? Right? That's what your immune system is meant to do. Anything that's not supposed to be there, it fights. The same thing happens with our beliefs. We hate changing our beliefs. We despise it. And even the most open-minded people hate it because it's very uncomfortable. Right? The B, it turns out we, you know, we used to have this concept in psychology. It was called learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is this concept that over time if nothing you do works, you learn to be passive. Turns out it's exactly wrong. that the authors of those studies uh Martin Seligman and Meyers they uh a couple years ago completely reversed the the conclusion and what they found was is that you don't learn helplessness helplessness is our default state. Helplessness is our default state. What you learn is hope that when we are born we're born helpless. Right? we have to have the assistance of others. And that that evolutionarily there's safety in what's worked before. There's safety in pacivity. And so when I feel endangered, when I feel stressed, when I feel like my uh you know that I'm not safe, when I'm scared, when I'm in fear, I always will retreat to my existing beliefs because that's safer. And so this is why we find you have to actively challenge these beliefs. The ones that are most uncomfortable, the ones that you think are crazy, the ones that can't possibly be true about your relationships, about your goals, about whatever is blocking you, those are the ones you most need to explore. That's where you'll find the most growth from. >> Where do you make the distinction? You referred to beliefs as tools, not truths. How do you delineate between seeing beyond beliefs altogether and questioning their falsity or their truth? like in Byron and Katie's framework um through that process of inquiry or optimizing them just making beliefs better you know cuz >> I think especially you know we can get quite existential on this on this podcast we love exploring all different themes and and there is the very real human character logical self that has these subconscious beliefs that very uh directly impact the quality of our relationships our career um and then there's the waking up to a uh the reality beyond any beliefs having real existential weight beyond somebody that holds them. And I'm just curious how you think about beliefs in that context. >> Yeah. I I've for so for the majority of our decisions in our life, I I'm very pragmatic. I I I want to learn the stuff that's not only interesting but is actually useful to my life that brings me peace that helps me contribute to my family to my community that that makes me a better person that someone who who who gives to the world >> and that that I feel better in right the better I feel the the more whole I am uh the more I can contribute that's what I'm really interested in and that's not how I used to be I used to be someone who I need to know exactly what is true and if it's not a fact that I can't do it. There's the other extreme where, well, I just think it's true cuz it feels true and I'm just going to have faith in it, which has a place in our life. But that's not actually where most of our important decisions come from. Most of our important decisions are based on beliefs. Should I marry this person? Should I move to this city? Should I take this job? These aren't laws of physics, right? These aren't facts. They're beliefs. And so that's what guides our life. And so that's what I'm most interested in. So for me, for example, uh the the last time I prayed was when I was six years old. My family came to America when I was three. And by the time I was six, they had been scammed out of every dollar they had. Some American saw some new immigrants that didn't really speak the language and took nearly every penny they had. And I remember I used to pray because um the voice I was talking to brought me a lot of comfort. And then as I got older, I I kind of lost touch with that. I didn't I didn't really find much value in in spirituality and uh the supernatural. And I I I just I stopped praying. But as I was doing this research, I I kept coming across this these amazing studies around the power of prayer that prayer has incredible benefits. People who pray live longer. They have more friends. They contribute more to their community. They make more money. All these good things happen to people who pray. And I thought that was closed off to me. Why? Because I didn't believe that what they said in their sacred text was a fact. So I I can't do those things. And then I came across this study that blew my mind that uh we have this a standard protocol for testing pain tolerance. And one of these protocols are we ask participants to put their hand in very very cold water and then we see how long they can last before they have to take their hand out. We measure, you know, how much they're complaining and their face grimaces, things like that. And in this study, they took three groups of people. One group, no, it was a control group, so they didn't do anything to. The second group were people who already prayed. They were people who regularly prayed and had some kind of faith tradition. And then they had a third group of people who didn't pray. They taught them how to pray. And they said, you don't have to substitute the word God. You don't have to say God. You can say whatever you want. You can say some of all forces or mother nature, whatever is meaningful to you. Okay? It doesn't have to be some kind of faith tradition. And it turns out that the people who learned how to pray even without a faith tradition had equal improvement in their pain tolerance as people who had a faith tradition which was much much higher for people who than people who didn't pray at all. So there does seem to be some kind of pain tolerance effect to pray. And so I wanted this. I was jealous of this. I wanted these psychological benefits. And in fact it turns out I'm not alone. That the biggest religious community in America today are the nuns. Not the Catholic nuns. not nu n o n e. People who call themselves spiritual but not religious. Those people have the worst outcomes. People who are spiritual and non-rel but not religious, meaning they don't have any faith tradition, they have higher rates of depression and anxiety than people who who have a faith tradition. And so they are the worst off. And I think it's because we have missed out on these ancient benefits that are there for a reason. And so I went to five religious leaders. It sounds like a setup for a joke. I went to a a rabbi, a priest, a monk, a swami, and a an imam. And I asked them the same question. How do you pray when you have uncertainties about God? And each one of them gave me a principle that anyone can use. And so that's what I've integrated in my life. I I use these secular prayers and I've stopped asking myself the questions that obsess me of is it true? Is it a fact? Cuz you know what, Andre? I'm never going to know. I'm never going to know. None of us are going to know. you're never going to have that certainty. So either it's blind faith or a belief. And for me that really works because I do these things because they improve my life. They improve the life of others around me. And so I can use these beliefs as tools, not necessarily truths. Hey there, a quick share. 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I hope you enjoy. What does prayer look like for you? Cuz I think a lot of people earlier on are maybe familiar with like just asking for things to slot machine. >> Yeah. To the sky daddy somewhere who's going to grant you something if you're lucky >> versus uh more of a grounded approach. What What is your What is your thoughts there? >> Yeah. I don't I don't like the uh the cosmic slot machine type prayer. To me, that's not meaningful. You know, you could pray for whatever you want. It's your business. To me, that wasn't meaningful. So, uh I do a few things. So, one, whenever I pass by a place of worship, if the doors open and they'll allow me, I step in. I always walk in. Now, if if I'm allowed to, I'll just sit there and I'll I'll I'll pray. What do I pray for? First, gratitude. Always gratitude. Uh the the the studies again show that that a gratitude practice is incredibly beneficial. It actually brings you will become more lucky the more gratitude you show others. I mean, if you've, you know, the more you write these thank you notes and, you know, never miss an opportunity to show gratitude. And so, prayer is yet another opportunity to to think about what I'm grateful for. And then I will focus on attributes I'm working on. Okay? So, one one of one of my mantras is that things don't get easier, you get stronger. And so, I focus on what am I looking to strengthen? Patience. Um, being more calm, being more thoughtful, being kinder. how am I looking to get better? That's that's another thing. And then the last part, I will uh contemplate a problem perhaps I'm working on and I'll just having that space to bring awareness to how can I solve this problem, right? If if there was some kind, you know, what kind of solutions, how would the puzzle piece fit together so that the problem I'm I'm working on right now could be solved. Uh and some people will will have a conversation with a higher being uh for that problem solving and and studies find that that's can be very very helpful. But but to me I can do that even without necessarily having that supernatural force. >> And then the other thing I do is that throughout my day I have these these little prayers or mantras that I repeat that when I find a a a liing a limiting belief. I will then immediately look for the liberating belief and turn that liberating belief into a prayer into a mantra. So for example, the the the mantra I say that it doesn't get easier, you get stronger. Okay, why do I have that? Because I had this terrible habit of telling myself that's just my luck. This always happens to me, right? Like traffic again or this and I would pay attention to I would focus on these negative aspects and I would constantly expect things to be smooth, right? That I would judge what was happening. And of course, we have what's called a negativity bias that we focus on the negative, not on the positive. That's just in our evolutionary DNA. And that was definitely me. I would look for those negatives and and reinforce them. And so when I realized that that was my limiting belief that that was keeping me from being the kind of person I wanted to become. The adverse of that is this liberating belief that chaos will always be there. that chaos in fact Schopenhau said that life the very definition of what is life is that which fights entropy that is the definition of life it fights chaos and so that attitude that chaos isn't something to be overcome you overcome chaos when you die right that's when you dissolve into nothing that that chaos means you are alive thank god that you can be in a chaotic situation that the kitchen is a mess and the kids are screaming and you've got all these things on your to-do list. Yeah, guess what? You're alive. And so, it's not going to get easier. The chaos is always going to be there until the day you die. But you get stronger. >> And so, I I have many of these kind of secular mantras and prayers that I've made for myself to repeat throughout the day to remind me of these liberating beliefs. >> Yeah. Do you want to share anything else there on the noibo? >> Yeah, sure. Where do we start? The nobo effect is uh is remarkable. And one of my favorite examples is uh of this this guy by the name of Mr. A. He was anonymized in in the academic literature. There's a study that talked about him. Mr. A uh had a very bad breakup with his girlfriend. This is a true story. This is you can read the scientific literature on this. And after this very bad breakup, he decides he wants to end his life. And he uh has a pill of anti-depress a pill bottle of anti-depressants. He takes the entire bottle of pills and he says, "That's the end. I'm I'm done." And then he changes his mind and he says, "You know what? I want to live." He rushes to the neighbor's house. He asks his neighbor to rush him to the the hospital. By the time he gets to the hospital, he's he's feeling awful. He crashes onto the floor and he tells the nurse, "I took all my pills. I took all my pills." And he he gives her the bottle, the empty bottle. They rush him to the ER. They strap a a blood rate monitor, a heart rate of monitor on him. They realize that his heart rate is dangerously low. His blood pressure is falling. He passes out and they want to immediately figure out what is this anti-depressant? What is in this this pill? And they look on the bottle and all it has is a phone number because Mr. A was in a drug trial for these anti-depressants. They call up the phone number and they said, "What was this medication? We need to we need to this guy's overdose. What do we do? What's the medication?" They look his name up on the computer and they say, "Oh, this guy didn't take the pills. He took the placebo." He just didn't know. It was a double blind control study. So, he didn't know he was taking the placebo. He thought he had taken anti-depressants to kill himself. Turns out he had taken an inert substance. And yet, from that placebo, what we call a noibo, the opposite of a placebo, placebo means I shall heal. Nobo means I will hurt. His physiological reaction was that of decreased uh u blood pressure, falling heart rate, all these symptoms of someone who had overdosed. Within 15 minutes, Andre, in 15 minutes, all his vital signs were back to normal. He was revived and he walked out. So what does that tell us? That if the power of the mind is so powerful to create these real physiological symptoms that we think are facts, absolutely. Look, look at the heart rate. look at the all these metrics objectively. These are facts, right? He overdosed. But he didn't. It was in his mind and his mind manufactured a reality based on what he expected. And so that's why we have to be very careful with our labels. Because what the research shows us is that if we misapply these labels, whether it's um I'm having a senior moment, I'm not a morning person, I'm a Sagittarius, and therefore I have to be I'm an ENTJ. Whatever the case, I have ADHD, which I do have. If those labels becomes our identity, we get into trouble. So labels can be very helpful as a map. A diagnosis can be very helpful as a map. But you are not the map. Okay? When when you become the diagnosis, your labels become your limits and that's very very dangerous. They essentially become your nobo effect. I'll tell you personally. So, I was diagnosed with ADHD and for a long time, every time I had a difficulty, every time I got distracted by something, there's my ADHD, right? And I hear this all the time. I'm not a morning person or I haven't had my coffee yet or uh Mercury's in retrograde. I don't know. Some reason that I can't function. And it's many times these are not facts. They're beliefs. And what happens when we focus on what we think is this limitation is that we are focusing on the why we can't and we've forgotten about what we're even trying to do. When I said h there's my stupid ADHD again. Now I'm thinking about this limitation versus what was the thing I actually wanted to do in the first place. And so even if it's true, okay, let's say you don't agree with what I'm saying. Yeah, but I have real limitations. Granted, let's say it. Does it serve you to believe in those limitations? Does it actually serve you? Right? Right? Even if you believe, okay, I'm not a morning person. You have utmost conviction. Does it help you? Does it make things better? If I have two people running a marathon, and let's say they're both equally capable or incapable of running a marathon, and one tells you, I can't do this, and one tells you, "I can do this." Who's going to finish the marathon? Equal physical level. Many people don't finish marathons, but if you had to bet on one, who's going to finish the marathon? It's the one who says they can. Because the one who says they can't instantly quits, stops running. Reminds me of that rat study. >> Which one? Oh, the Kurt Richtor study. >> Yeah. Yeah. The Kurt Richtor study is amazing. And uh what he did is this was in the 1950s. You can't do these kind of experiments anymore, but in the 1950s, he wanted to figure out how long a rat can swim for in water. Kind of weird experiment, but that's what he wanted to find out. So, he took these wild rats, put them in a cylinder of water that was halfway full, and he stood there with a stopwatch and saw how long they paddled until they gave up. And at 15 minutes, turns out the average wild rat gives up, sinks out of the water, and dies. Now, he knew that after, you know, after he did the first leg of the study, he took another group of of wild rats, and now this time he put them in the cylinder, timed how long they were swimming, and at the 15-minute mark, right before he knew they would give up, he took out the wild rat, dried it off, let it catch its breath, and Plunk put it back in the water. Now, he did this a few times and conditioned the rat. And he wanted to find out could he increase how long the rat would swim for. And the rat did swim for longer. People know that there's a trick here, right? There's something something remarkable happened. But what people have no idea of is how much longer the rat kept swimming. So when I tell people this, I know you've read the book, so so you know. People say, "Okay, maybe twice as long, maybe three times, maybe four times as long. The rat went from 15 minutes to an hour. Wouldn't that be amazing? Like if you could increase your perseverance by 4x, that'd be incredible. Run a marathon four times longer. Uh work on that difficult project. Have the patience and perseverance to keep going on something that's difficult. Amazing. Life-changing. That'd be incredible. Headline news. But the rats didn't swim for an hour. The rats did not swim for 60 minutes. They swam for 60 hours. They went from 15 minutes to 60 hours of swimming. 240 times more persistent. What changed? Their bodies. Same bodies. Nothing physically changed. Same experiment, same challenge. What change? We can't ask the the rats what they believed, but the only factor left was that something was unlocked in their minds. Now, they could always swim those 60 hours. That was always within them. But they couldn't. They gave up at 15 minutes even though they were capable of 60 hours because they didn't realize that salvation was possible. But once they were conditioned to see that something might save them, that there's a reason to keep swimming, something was unlocked. And that's exactly what happens to us. That when we change our beliefs into these liberating beliefs, what we thought was impossible for us now becomes possible. >> Makes me think of Victor Frankle's hypotherapy. >> Yeah. >> It it's such an important reflection. And I just want to >> I want to get your your your thoughts on diving a little bit deeper here. When you referred to this earlier as you know, you can't see your own face. you're looking through it, right? >> Ellen W says you you can't bite your own teeth, right? That is part of the problem when you you know if you don't brush your teeth for a week, everyone around you will notice, but you actually won't because you become acclimized. You're so close to your own BS with these limiting beliefs um so often. And so when you you know the importance of reflecting and being able to um whether it's journaling, whether it's through conversation, whatever means we can externalize our internals to be able to see what's actually going on mechanisms beneath the surface uh is so important. And so now I feel like we've laid out the reason for why this is critically important. is there's not an area of life where examining questioning your beliefs not only seeing beyond them but also uh incorporating ones that are more beneficial for you um are is very important. What is the process to identify and to externalize and to see what are my limiting beliefs if we're so close to it? >> Sure. You know, I'll tell you my example. >> Okay. >> Um and this this one is hard to to share because I I'm not proud of it, but I'll share it anyway. Um, a few years ago was my mom's uh birthday, her 74th, and I wanted to do something nice for her, and so I wanted to send her flowers. I was in Singapore at the time, and she was in Central Florida where I grew up. And uh, I wanted to make sure she got beautiful flowers on her birthday. So, I stayed up in Singapore till 1:00 in the morning calling places, looking at reviews, and making sure that the van could get the flowers to her on her birthday, and they wouldn't spoil in the Florida heat. went finally finished 1:00 a.m. I went to sleep and I said, "You know what? I'm a good son. I did a nice thing for my mom." I called her up the next day and I said, "Hey, mom. Happy birthday. Did you get the flowers?" She said, "Yes, I did. Thank you very much. So, you know, they were half dead and don't order from them anymore." To which I said something like, "Well, that's the last time I order you flowers." Which I regret, but that's what I said. And uh after the call, my wife could feel the tension and she said to me something like, "Do you want to do a turnaround on that?" And I said, "No, I do not. I don't want your touchy feely hocus pocus. I want to vent because what we're told is that when you have something inside, you need to get it out." Right? You need to vent. You can't hold on to your emotions. You need to get you got to get them out. Turns out that the the science doesn't say that. that in fact venting is not the right thing to do. That it's actually harmful because what venting does it reinforces your effigy of people because we don't see just like we don't see reality as it is. We definitely don't see people as they are. And the people we know best are the people that we most see an illusion of. We don't see our beliefs about we don't see people as they are. We see our beliefs about people. And so when you vent, you're reinforcing layer upon layer this effigy of what you think someone is like. So I knew that at the time and I had the sense to not vent and then I sat down and wanted to do one of these turnarounds. And so again this is you know credit to to Byron Katy. I've modified the the the process a little bit but in short the first question that that she asks is is it true? Okay. Is this belief true? What was the belief? The belief was that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Okay. That was the belief that I was holding on to. My mother was too judgmental and hard to please in that moment. Now is that true, Andre? Back me up here. That was obviously true, right? She was being Well, who does that to their son? I sent her flowers. Cost me a bunch of money. I stayed up till 1:00 a.m. and she wasn't grateful for that. Obvious. Okay, question number two. Come on, let's go. Question number two was, is it absolutely true? What? What does absolutely mean? Absolutely means in all circumstances, 100% of the time, no exceptions. >> Can you be certain? >> Can you 100% be certain? >> Okay, maybe not. Like, maybe there I don't know why. I don't know how, but okay, maybe there's some kind of excuse as to why she wasn't being judgmental, but I don't know what it might be. Okay, but maybe there's a little bit of uncertainty there. Question number three, who are you when you hold that belief? So, when I was holding on to the belief that my mother was too judgmental and hard to please, I was short-tempered. I said something I regretted. I wasn't being myself. I was being a 13-year-old. Fourth question, who would you be without that belief? So, if you had some kind of magic wand that you could wave around and poof, the belief disappears, who would you be? And if I'm honest with myself, I was a little embarrassed. That's not me, right? I wouldn't do that to a stranger. I wouldn't I wouldn't act in in such a way. I I I regretted what I said that frankly, if I didn't have that belief, I'd be more myself. Okay. So now we've established in about 30 seconds that the belief might not be true that holding that belief isn't always serving me and that getting rid of that belief might actually be a good thing to do. Okay, that is already a lot of progress. Now we're we're doing the shortened version, but you can do this with literally any belief you're holding. Wherever you feel stuck in your life, asking those four questions will get you to now here's the the the me the turnaround. And a turnaround asks you to look at the diametric opposite of what you believe is a fact. Okay? I believe as if it was a fact that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Now, I can still hold on to that belief. That's belief number one. I'm not asking anybody or myself to change a belief with this process. Keep your existing belief. No problem. But let's collect a portfolio of perspectives. Let's see what else might be true. So, what would happen if I flipped that belief? Now, this is where people hate the process. This is where people give up. It's so obvious. Why would I possibly look at any other alternatives? That's what happened. It's a fact, but it's not a fact. It's a belief. So beliefs are tools, not truths. Let's collect more tools. Let's just see for the sake of discussion. What would be the opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please? The opposite of that would be my mother is not too judgmental and hard to please. Now you have to figure out how could that be true. In that scenario, is there any way that could be true? Well, she was just stating a fact, right? She did thank me. Maybe she was trying to help me. Maybe she just doesn't didn't want me to be scammed by this florist. Okay, could be true, right? That's not crazy to think. So, now I have two potential beliefs. What's the third? Now, what this is a turnaround to the self, what what Byron Keat calls it. Now, it's not my mother's too judgmental and hard to please. What if I what if I turned that around and asked, "I am too judgmental and hard to please." How could that be true? I am too judgmental and hard to please. Well, the more I thought about it, I had a script in my head that when I sent her flowers, she should thank me the way I want to be thanked. And when I didn't get that eusive praise, I lost it. So, who was being judgmental? I was, right? But I was judging her response as inadequate. So, I was being hard to please, wasn't I? Okay. What's the a fourth belief? I am being too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. This one was the hardest to admit because the more I thought about it, when something I had spent time and money on didn't work out the way I had planned, I took that to mean I was inadequate, that I had done something wrong, that I was a bad son, that I was incompetent somehow because things didn't work out. And I had this what's called a misattribution of emotion, which happens all the time. A misattribution of emotion. That I was feeling bad about myself. And well, what do we do when we feel bad about ourselves? We look for the first person that we can blame it on. And that's what I did. But the truth of the matter was that I felt bad that I'd messed up, that I picked the wrong person. Now, that's also just a belief. But now I have four beliefs. One of those beliefs, my mother's too judgmental and hard to please. There's only one way out. One way out was you have to change so I can be happy. That ain't going to happen. Hey, don't hold your breath. You're going to suffocate. The other three beliefs gave me options. I could do something with those. Which one is true of those four beliefs? Which one is true? None of them. All of them. Who cares? Which one serves me best? This one didn't definitely didn't serve me, right? This one is the one that made me impatient, rude, uh not myself. These I could do something with. That's the process. You don't have to change your mind. But what you can do is to say, you know what, that pair of sunglasses that I've been wearing, I'm sick of those sunglasses. Let me try a different pair. These sunglasses are old and ugly and scratched up. Let me try a different pair. Let me try and look at the world through a different pair of lenses. Try it for a week. See what happens. If that one doesn't work, that's okay. I can go back to my old ones. I can try a new one. That's the process. >> Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. >> Of course. >> Yeah. I it's funny to see how we live in a prism of our own making and the projections and the blame that we often externally attribute to others as a reflection of where we're holding the energy within ourselves. >> Yeah, >> it's a trip how life's a mirror like that, >> right? You know, >> and notice, by the way, I don't have to invoke any psycho blabble. I don't have to like diagnose her as anything. I don't have to call it trauma. I don't have to say, you know, all I need to look at is what other lenses could I look at it through? Yeah. And then it doesn't necessarily matter what is the right one. That's not the goal here. We're not looking for truth. We're looking for what's useful. >> Yeah. Is it serving? >> Is it serving you? Exactly. >> It also creates this tension sometimes where there are still scripts that we're running subconsciously >> that in many ways do make us suffer to some degree. But because we've created distance from believing how true they are, it makes it almost harder to make contact with them because you don't really believe them as real. So it creates distance from the suffering, >> but it also for me makes it harder to actually make contact with those things if that makes sense. >> Say more. Tell me more. like uh I mean in the Buddhist contemplative practices you're waking up to a space of self a level of a vastness of awareness that contains all content of experience. It's a greater context of awareness, you know, and so the thoughts, the emotions, the belief instead of being forefront forebrain screams, they become background chatter, right? >> You know, they become less prevalent, still there to some degree. >> Um, and so they're more subtle to work with. Doesn't mean they dissolve completely, but but does that make sense? >> Yeah. Yeah. And and and what the literature says that the fear part of that is super critical that for example with when it comes to chronic pain that what drives chronic pain and this is pain that persists 6 months after you can find any kind of physical cause. It's called neuroplastic pain as opposed to physical pain where there's okay something broken but when there's we can't see anything is broken there's no physical damage but the pain persists for more than 6 months uh that's what we call this neuroplastic pain and it turns out we used to think that the that the right thing to do for example if you have uh back pain okay when I had really bad back pain you know I they I was told you need to ice it you need to heat it you need to lay on the floor you need to immobilize don't move don't don't don't feel it And and what that script that I was learning was to be fearful of the pain, was to do everything I could to not feel pain. That uh and that in fact what we know is that what does it do with this model that I laid out earlier of the power beliefs? It causes you to pay more attention to the pain to anticipate the pain returning and to give up your agency because the fear drives the fact that it's out of your control. So you start ruminating. What if it comes back and what am I going to do? and what if this medication doesn't work? And that fear, that rumination accentuates the pain and creates this awful feedback loop. >> And uh now the the medical community is really reassessing pain. That now there's what's called pain reprocessing therapy. That the way that works is step one is that you pay attention to how you are safe. That pain does not mean you're not safe, which is our our default reaction is, oh, something's wrong. I have to fix it. I have to fix it. Something must be broken. Many times nothing's broken. It's just that your pain dial has been cranked up to to maximum volume because you're paying attention to it all the time. So, what what pain reprocessing therapy tells us, and there's many studies that have found this effectiveness, is that by uh reminding yourself that you're safe, that that that discomfort does not necessarily mean damage. And then step two is that you release the urgency. It's a big part of it. that you know because modern science has given us all these medications and treatments if we don't get urgent results we freak out is it ever going to go away when can I get past it right what if this is forever am I always willing to suffer and so if we can if we can stop expecting that urgency that things need to be solved right away >> and then three if we can kind of lighten the mood if we can add agency to the situation uh so for example what what I do you know I still get I'm 48 years old so every time yeah I do feel a pain here or there but I don't tell myself oh I'm I'm getting older right and it's inevitable decline Rather, what I tell myself is, okay, that's just a signal. And instead of immobilizing or worrying about it or ruminating about it, which I used to do, I'll do the same movement 10 times. Like literally the same thing that just caused me pain, I'll do it 10 times until by the 10th time it doesn't hurt anymore, right? And so we can use that technique in all kinds of areas in our life where we feel discomfort. By training ourselves to use these three powers of belief, attention, anticipation, agency, we can teach the brain to leverage these beliefs to to help us even if we feel the pain, we don't necessarily have to suffer from it. >> It makes me think deeper about the level of expectations we hold and how there's a mismatch how we evolved in the ancestral world, you know, compared to modern society. how we're very much so wired to perceive threat in an environment where we're still looking for it but isn't actually there, >> right? >> What do you think that mismatch is costing us when you look at how marketing and branding is kind of preying on this this uh psychology and um yeah, what what is the cost of that unexamined area of life? >> Right. Well, certainly with media uh that's what media sells us. we we have what's called a negativity bias that we pay attention to threats much more than opportunities. So, um and why does that happen? Because evolutionarily something good is nice, but something bad can kill you. So, you're much more likely to pay attention to what's that rustling in the uh in the bush that could be a tiger that's about to eat me then, oh, there's a couple berries over there. So, you're much more attuned to threats. So, in modern society, the first rule of journalism is if it bleeds, it leads. So, I'm going to worry about some war that's 6,000 mi away that's got nothing to do with me. I'm going to see what's happening in the nightly news that somebody got killed or some, you know, statistical flu, you know, if there's a uh the news will report about a plane crash, but they won't tell you about all the planes that landed safely every day because it's not interesting to us because we we are constantly on alert for possible threats, things that we have to do something about. And we should be aware of that because that's another belief. Now there's nothing necessarily wrong with that unless it's causing you suffering. And today many people I certainly before I I started this line of research was not at peace. I was suffering because of all the things that are happening in the world. And that wasn't good for me. I I felt like I had this responsibility to constantly have an opinion about everything all the time. And so I needed to reassess that about how my beliefs uh were causing this kind of suffering. Hm. We can't think about the beliefs that we have in our life without thinking the places in which they originated. And I've heard you refer to Rene Jarard's mimetic theory and how so much of what we want is culturally indoctrinated into our mind. It's what we what others want is we've learned to want for ourselves. How do you clarify the signal of what you actually want and not what somebody else's scripts uh of what they want >> for your life? >> Yeah. And it's important to realize that uh you know some the probably the biggest criticism I'm very aware of of opposing perspectives and one of the most common I hear is that isn't this self-d delusion? Right? If you're saying beliefs are tools not truths then are you telling me to gaslight myself? And I would argue you're already gaslighting yourself. You're lying to yourself every day because your beliefs have been programmed into you just without your approval. You've accepted them without consent. Whether it's your upbringing, what happened to you in the past, your culture has a huge influence, the media you've consumed, all these things have informed your belief set. You're already gaslighting yourself, right? Because you don't see reality as it is. What I'm arguing for is to change that lens once in a while to try on different perspectives so that you can finally for the first time choose the belief that actually serves you best. So it's not believe what everybody else is believing. That's, you know, Gerard with mimemetic desires that we we want what others want. Again, for an evolutionary basis, if you see everyone rushing to get some some something, right? If everybody wants those berries, those berries must be valuable. Let me go get some of them as well. We see this all the time, right? Every few years there's, you know, the the the hot thing that everybody wants, does it actually make us happier? No. But we want it because other people want it. >> That's again, it's just a belief and often times it doesn't serve us. H there's two things that come up like one how can we safeguard oursel from the continual stimulus of everyone's highlight reel. So we're continuing continuing to program oursel and and >> subconsciously when we see somebody's life that's in this uh that's being rewarded society and everybody seems to admire and and have adoration for >> there's like a pull into that right that's the mimemetic desire that's pulling us into that and that imitation. So like I'm curious your thoughts on how we can one safeguard from that but then two like how do you really clarify the signal of what it is that you want to do your desire your intention um of course that's not fully in a vacuum of no influences that's not realistic either >> but is like really true and aligned to your nature and what you want >> I think you need to know when to quit and I think you can misinterpret what I said earlier about the rats you know that that they became more persistent and we do know that that persistence is a defining trait of success success in all areas of life that it's not intelligence. Uh it turns out that if you are persistent, the more persistent you are, the more adaptable you are, the more likely you are to succeed at every endeavor. Um but does that mean you never quit? No. I think there's definitely times to quit. Lord knows I've quit relationships. I've quit businesses. I've quit book projects. I've quit all kinds of things. It's not that quitting is wrong. It's that quitting too soon is the problem. That's when we squander human potential, human capital. So when is the right time to quit? Number one, you have to set a checkpoint. Not a deadline, a checkpoint. Meaning, I will try this hard thing for x number of days. I will try this new belief. You know, people have a lot of resistance to these new beliefs of uh maybe that person didn't intend to hurt me. That's a big one. People have a really tough time saying, "No, that person caused me trauma. That person was trying to hurt me. Why was that person so evil to me?" Trying on a different belief can feel like a lie. But again, beliefs are tools, not truths. Try on that belief. Try on the perspective. see if it brings you better uh more peace and then see what happens. And again, it's not excusing the person. It's not necessarily even forgiving the person. Doesn't mean you have to be around that person, but if that belief is causing you suffering, it's worth turning it around. And you can apply this to pretty much every endeavor. If it's I want to try this business, I want to um you know, exercise more, whatever the case might be, whatever that goal. So having a checkpoint where you say, I'm going to try on this new belief for x number of days. Because if you don't set that checkpoint, as soon as it gets hard, I don't want to do it anymore. Right? So setting that checkpoint to say, I'm going to try this new belief on for size for a week, a month, a year, x number of days, and I'm not going to re-evaluate it until I get to that checkpoint. At that checkpoint, I can say, hey, is this really serving me? Is this is this giving me what I want? If if what I want, if my values dictate I want greater peace, I want wisdom, whatever your values are, am I getting those things? Then the second u reason to to quit is am I learning? So uh just because you're failing doesn't mean you're not learning. People interpret failures as a reason to quit. But that's exactly the opposite. For example, if I told you that whatever it is you want, I traveled into the future and I know that if you fail five more times, the sixth time you're going to succeed. You're looking for love. I know, Andre, if you go on five more dates, the sixth one is going to be the love of your life. What are you going to do? >> Go on six dates. >> You're going to go on those dates as quickly as possible, right? I need to get through those five dates so I can meet the sixth girl, right? Well, that's not how most of us think about failure. Most of us think, "Hey, I'm failing and failing and failing. I need to quit." It's a sign it's not working. But in fact, if you're still learning from your failures, if you're making progress and and getting smarter about this path, then failure is fantastic. You're just filtering out what doesn't work. So that's the second criteria. Third criteria is does persistent pay off? So in many areas of life, persistence does not pay off. So for example, uh I I used to work at a company I'm not going to mention that had a terrible workplace culture. A really like just I would I I would break out in hives on Sunday night because I had to go to work on Monday morning. Uh it was a really toxic workplace environment. Persistence would not have made a difference, right? I'm not going to outlast the company culture. So I quit. In many areas of our life, however, persistence does make a difference. So for example, physical fitness, right? When you start exercise, I used to be clinically obese. And many times on my path to to better health, there were plateaus where I'd lose weight, I'd get stronger, and then I would just kind of flatline for a long long time. But persistence through that eventually you do break out. You do actually start making progress. So that's an example of an activity where persistence really does make a difference. So those are the three criteria is number one, did you meet your your checkpoint? Number two, are you still learning even though you might be failing? And number three, does persistence make a difference. That's when you when you decide when to quit. And that's when you realize uh is when I'm working on something, I should continue. >> Well said. I uh I think this goes also nicely with your work within Distractible. uh because that level of information I think is really important both from the technology standpoint um but more so the internal emotional triggers that are like more at the root cause when you go on that process you know when to quit you're clarifying what it is that you truly want then there's this knowing and doing gap right you like know kind of what you should do but you fail to execute you fail to have the consistency and what some people feel is like the discipline and willpower but you have a great frame on on how to actually close that gap so could you set the stage for a bit that work because I think it tales in um tail ends this conversation quite nicely. >> Absolutely. So the best place to to understand um how to fight distraction is to start with what is distraction? What are we even talking about? So uh what is the opposite of distraction? Most people think the opposite of distraction is focus. But it's not focus. The opposite of distraction if you look at the origin of the word the opposite of distraction is traction. Right? Obviously now when you think when you look at them side by side they're opposites. Traction and distraction they're opposites. They both come from the same Latin root traare which means to pull and they both end in the same sixletter word act I n that spells action. So traction is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do. Actions that move you closer to your values, help you become the kind of person you want to become. Those are acts of traction. The opposite of traction, distraction, is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do, further from your goals. The thing that I think most people get tripped up on is that they think that certain behaviors are distractions. And that's not true. If you want to watch Netflix, you want to listen to a podcast, you want to play a video game, great. That can be traction as long as that's what you said you were going to do with your time and attention. Not the media company, not, you know, some outside influence. But I said, "This is what I'm going to do in advance." As Dorothy Parker said, the time you plan to waste is not wasted time. So, if that's what you said you're going to do, enjoy it. And why should we say that, you know, playing video games or watching uh Netflix is somehow morally inferior to watching golf on TV? What's the difference? It's a pastime. If you enjoy it, do it. But plan for that time. That's how it becomes traction. Conversely, and this is much more common, just because something is a work-related task doesn't mean it's not distraction. So, um this is this was my daily routine. I would get into work and I would say, "Okay, I've got this big important project to work on right now. Uh, I've got to get started on this. Nothing's going to get in my way. I'm going to start working, but first, let me just check some email." Right? Because email is part of my job. I got I got to check email sometime today. So, let me just check email. But if that's not what I said I was going to do, it's a distraction. If I said I was going to work on this big project, but now I'm checking email. Email, even though it's a workrelated task, is just as much of a distraction. It's even a worse distraction because you don't even realize you're distracted, right? If you're if you're uh scrolling Instagram while you're at work, okay, that's pretty obvious you're not supposed to be doing that, right? But if you're checking email and being productive, but if that's not what you said you do, it's by definition a distraction. So, you've got traction, you've got distraction. Now, you have the triggers. We have two kinds of triggers. We have external triggers, the pings, the dings, the rings, all these things that are outside environment. And you've got internal triggers, these uncomfortable emotional states. Now, it turns out that 90% of our distractions, okay, this is this blew my mind when I saw this study. 90% of the time you check your phone, it's not because of an external trigger. It's not the pings, dings, and rings. 90% of the time you check your phone, it's because of an internal trigger. Boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. That is why if you look at your behavior throughout the day, most of the time you check your phone, it's not because it's ringing. It's because you're feeling something you don't like to feel. >> It's soothing. >> Exactly. And so it becomes this pacifier that we've learned that whenever I feel this thing I don't like to feel this is the south. This is the solution. And so that's why we're distracted by things. It's that we've the brain has has been taught that to fight this discomfort there's a solution here. And so we keep checking and checking because of a feeling. Now does the technology facilitate that south? Of course. But that's not the whole story that you can blame the technology all you want but it turns out that the pings dings and rings are only 10% of the problem. The 90% is up here that we don't know. We haven't been taught how to deal with these uncomfortable sensations because distraction is not a moral failing. It's not a character flaw. It's not a conspiracy. It's that we just haven't learned how to deal with discomfort in a healthy way that leads us towards traction. And so we try and escape it by scrolling it away, by drinking it away, by smoking it away with distraction. So that's the basic framework. >> What is it then? those emotional triggers. What what is the origin in your perspective of that discomfort being human? Where you know what is the origin of motivation? What is motivation? Motivation we used to think was carrots and sticks, right? I want to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. That's motivation. Carrots and sticks. Wrong. We now know that when you look inside the brain, we can see this through fMRI studies that the brain is not motivated by pleasure. That's a metaphor. Only one thing drives motivation. The desire to escape discomfort. >> Young said that pleasure is tension reduction. >> Yeah. Why? Why? Because And now we can see it's actually true and how the brain works. And people say, "Yeah, but I do things because I want to be with my friends and I I love delicious food and I I want this and I want that." So, isn't that the motivation to feel good? Well, but why why does that spur you to action? Because wanting, craving, hunger, l lusting, all of these things feel bad and that's what makes us go get them so we can feel good. So that's exactly right. >> Um once you realize that fact that all motivation is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort, now you realize that everything is pain management. Time management is pain management. Money management is pain management. Weight management just pain management. So to me that's incredibly liberating because that means that once I can control these these interpretations of my pain, if I can control the suffering and separate it from my pain and there are wonderful techniques to do this, I'm free. I'm not a slave to these sensations. So each of us individually has her own go-to coping mechanism. >> Everybody knows the person that pull pulls the phone out at the party because there's anxiety, right? Mhm. >> the substances, the pornography, the the videos, not necessarily moral failings at all, but you're speaking to this distraction as being sort of rooted in a disregulation of your nervous system. There's a discomfort. There's something that you're avoiding. So, is it then a skill issue to be able to learn how to be with discomfort >> to be able to go back in the direction of traction and not distraction? If we want to reclaim and live the life we want that we plan and intend to live um then how does one cultivate that traction >> right? So the first step there's four steps. The first step is to uh uh is to master these internal triggers or they become your master. So, if you just think that you should know this skill somehow, I I I think you're you're deluding yourself that this is a skill just like any other. And especially when we have these potential distractions with us at all times, it's very easy to go off track. Now, again, I don't think it's the it's the distraction. It's not the action itself that's the problem. It's why you were doing those things. If you are uh you'll give you a good example. So, I remember when my daughter was younger, um we had some daddy daughter time together, just some an afternoon together. And we had this book of activities that dads and daughters could play together. Do a sedoko puzzle, have a paper airplane throwing contest, all kinds of little games. And one of the questions in this book was, "If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want?" And I remember the question verbatim, but I can't tell you what my daughter said because in that moment, I thought, "Hey, honey, hold on one second. I just got to check this one thing on my phone. And by the time I looked up for my device, she was gone. Cuz I was sending her a very clear signal that this was more important than she was. And she went to go play with some toy or something. And why did I do that? I did that because I was bored, right? There's only so many hours that you can play with a six-year-old before you need an escape, right? And I didn't know how to handle that discomfort. And so that's when I decided, you know, I if this is happening with my daughter, someone I love so much and I don't know how to handle that feeling. I need to figure this out and I can't keep blaming the phone because there's always going to be some kind of distraction. In my generation, it was my dad was watching the TV while, you know, or what, you know, before that was the radio. Before that, there was always something that has distracted people for, you know, uh Plato used to talk about uh uh acia, the tendency to do things against our better interest. So this is part of the human condition. Distraction has always been with us. Do you think it's Facebook's fault? It goes back way, way, way farther than that because we haven't, most of us haven't learned that skill, right? We'll find it whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, we're going to find some distraction unless we know how to deal with that discomfort in a healthy way. And so, it's just a skill like any other. So, step number one is master the internal triggers or they will become your master. So, having a toolkit ready to go that you can say, "Okay, I'm feeling this urge. I I want to get distracted and do something else that's not what I said I was going to do. What do I do with that? Do I just escape it or do I have some kind of practice? Uh, one, there's dozens of different techniques you can use. One of the techniques that I use almost every single day, you know, I've been a professional author now for over a decade. Writing sucks. Writing's hard, right? Like I've had three books published and uh it's really difficult work. And all I want to do when I'm writing is anything but the writing. I want to go do some research. I want to go check my email. I want to go do check sports scores or stock prices or anything but the actual work but I can't do what I said I was going to do. And so one one technique that I use is called this 10-minute rule. Uh this comes from acceptance of commitment therapy. And the idea of the 10-minute rule is that you are uh telling yourself in advance that you will give into that distraction. Okay, you you can do that thing but not right now because we know that strict abstinence unless you can remove the external trigger, strict abstinence backfires. So if if you can remove the external trigger, like if you're in rehab for example, uh removing the paraphernalia, finding different friends, the things that reminded you of of of an abusive substance disorder, that can be very helpful. How exactly are we supposed to remove our technology? Like we use it for work, we use it for entertainment, we use it to manage our lives. How do we remove it? Uh, same goes with food. You know, when I was obese, you can't stop eating. So, instead, what you have to do is to learn how to gain greater agency over it, to learn how to manage these internal triggers. And so, the 10-minute rule is just one of many techniques where I will tell myself, I can give into that distraction, but not right now. So, I'm not saying no. I'm saying not yet. Because if you say no to yourself, it's bad to check your phone. I shouldn't do that. That's bad of me. It elicits what's called psychological reactants. Reactance is that feeling that when someone tells you what to do, you want to rebel, right? We've all felt it. If your boss micromanaged you, if your mom told you to put on a coat out, you know, when you go outside, don't tell me what to do. That's reactance. Now, the crazy thing is that we can elicit psychological reactance even when we are telling ourselves what to do. That's how crazy the human mind is that we can literally elicit that same feeling. So, the way we we disarm that reactance is to tell ourselves, I can do it. I I can smoke the cigarette. I can eat the chocolate cake. I can check social media. I can do it. I'm allowed. I choose not to do it right now. I'm going to do it in 10 minutes. And if 10 minutes are too long, 5 minute rule, 2-minute rule, doesn't really matter. And what you're doing over time is to say is to find that, hey, you know what? I resisted for 10 minutes, right? I worked on whatever I was going to work on, and then I will give into that distraction in 10 minutes. And then what happens over time? The 10-minute rule becomes the 15-minute rule, becomes the 20-minute rule. And you're proving to yourself, you're showing yourself that wait a minute, I do have agency here. these things aren't addicting me. I do have some control here. And you're building that muscle over time. So, that's one of many, many techniques. There's over a dozen that you can use for for step one. And not every technique works for every person every time. You want to have kind of a portfolio of, okay, 10-minute rule, surfing the urge. There's all these different techniques that you can use. >> I'm curious your thoughts on I personally love the intersection of neuroscience and what the contemplative, you know, wisdom traditions have been saying for a while. Where do they converge? what are they what are you verifying with science and and backing up from what the yogic you know yogis would say? Um and one one thing that's interesting for me is just uh what attention is from their perspective and really the goal for moving from like unconsciousness to consciousness from this like compulsive reactionary state that we find ourselves in often originating in this sense of discomfort towards agency towards responding instead of reacting. Um and I'm curious your thoughts on that because they would the way that a lot of those wisdom traditions would phrase it is that uh tanha which is craving which is the pulling towards um you know it's the craving and the aversion this like the grasping for is actually rooted in avidia which is ignorance. M >> uh ignorance of self. Um you in many ways slip into like a hypnotic state when you when you are getting pulled by like that dopamineergic urge for pleasure because you can't be with discomfort like you're speaking to. Um I'm curious what you what you thought there and any interesting findings in the >> I have to play ignorance because I I'm not really conversant in the yogic tradition. So you know you know much more about them than I do. Well, I I'm I'm just curious your thoughts on how like I'm always looking to go back into the root and the origin of why something's happening cuz then you have actual you can you can affect the actual chain of causality instead of just working on the surface level, right? >> We try to change our thoughts, but like we don't examine often the beliefs that are the thoughts are originating from often. And when it comes to attention, uh I love how you brought it back to the discomfort is the motivating force that puts us in a direction where it's like it's like unconsciousness. You know, I think of life is like time and energy. Like there's a certain amount of time and energy and what we're doing with our attention at any given moment is what we're doing with that time and energy. >> And for me, it's like a really painful realization when you think that you might be living your life unconsciously, not in the way that you intend to, you know? Well, I'll tell you, I think what the big picture of why I do all this, uh, you know, I write my books for me. >> I'm really glad that millions of people have have enjoyed them. That's wonderful. I'm I'm super happy about that. But these are problems I'm struggling with. And the reason I write the book is because uh I've read other books on the topic and they don't fix the problem. So, I have to go back to first principles and understand, you know, what's what's really going on here. So, the surface level explanation is it's all the technology is doing it to us. But distraction has always been with us. And even when you get rid of the technology, you'll still be distracted. So there has to be something deeper going on there. And so for me, the the reason I I do all this is because I'm trying to minimize regret. And very few people have experienced even one day that they can remember that they live their life according to what they wanted to do. Very few people have experienced how blissful that is. Even one day when you say this is what I'm going to do today and then you do it according to your values. And when you can turn your values into time, you you're living your authentic self. You're doing things that are are are consistent. You are living with integrity between what you said you were going to do and how you actually lived your life. And that is that's the best. There's nothing better than that. >> Yeah. And just an important highlight there from what you said is like to to be distracted, you you have to know what you're being distracted from. >> Yes. Exactly. >> And so I'd love for you to elaborate a bit on that because unless you have a plan, unless you know what it is you actually value and want, then >> you're just swimming in a sea of of pleasure seeking and there's not you don't have really a northstar in which you don't want to be distracted from. >> Yeah. And I think the part of the difficulty is people somehow are really good with those long-term goals, right? The vision boards and the aspirations and here's what I want big picture. >> Yeah. >> But when it comes to how about tomorrow, like how do I want to spend the next 24 hours? Can you time box your day? >> No, I can't do that. I need to I need to stay with the flow. I need to do, you know, my life is too chaotic. And I've heard every excuse. I' I've talked to literally thousands and thousands of people over the years, and I constantly hear, "You don't understand my life. I I have a a distributed workforce. I have a busy family. I have this. I And nobody who actually doesn't desire to do this can't do it. Now, if you say you can't do it, okay, case closed. You won't do it. But just trying a time box schedule where I say, look, I want to have breakfast from this time to this time. Then I want some time for email. Then I want to go check social media. Then I want to get to work. That having just a a plan for how I'd like to spend my ideal day based on my values. Now, what are values? Values are attributes of the person you want to become. And most people never ask themselves what their values are. What are the attributes of the person you want to become? And if you want to know what someone's values are, you look at two places. You never look at what they're saying. You don't People will tell you all kinds of rubbish cuz we lie to ourselves every day. You look at how they spend their money and how they spend your time. Those that demonstrates your values. And most of us spend our money and our time unconsciously, right? We we spend it on things that people tell us we need and and we spend our time, you know, the if the news wants our time, if this gossip wants our time, we just give our time to whoever wants it, which is which is funny because we're so cheap with our money, right? With our money, we clip coupons, we look for sales, we'll drive across, you know, further down the street so we can get a better price on something. And we're very, very stingy with our money. We put it in banks so that nobody can steal it. But our time, we think it's limitless. We give it to anybody who wants it, right? without considering that in fact time is the thing we should be stingy with because you can't make more of it. You can always make more money as long as you live. You can always make an extra buck somehow. Time you can't make more money more of everybody. Doesn't matter how rich you are. Everybody has the same 24 hours in the day. So I think we should be very stingy with our time and generous with our money because we can always make more money. But you can't, as you said, you can't call something a distraction unless you know what you got distracted from. So, if you're living your life daytoday with nothing more than a to-do list, which which is just a register of the things you want to have done, and you're saying, "Wow, I I I can't seem to get things done. I can't seem to focus." It's probably because you haven't planned your day. It's as simple as that. It's not a very difficult practice, but you're turning your values into time. And what will invariably happen, and here's why people have trouble with this, is that they they think they can do everything, right? They have a mile long to-do list. And by the way, to-do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your productivity. and they don't understand why they can't fit everything in. Well, the fact of the matter is there's a constraint of how many hours there are on the day. So, when you have this constraint, it's forcing you to make trade-offs. So, the the suffering of not I don't have enough time in the day comes from the fact that we think we can do it all at the same time, which you can't. So, one of the uncomfortable steps that we have to do in order to seek the ultimate comfort of being indistractible is deciding the trade-offs is saying, you know what, if I'm going to watch TV, that means I can't go to the gym. If I'm going to be with my kids, that means less time at work, whatever the case might be. But having those trade-offs made in advance versus after the fact is a whole another story. After the fact, that's when you live in regret. That's when you say, "Ah, why didn't I ever write my novel? Why didn't I start that business? Why didn't I spend more time with my kids? Why didn't I have more time with my friends? Well, it's because you didn't make the time. You didn't plan for it. And so, what did you do? You watch TV and scroll TikTok because those became your defaults because you were looking for emotional escape as opposed to Yeah. Go on Tik Tok, watch YouTube video. Doesn't matter. But decide to do that. >> Have make that consciously versus doing it emotionally. >> No, it's a it's such a good reminder. I wonder how many people listening have lived life lived a single day completely intentionally. It sounds like I mean I I think it'd be very hard to at least at not one point in the day get pulled into you know some sort of a distraction. >> Yeah. >> But uh was there a moment when you really realized that there was a lot of potential on offer for you that was that was that you were not accessing because of how distracted you were? >> Absolutely. Oh my goodness. Um, yeah. I mean, I I was the the the the thing that really opened my eyes was what I was doing to my daughter. >> Uh, it's terrible, right? I mean, I I I only have one child and every day with her is precious cuz I know eventually she's going to go off to college and and start her own life outside the home. And here I was squandering it. And it would happen when I would say, "Oh, today's going to be the day that I eat, right? And today I'm definitely going to start exercising." But I didn't and I wouldn't. >> Uh, today's the day I'm going to work on that big project. and then it would delay till the next day the next day and then I'd procrastinate and then you know stay up till 3 in the morning trying to finish it and do a pretty crappy job. So people have no idea how much potential they have when they not only do the right things. We think you know if we have the secret knowledge that someone will tell us exactly what to do then we'll meet our full potential. But actually what's more important is not what you should do. What are you not going to do? That's equally important. And in fact I think it's more important because today we basically know what to do. If you don't know what to do, Google it. You know, ask chat GPT. You'll find the answer for what I should do. That's not the problem. It's how do you stop getting in your own way? How do you stop getting distracted from what you know you should do? >> Yeah. And you refer to how like a lot of us know those kind of big overarching goals. Not all of us, but many of us are kind of know what we essentially want from life, but we suck at reverse engineering and actually making a plan for it that we can actually stick stick to and follow through on. Any other thoughts or advice there? I mean, in terms of time blocking, that's that you already mentioned. That's >> Yeah. Well, I think with time boxing, it's interesting. The biggest uh misconception, a lot of people say, well, time boxing didn't work for me. Uh I've never met anybody who doesn't work for if they do it right. So, what's the biggest pitfall? People think that time boxing is I'm going to work on this thing for an hour and then finish it. Wrong. Incorrect. That is a to-do list mentality. To-do lists, you get points every time you check off a box, right? >> Why does that suck, by the You mentioned to-do lists suck. >> Oh, to-do list suck for so many reasons. >> Okay, sorry. I don't want to interrupt. >> No, no, it's good. Okay. Why do to-do lists suck? To-do lists suck because to-do lists are register of things you want to have done. They're outputs. Okay, outputs. >> Now, it's not that to-do list on their own are bad. It's that people use them incompletely because a to-do list without a calendar is outputs without inputs. So, let's say you want to um my daughter has a birthday party and I want to go get a bunch of cupcakes for her. Well, I need to go to the baker, and the baker's going to tell me, "Okay, if I'm going to make 20 cupcakes, I need flour. I need sugar. I need butter. I need all these inputs to make the output of the cupcakes." So, for us, we have this to-do list of all the things we want to do, right? I have to make the presentation. I have to cook dinner. I have to uh, you know, make those sales calls. All these things I have to do, and where is the time to do that? Where's the input? So, if you wake up in the morning and you have all these things you said you were going to do and you haven't figured out when you're going to do them, you know what's going to happen. You're not going to do them. Uh, another thing that's terrible about to-do list is that people who use to-do lists, and this happened to me all the time. I'd come home from work and I'd still have a to-do list that's a mile long. I said, "Well, I I didn't do all these things, right? I said I was going to do all this stuff. I worked all day and now I didn't get them done." So, what happens if that happens day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. You are training yourself to think that you are incompetent. And so, people think, you know, they come up with all these crazy excuse. no good at time management or that doesn't work for me or whatever the reason. It's not that you're broken, it's that this stupid time management technique sucks. That's what's broken. So, because to-do lists have no constraints, you just add more and more and more and more. Whereas a time box calendar forces you to make trade-offs and say, "Okay, I'm not going to work on that project today. I'm going to work on this project today. That one's more important." And and so if you if you don't do that, you can't judge what is traction and what is distraction. So, the kicker is the person here's how a person with to-do list works. The person with a to-do list says, "Oh, okay. That's a very important project. Let me start working on that." And they start working on it. Five minutes go by and they say, "Oh, let me just check email for a minute." Or, "You know what? I could really use a cup of coffee. Hey, Janet's at the water cool. Hey, Janet, how's it going?" And they start talking. Wait, what was I working on again? Oh, yeah, that presentation. I forgot. Whereas a person with a time box calendar, the goal is not to finish. The goal is not to finish. The goal of a time box calendar is to work on a task for as long as you set you would or to do anything, right? If it's spend time with your kid, if it's to watch YouTube, it doesn't matter. Do whatever it is you said you were going to do for as long as you said you would without distraction. Not to finish. Why is that so much better than a to-do list? Because with a to-do list, when you work on a task for 5 minutes here, 2 minutes there, you don't ever learn how long things take. You never learn. Which is why we have what's called a planning fallacy that we know that on average, people underestimate the time it takes them to finish a task by a factor of three. it typically takes you three times longer to finish a task than you think it will. Whereas when you use a time box calendar, now the goal is to say, "Okay, I'm going to work on this slide presentation, let's say, for 30 minutes. No more, no less. 30 minutes. That's all I'm going to do. And I'm not going to do anything else." And now at the end of the 30 minutes, I can say, "Okay, in 30 minutes I finished three slides, and the whole presentation needs to be 30 slides." Well, that means I need nine more time boxes to finish the whole presentation. Now I have a feedback loop. to-do list never give you that >> feels like between your last two books they really complement each other and go hand in hand to like examine examine who you are and the beliefs that constitute so much of what we think we want in life and then to like realign with who we are what our values are and then to actually follow through with that and learn how to do that. Um, so good work, man. >> They definitely line. I mean, this this is why I I I wrote Beyond Belief because knowing what to do isn't enough, right? That you can know what to do. I can give you all the productivity tactics, right? I can tell you exactly what to do. I mean, I >> It's an hour and a half read. I'll tell you how to be indistractible. >> Yeah. >> But will you do it? >> Uh, if you don't Do we talk about the motivation triangle? >> No. >> Okay. So we most people think that motivation is a straight line that if I want the benefit, I'll do the behavior. That's kind of how our jobs work, right? If you uh if you do your job, okay, I'm going to that's the behavior. I'm going to give you the benefit. I'm going to give you the paycheck. Okay, so straight line, but there's something missing that I can know that I want the benefit. I can even know what the behavior is that I need to do, but I still won't do it. If it was as easy as a straight line, I want the be a benefit. So do the behavior. We'd all have six-pack abs. We'd all be multi-millionaires. There's something missing. What's missing is we don't have the belief. So if I don't believe that I will get the benefit. For example, let's say I have a boss who I don't believe has my best interest at heart. I don't believe I'm going to get the promotion. I don't believe I'm going to get the raise. Am I going to work hard? No. Because I don't trust my boss is going to give me the benefit. Much more common is even when I know the behavior I need to do, if I don't trust myself, if I don't believe, if I have a limiting belief about my own abilities, even if I want the benefit, if I don't believe I will do the behavior, I'm also going to quit. So, it turns out that the heart of motivation, what holds this triangle together of benefit, behavior is belief. That's the base of the triangle. If you don't have the belief, doesn't matter if you know what to do and you want the benefits, you're not going to do the behavior. What's the biggest thing that you hope somebody reading your book listening to this conversation would really like take home in their life? >> Uh number one is that we need to realize we do not see reality as it is. That we need a lot more intellectual humility. That when you are sure that you're right and and again these limiting beliefs are hidden, right? That's the nature of them. We have to examine them because we all hold these limiting beliefs. We all have in one area of our life or another we're holding on to these limiting beliefs that it's important to constantly reassess our certainty around our beliefs that we don't see reality clearly. H my uh my good friend >> oh there's a second one sorry one more >> hit it >> is that we are capable of far more than we know >> and those go hand in hand right that our limiting beliefs keep us at the 15inute mark and really we have 60 hours in us >> on the first note my my buddy Peter Cron has this good saying uh self-righteousness is the poor man's version of selfworth >> oh that's good >> you know >> that's really good so truem M >> yeah so true that you know if you if you really want to understand something and this is why I I don't get into politics. I don't I don't you know I don't talk about that stuff because I only want to talk about stuff that I can argue both sides on. >> And that's how I kind of release myself from this. For me it was a a stressor that I had to have an opinion about everything. I had to take sides. I had to judge everything. Well, you know what? If I can't in good faith argue both sides and steelmen my best argument for both sides, I should probably shut up. Like that's not my job, right? I should focus on the things that I know deeply and I can't argue both sides about so that I can contribute to the discussion. >> Yeah. >> As opposed to this false certainty of, oh yes, I know who the good guys are and the bad guys. I know the right and wrong of every issue. I've judged everything into little nice little cute boxes that are very convenient for me. That's this permanence selfworth. >> Yeah. Is there anything that we haven't touched on today that you feel like is essential to add in the context of this conversation? >> I mean, we could talk about studies for hours. There's a lot more, but yeah, I think we think we had some good ones. Anything else that uh is on your mind? >> What do you think it means to know yourself? >> Yeah, actually, I was thinking about that earlier. Uh, what's the thy right? >> Know thyself. Yeah. >> Yeah, the thy part. Mhm. >> Once I Yeah. It's know the inside the definition of thyself. It's not just the physical body. Obviously, it's the psyche. And what is the psyche? The psyche is know your beliefs. Know this operating system that's operating in the background that you don't even realize the software that's been installed for you. That's I I love I love that. That's the the name of of the podcast because this this is the essence of it. This is this is how we see reality clearly is to know thyself. Is to know what what script am I running that I'm not even conscious of of running and is it helping me or is it hurting me? >> Yeah. One thing I just I feel called to bring back up just because we've had on a lot of cognitive scientists, psychologists, consciousness researchers, examining from many different lenses and disciplines how we do not see reality as it is. I think for many people it can be destabilizing. For many people it can be quite liberating because then you start holding your beliefs and presumptions a bit more loose, right? >> Which gives you more access to freedom. How does that insight that like we are really looking through reality through like a straw hole, >> right? >> There are millions of bits of information that we have that we don't have access to that we're perceiving but we're very selectively perceiving a very small amount of. Um I'm just I'm just curious any when you've done your research in that arena and when you've seen how we are this this predictive machine that is that is that is happening and you see how much we are essentially kind of like simulating our reality. What has that done for you like onlogically as as a human being how you navigate life? >> I think the biggest thing is that I've become aware of how I created problems that weren't there. Uh there's a a wonderful study that was done at Dartmouth where they uh took a group of women and they told them we're going to do a study on how people treat those with facial disfigurements and they put a large scar on their cheek and they said okay you're you're part of the study. We're going to put you into a room with a participant in the study and you're going to note how they treat you when we put this large scar. And so they put this like you know horror movie type of big scar gash on their on their cheek and it looked very realistic and they were about to go in the room and just as about they were to go into this room they said wait wait wait one second let me do a quick touch-up and unbeknownst to the the study participant they took off the scar right in the mirror they had just seen the scar and now they had taken the scar off and what's amazing is that these women who didn't have the scar reported that in a conversation they were stared at they were treated with disrespect uh people uh acted as if they were disgusted by them. And all this had come to their minds because of what they anticipated, not because of what was actually occurring. There was no scar, but because they expected this to happen. They did. They saw a problem that wasn't there. And that was me. I think as a lot of people that we invent these problems uh that a lot of times aren't real. We're expecting them. We're and and then we of course suffer from them. And and so I think it's it's helpful to put in perspective that uh and I'm not dismissing problems. I mean is there a lot of suffering in the world? Is the world a terrible place? The world is a terrible place. Lots of terrible things are happening. And also at the same time it's the best it's ever been and it's getting better. Those two things could be happening at the same time. There are terrible things happening in the world. It's a terrible place and also it's the best it's ever been and getting better. They're both true. And our perspective shapes reality that if you give up, if you say it's terrible and that's all that's the only belief I'm going to let into my consciousness, well, what do you do? What's what's worth it? What's worth fighting for then? Everything is going to hell. And that's a lot of people's attitudes today. Whereas when you have a historical perspective, you know, a lot of times they they do these surveys where they ask people, "Is this the worst time in history? Would you like to go back to any other time in history?" Most people say, "Oh yes, it was so much better back in the good old days." When was that? Right. The the 1400s. You want to go live like a French king. You'll live like the richest person uh of the day back then. You don't have plumbing. You have fistules and soores all over your body. You probably have syphilis. Your teeth are falling out. That is that the reality you want? So we often times forget that that perspective that allows us to to to not suffer so much to not create these uh the these false realities. So that's what's changed most for me is not seeing not creating these problems that that don't exist in our life. And so I consciously constantly have to remind myself of is is this true? you know, every and I think a good place to start, by the way, because if you jump too far into this too fast, it can be destabilizing because again, your your psychological immune system does not want to change your beliefs. But you can start with minor annoyances like the minor suffering, you know, the the person who cuts you off in traffic, the long line at the TSA at the airport, the the the baby who's crying at the shopping center. having that like so for example another one of my um my little secular prayers that I repeat constantly is love is measured by the benefit of the doubt that's how I measure love is measured by the benefit of the doubt what does that mean when my daughter was born uh right after she was born I was allowed to go wash her hair to wash the baby and I remember holding her arm she was this big was one of the most beautiful experiences of my entire And um in that moment she was completely helpless and I gave her complete benefit of the doubt. She cried. I don't care, you know, she she poops. She who cares, you know, cuz you give that person all the benefit of the doubt. You love them so much. And somehow when we grow up, we fail to give that benefit of the doubt because we think that people are trying to annoy us, that they're trying to hurt us. A baby, when a baby cries, they're not trying to annoy us. That's the best tools they have. That's all they can do. You know what? We're all big babies. That's the best tools we have. When someone hurts us, when someone offends us, that's the tools they got. Does it mean we have to excuse it? Does it mean we have to forgive it? No. Do we have to expose ourselves to it? No, we can definitely remove ourselves if we're not equipped to handle it. That's that's totally in our control as well. But also, it gives me greater peace to remind myself that love is measured by the benefit of the doubt. And I that's one of those whenever I have one of these annoyances to love your fellow man means you give them the benefit of the doubt. >> Yeah. Yeah, there's something so powerful about seeing how somebody cannot hurt another person in consciousness like by ver by by by nature of doing something that is betraying somebody or hurting somebody. There are internal forces that we do that they do not have agency over to the to the degree we would probably say that they would, you know. And to me that that understanding of examining free will and seeing that you know if somebody was to murder somebody and go to prison they of course have the consequences that are necessary there but if we were to then discover there was a tumor pressing on their amydala it changes the circumstances right and how the compassion we have for them. So I think it's a beautiful place to arrive to to be able to look at all life and people as phenomena unto themselves and um of course doesn't disavow the consequences and the responsibility that comes from different people's actions. Uh but uh it's a it's I think it's a beautiful note to end on and uh yeah something I resonate a lot with. >> My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. >> Yeah man. Um congrats once again. We'll leave links down again in the description where people can find you, your work, your book. Any other last words? Uh yeah, the the the just some information to find out more. We actually have a uh belief change guide, a fiveminute belief change guide that's totally free. Anybody, you don't have to buy anything. There's there's no requirements. It's at nearfar.com/belief-change. Uh free fiveminute belief change guide that gets you started on exactly how to do the techniques. >> Good work, man. >> Thanks. Thank you. It was a pleasure to connect. >> Thank you. This is fun. >> Yeah. All right, man. Until next time, be well. >> Sounds good. Thank you. Heat. Heat.

Nir Eyal joins the podcast to explore one of the most foundational forces shaping our lives: belief. What if the way you see reality isn’t reality itself, but a simulation filtered through prior assumptions, expectations, and unconscious scripts? In this conversation, we unpack the difference between fact, faith, and belief—and why most of our suffering stems from confusing the three. Nir shares powerful research on predictive processing, placebo and nocebo effects, learned helplessness, and how our expectations literally alter what we see, feel, and experience in our bodies. From secular prayer and gratitude practices to Byron Katie’s turnaround method, this episode is a deep dive into how to move from limiting beliefs to liberating ones. If beliefs are tools, then the real question becomes: are the ones you’re using serving you? EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/knowthyself Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee 3/10 Book release: http://geni.us/beyondbelief André's Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:35 The Difference Between Fact, Faith, and Belief 05:36 Illusions of Reality 07:29 The Core of Our Perception 15:52 Where to Start Enacting Change on Your Life 19:53 Beliefs as Tools, Not Truths 25:28 Ad: Nord VPN 26:32 The Cosmic Slot Machine 37:39 Spotting Your Limiting Beliefs 46:39 The Prison of Our Own Making 51:33 Why We Perceive Threats Everywhere 1:00:18 Becoming Indistractable 1:12:57 What Attention Means Today versus the Past 1:26:44 The Motivation Triangle 1:32:00 Closing Thoughts ___________ Episode Resources: https://www.instagram.com/neyal99 https://nir.substack.com/ https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com Listen to the show: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX