1136: How to Reshape Your Beliefs to Unlock Hidden Capabilities with Nir Eyal

Pete Mockaitis
Nir, welcome back.

Nir Eyal
Thanks, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat about your book, Beyond Belief. Beliefs, boy, I have found them to be powerful and I’ve heard them to be powerful, and I’m excited to have you sort out the myth from the fact and the science and bring some inspiration.

So could you maybe share with us, as you were doing your research for this book, any super surprising or fascinating discoveries, any maybe counterintuitive bits that you came across when it comes to us humans and belief?

Nir Eyal
Okay, let me take you back into the time machine of psychology history, back to the year 1950.

And Curt Richter, this researcher, takes a wild rat, and he wants to determine how long a wild rat can swim for. Fascinating stuff. It turns out, a wild rat in a cylinder of water will keep swimming for about 15 minutes before it gives up and drowns.

Nir Eyal
Then he decides to do a follow-up study. The follow-up study, he takes a wild rat, puts it in the same cylinder of water, and this time knowing that the rats will last an average 15 minutes, right before the 15-minute mark, he reaches in, takes out the wild rat, dries it off, lets it catch its breath, and plunk back into the cylinder it goes. And he does this a few times to condition the rat.

The question is, now that the rats have been conditioned, that salvation might be possible, that that magic hand might reach in and save the rat, how much longer did the rat swim for? Now we know it started 15 minutes, how much longer did the rat persist?

Pete Mockaitis
Nineteen minutes.

Nir Eyal
Nineteen minutes, not even close. Keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
Thirty minutes.

Nir Eyal
That would be amazing, double the perseverance. Would that be amazing if you could double? No, not even close. Keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
Sixty minutes.

Nir Eyal
Four times longer, can you imagine if you had an intervention that could help you run four times the marathon, persist on a big exam four times longer, stick with a hard task at work four times longer? That would be insane. That would be a miracle.

The rats didn’t swim for four times longer. They didn’t swim for 60 minutes. They swam, are you ready for this? They swam from 15 minutes, with that intervention, they now swam for 60 hours.

Pete Mockaitis
Sixty hours straight?

Nir Eyal
Sixty hours straight.

Pete Mockaitis
You got to eat! You got to drink!

Nir Eyal
Yeah, they became 240 times more persistent, okay? Why? What happened? We can’t ask the rats what they thought, but if we know their bodies didn’t change, the intervention happened, same rats, same bodies, and they didn’t become physically stronger, nothing changed with their environment, same cylinder of water.

The only variable left is that something changed in their brains. That, in fact, that 240 times more persistence, that 60 hours of swimming was always in them. They physically could always do it. It’s that something was unlocked in their brain that made that now possible.

And so that leads us to, what I’ve been working on the past six years, beliefs. That we can push beyond our limiting beliefs. That the rats that originally gave up when they didn’t know there was any other option, they just kind of gave up at 15 minutes, didn’t know that within them all along was 60 hours of perseverance.

And, of course, what’s the metaphor here? We are just like those rats. We have all these capabilities. We have no clue we are able to accomplish all these things we can do, but we limit ourselves because of our beliefs, because we think, “There’s nothing more to be done,” “I’m not good enough,” “I had this condition,” “I do this,” “I can’t do that,” “I’m too old,” “I’m too young,” “And there’s no time,” “The world sucks,” “Exercise is terrible,” whatever.

All these limiting beliefs we have that aren’t real. They’re not true. They just limit us. And so that was the study that I saw that I said, “Wow, I have to tell the world about this. It’s totally remarkable and that was incredibly surprising.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s wild. That’s wild and very intriguing and enticing. But, Nir, you know, I’ve had my heart broken before by rodent studies, they promised much that didn’t translate. So can you lay on us the most compelling human random control trial you’re aware of in this domain?

Nir Eyal
Yeah, I’ll give you another one. A group of athletes were told that there was a breakthrough steroid that is going to help them put on muscle with no side effects. And this study has been replicated many, many times. It was done back in the 1970s.

So a group of athletic men told, “Here’s a breakthrough steroid, unbelievably effective, go work out.” They gave another group – nothing. The control group, these men who were given the steroid put on significantly more muscle mass, like actually, they had more muscle, like they weighed more in terms of their muscle. They also became quite a bit stronger. They could lift more weight. They could do more pushups there. They got overall way, way more, way stronger.

It turns out that this magical steroid was nothing. It was a placebo, an inert substance. So placebos can help you put on muscle mass, it turns out. Now, is it through some magical intervention? Are your beliefs becoming your biology as some studies that we know about suggest? In this case, that was true, but not the way most people think.

When people think of placebos, they think there’s some kind of magical property to it. There’s some kind of pharmacy in your brain that just makes you live longer, etc. It’s not how it works. It is true that your beliefs can become your biology. But the path through that goes through behavior.

It turns out, when they tracked how much more effort did these men put into their workouts when they were taking the placebo steroid, they pushed a little bit harder, they did one more rep, they tacked on a little bit more weight, because they believed, “Hey, I’m on this steroid, I should be stronger,” and they, therefore, became stronger because of it.

So this is super important. There isn’t some magical power to placebos. It’s, in fact, a technique we can use on ourselves to help us accomplish the things that we didn’t know we could do, but it’s not magic, it’s behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s intriguing. And I want to have all kinds of techniques, but maybe let’s zoom out and give us what’s the main big idea or thesis of your book here, Beyond Belief?

Nir Eyal
That beliefs are tools, not truths, and we can use them just like a tool, that when we have the right tools, we can build amazing things. So let’s differentiate between what is a belief, what is a fact, what is faith. Fact is an objective truth, it’s something that is true whether you believe it or not. The world is more like a sphere than it is flat. It is what it is.

Then you have faith. Faith are matters, these are convictions that do not require evidence, “What happens after you die?” “God rewards the righteous.” These are matters of faith. These things do not require evidence. Then there are things in the middle that we call beliefs.

Beliefs are convictions that are open to revision based on new evidence. And most of our big decisions in life are not based on fact because we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. We have to have our best guess, “What job should I take?” “Who should I marry?” “What city should I live in?”

These questions, they’re not based on fact or faith. They’re based on belief, convictions that are open to revision based on new evidence. But here’s the kicker. Even though most of our decisions in life are based on beliefs, most of us believe really stupid stuff.

We have these convictions that, to us, feel like facts and we can’t see for ourselves that they are actually hidden, limiting beliefs. It’s almost like your face, that we all carry around a face, but you can’t see your own face. You can see other people’s faces.

Just like if I said, “Hey, think of someone you know very well, someone you’re close to, what’s their limiting belief?” “Oh, in a second, I can tell you what that person’s limiting belief is if I know them pretty well.” But when it comes to ourselves, uh-uh, we don’t know what our limiting beliefs are because we think they’re facts, they’re hidden to us by design. Because the brain has what’s called an immunity to change.

We hate changing our beliefs because the brain wants to default into passivity. Another very surprising result. You’ve heard of learned helplessness?

That, over time, if you can’t do something, it started with animal studies where they did terrible things to dogs and figured this out. But they say now with humans as well that you learn helplessness. You learn to give up. If you can’t, can’t, can’t, you eventually don’t even try.

This was gospel in the psychology community until the very authors who ran those studies and came up with the term learned helplessness, just a few years ago, decided that their conclusion was completely wrong. In fact, it was the opposite. That we don’t learn helplessness. Helplessness is our default state.

That we always want to retreat into safety. We always wanted to retreat into our previous beliefs. We always want to go back to what we currently know and think we know, because that’s what kept us safe in the past, and so that’s what’s going to keep us safe in the future. That’s our default state. We don’t learn helplessness, we are all helpless.

Think about a little baby when they’re first born, they’re completely helpless. They’re dependent on others. We’re always, by default, helpless. What we have to learn is agency. We have to learn hope. And that’s exactly what those rats learned.

Originally, in that Richter study, they were helpless. They gave up after 15 minutes. They weren’t exhausted, they just gave up. But when they had learned that something might save them, salvation might be possible, they persisted. And so that’s something that I think is incredibly important to realize, that we have far more agency than we think because we can actually shape our beliefs.

We don’t have to accept our beliefs as default. It’s almost like a carpenter doesn’t say, “Oh, you know, one time, I used a hammer and it was very effective. So hammers, hammers are the one and only true tool forevermore.” No, a carpenter says, “Hey, sometimes I use a hammer, sometimes I use a saw, sometimes I use a screwdriver.” They find the right tool for the job.

So most of our problems in life, personal problems, interpersonal relationship problems at work, and even geopolitical problems come from the fact that far too many people don’t realize that the things that they think are facts are nothing more than beliefs.

And so if we realize that, we can actually shape our beliefs to live better, to make the world a better place, to reduce our suffering.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you maybe give us the top five hidden limiting beliefs that show up all over the place in all kinds of people and cause all kinds of limitation?

Nir Eyal
Sure, I’d be happy to. Just curious, can you think of any that you have? Anything come to mind?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that I have.

Nir Eyal
I’ll give you the number one. I’ll give you the number one. What do think it is, by the way? What do think the number one limiting belief that I hear is?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think, in terms of the destruction, I’m thinking, “Oh, I’m unlovable,” or, “I’m not good enough,” or, “I’m not worthy.”

Nir Eyal
That’s too serious. Those are all limiting beliefs. Those are really hidden. Very few people will say, “Oh, I’m not lovable,” but, yeah, they can act as if that’s true. Number one, “I don’t have enough time.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Nir Eyal
Right? Everybody thinks that, “Well, of course, I don’t have enough time. We’re busy, busy, busy, busy.” What are you talking about? Not enough time for what? The human race is 200,000 years old. The earth is billions of years old. Zoom out. You got time.

It’s just that your priorities are different, that you have a limiting belief that, “I have to be stressed.” It’s a limiting belief that I have to accomplish more than I am. Because all these limiting beliefs, they create suffering. Well, I didn’t define it. What is the difference between a limiting belief and a liberating belief?

A limiting belief decreases motivation and increases suffering. A liberating belief is a belief that increases motivation and decreases suffering. And it turns out, once we evaluate these limiting versus liberating beliefs, we can choose, we can take them out for size.

So these limiting beliefs come from the fact that we expect things to be different. We expect to accomplish all this stuff and we can’t or we don’t and so, therefore, we suffer. But that’s a limiting belief. It’s just a perception problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. So “I don’t have time” is a big one. Give us a couple more.

Nir Eyal
Yeah, “She always acts that way,” or, “That’s so like him,” right? You see that one a lot with interpersonal relationships, especially, in the workplace, when it comes to people we work with, “That’s just who they are.” It turns out, we don’t see reality clearly. This is a really, really important point.

So let me explain the three powers of belief so we could dive deeper into how to get rid of these limiting beliefs. There’s three powers of our beliefs. Beliefs shape what we see. We call this the power of attention, beliefs shape what we feel, We call this the power of anticipation. And beliefs shape what we do. We call this the power of agency.

And so, it turns out that the reason beliefs are, why do we even have these beliefs? How do they shape what we see, feel and do so dramatically? It’s because, fundamentally, the brain cannot process reality. None of us see reality clearly.

That’s probably the biggest limiting belief, is that you think you know what happened. You think you see reality clearly. You don’t see reality clearly. You don’t feel reality clearly. None of that. Why? Because the brain is processing for every second, 11 million bits of information.

Eleven million bits of information, to put that in perspective, that’s like reading War and Peace every second, twice. It’s a tremendous amount of information. The light entering your retinas, the sound of my voice in your ears, the ambient temperature of the room, your brain is collecting all this data. However, your conscious perception is only processing 50 bits of information, 50 versus 11 million.

So that means that you are aware of 0.000045% of what’s actually happening in reality. And you think you can take someone else’s perspective and think you know what they’re thinking and feeling? No, you have no clue. You’re barely processing your own version of reality.

So what this means is that, based on this keyhole of attention that we’re all looking through, the brain has to create a simulation because it can’t process what’s happening. So it’s creating a simulation of what it expects to…?

Pete Mockaitis
Happen.

Nir Eyal
Perfect. How did you know I was going to say that? Because of your priors, your prior experiences, what happened in your childhood, what happened yesterday, what happened in the past. That is what decides what you will perceive in the future. Those are called our priors.

What are priors? They are based on our beliefs. So we see reality, feel reality, and act in reality based on what we believe. That’s our perceptual filter that we can look through. But the problem is, of course, we keep using the same perceptual filters, whether or not they serve us because in the past they did.

And so that’s why it’s so important to be aware of, “Hey, can I swap the bad beliefs, the ones that don’t serve me, that limit me for the ones that liberate me?”

Pete Mockaitis
I see. And that’s why we’re able to finish each other’s…

Nir Eyal
Sandwiches, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Sandwiches. Oh, wow, Nir, I didn’t think…Oh, that was magical.

Nir Eyal
I have a daughter, too. I’ve seen “Frozen” 110 times.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s a joke, but I think it also illustrates the notion that if you have had those experiences of watching the “Frozen” movie or wherever they employ that joke, finish each other’s sandwiches, then you’ll say sandwiches. But if you haven’t, it’s just like, “Sentences,” that’s what gets finished.

Nir Eyal
It’s a beautiful illustration. That’s exactly right. That the brain perceives what it expects.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d love to dig into how we can reshape these, but maybe could you tell us really what’s possible, in terms of an inspiring story of a person who noticed some of these things that you highlighted and they said, “Uh-oh, I got to take some action,” and they reshaped it and what happened?

Nir Eyal
Sure, I’ll give you an example of a famous person who was duped into being better and how did this happen. So this is a story of Serena Williams, and this really happened, at Wimbledon one year. And she was having a really tough go at it that year, that she was not performing at her best, and she started to psych herself out. She was capable of more.

And her coach, Patrick, knew this, and so he saw that she was not performing well because, principally, she was not rushing the net. And in tennis, if you hesitate for even a microsecond, you’re going to lose the point. And he saw that this was happening to Serena because she was doubting herself, and so he wanted to break that belief.

So what did he do? He goes up to her, and he says, “I have some amazing news. I was just looking at the statistics and I saw that, when you rush the net, you score 80% of the points.” And she said, “What are you crazy? I thought I was sucking at the net. I thought I was doing terrible with the net.”

He says, “Well, you know what, the statistics are with the statistics are. That’s what it says. So, you know, this is the best news of the day, 80% of the points, just rush the net. You’re doing great.” It turns out this was a complete lie. A total lie. But it was a productive deception.

Now that she has that new belief, even though it was false, it wasn’t true, it was useful. Beliefs are tools, not truths. And so now she began to behave differently about what she would do in the future. Maybe in the past, that was a fact, but the future is not a fact. It hasn’t happened yet. So she used her beliefs as tools, not truths, and turns out, she wins Wimbledon that year.

Now, I’m not saying go lie to people and that’s going to make them better. What her coach was doing was he knew her potential. He knew what was in there already. So if you go tell somebody, “You’re really good at something,” that they’re just not good at, it’s not going to work.

But when someone is actually good at something, just like those rats who had those 60 hours in them before the experiment, they just needed them unlocked, that’s what this productive deception actually did. And so we can actually do this in our own lives.

When you think about how people use totems or placebos or potions, whether they work or not, maybe it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are effective. So sometimes these productive deceptions can be very, very useful.

I mean, think about branding. What the heck is branding? It’s just a productive deception. And you think, “Oh, but that’s like marketing, you know, BS.” No, in fact, there was a wonderful study where they took people and put them in an fMRI machine. An fMRI machine tracks blood flow in the brain so we can see what areas of the brain are most active.

They put them in this machine and they give them a little tube in their mouth. And in that tube, they send a squirt of wine and they say, “Okay, we want to see how you like this wine. Here is a cheap bottle of wine, maybe it’s $5 or so. What do you think of this wine?”

And people in the fMRI machine who were tasting the wine said, “Oh, you know what, this wine is okay, it’s a little flat, nothing special. Eh, it’s okay.” Then they said, “Okay, now we’re going to give you a very expensive bottle of wine, Chateau des…” something, something, “Here you go, try this wine.” “Oh,” they reported, “this is a very tasty wine. I taste hints of oak and berry and…” all kinds of the things that the wine snobs say.

You know, there’s a trick coming. The trick is it’s the same wine. But their perception of the price changed not only what they said they experienced, it’s not that they were lying, they actually, in their brain, we could see that blood flow was measuring more intensely in the pleasure centers of their brain. They were actually perceiving that wine that was more expensive as better because of this expectation, because of their belief that expensive wine should be better.

So marketing, in many cases, we’ve misunderstood. We think that advertising is about telling people about your product. That’s the simple definition, actually. That’s the simple version. Really, what advertising does is that it informs how you will experience the product itself. It shapes an expectation. It incepts an expectation so that you actually experience the product as more superior.

Take headphones, for example. I know you’re an audiophile. You’ve got all kinds of headphones. Studies have found that between $100 headphones and $1,000 headphones, people can’t tell the difference, not at that quality level when we do random studies. And yet, when they know the price of the headphones, they rate the qualities better, right? Even if it’s not.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. You know, Nir, you’re making so many connections for me. One with wine and marketing, and Seth Godin’s book, All Marketers Are Liars, he talks about the Riedel glasses, which is a fancy wine glass. And so they tell a story about how, with its properties of scents and geometry, it enhances the wine flavor, dah, dah, dah. And likewise, in sort of blind tests, it does not.

But when people believe that it does, it does. And I’ve had that experience. I’ve used those glasses. They feel very nice. And I think, “Ooh, yeah, this really is enhancing the experience.” And so it’s intriguing in that there’s nothing intrinsic about the glass that is doing that. And Seth’s point is it’s not that the marketers are really shady, terrible people. They are giving us a better experience because they’re telling us the story and we are enriched from it.

And with regard to audio, I kid you not, one time I was working with a super duper audio engineer trying to get my sound dialed in. And he said, “You really need this device.” It was this clunky thousand-dollar cast iron thing. I was like, “I mean, okay, dude, I’ll give it a shot.” And so I was like, “But it’s going right back. I’m not spending that money if no one could tell the difference.”

And so I did an elaborate blind listening test, including with the super audio engineer, Conan O’Brien stole him from me. No big deal. This audio engineer, I had him and some other folks listen to all these samples with the fancy piece and then the normal piece, and they really were indistinguishable, despite all the ooing and aahing, and he was like, “Oh, it gives your voice this just thick, heavy, rich, solid sound.”

I was like, “Well, apparently you couldn’t hear it when I obscured the names of the things.” So it really does show up in all kinds of places.

Nir Eyal
Yeah, and the natural gut reaction is, “Oh, it’s deception.” But actually, what’s the point? The point of this stuff is to enjoy it more, right? So maybe spending a few extra bucks, if that’s the goal, right? Here’s another good example, that when golfers were told that a putter was used by a famous celebrity golfer, right, like, “This putter was used by Tiger Woods,” or something, I don’t know who they used, they golf better. They actually performed better in their golf game, right?

So it can actually have some kind of actual effect on your performance as well. So maybe we should give a chance to these placebos. Maybe they’re far more powerful than we think. Again, no magic here, but if that’s what we’re paying for, if we’re paying for perception, if we’re paying for performance, maybe it’s worth it. And the nice thing is that placebos don’t have to just come in terms of products.

We know that we can have similar effects by changing our beliefs. So, for example, there’s an amazing study that was done at Yale a few years ago, where they found that people who have positive views about aging, okay, what is a positive view about aging? Something like, “Growth is possible at any age,” versus a negative view of aging, someone who says, “Aging involves inevitable decline.”

Now, which one is true? They’re both true, right? But someone who’s first to mind reaction is, “Oh, I’m having a senior moment. Those aches and pains is because I’m getting old,” what are they more likely to do? How are they more likely to live? They’re more likely to limit themselves and do fewer healthy behaviors.

And so, when we talk about what affects lifespan, smoking, what you eat, exercise, beliefs blow all of those out of the water. That people in this study, people who have positive views about aging at age 30, lived seven and a half years longer. Seven and a half years longer is off the charts. That is more than the effect of smoking, more than the effect of exercise, more than the effect of what you eat. But we never hear about that.

We think about blue zones and you have to eat this, olive oil, that, matcha, this, all these fancy, fancy things that you’re supposed to do. It turns out, having a positive view of aging is the best thing you can do to increase your lifespan. Again, it’s not that your beliefs become your biology, it’s that your beliefs create behaviors that then change your biology.

So these are very simple things that any of us can do. Stop telling yourself these limiting beliefs. Stop telling yourself, “I’m not a morning person.” Because, you know what, when you tell yourself you’re not a morning person, guess what, you’re not.

Stop telling yourself that you’re limited by your labels. Don’t say them out loud. Don’t say them to others. There’s no purpose for it, even if you think it’s true, even if there is some kind of basis. For example, I was tested for ADHD.

Pete Mockaitis
Me, too.

Nir Eyal
And for years I would say to myself, “Oh, there’s my ADHD, there it goes again.” Now, what was I doing while I was thinking about my stupid ADHD? I was not thinking about the thing that I was supposed to be thinking about.

So it became this trap that I had built for myself, versus a much more positive belief is that, “Hey, this is a new skill I’m learning. You know, maybe it wasn’t my ADHD.” Now it doesn’t mean ADHD isn’t real. It might be real, but we’re not arguing about the facts here. We’re not arguing about truth. We’re arguing about belief. What was causing me to get distracted in that moment?

It could also be that I just haven’t learned a skill to stay focused. Okay, maybe I’m starting a bit behind other people, but I don’t want to think to myself that I’m limited in this way. It’s not helpful. So I can do away with that limiting belief and instead adopt a much healthier liberating belief.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and then you can have your beliefs associated with the supplements or the medications therein, which would likewise have impact. So I’m curious, if we have spotted a belief like, “I don’t have time. I don’t have enough time,” and we really do believe it, just like, “Nir, I mean, straight up, just take a look at this list and take a look at this calendar, like, straight up, there just is not enough time,” what does one do to rejigger that?

Nir Eyal
So the first thing we do is we take out that belief, and we recognize that the last thing our brain wants to do is to prove it false. We hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it, okay? So acknowledging that, we thank our brain and say, “Thanks, brain. I’m going to put that on pause for a minute and I’m going to explore an alternative perspective to collect a portfolio of perspectives,” right?

You don’t have to change your mind. You don’t have to believe something different. You don’t have to tell yourself myths. You just want to create other perspectives and explore whether they also might be true. So for example, let’s take, is this a limiting belief of yours, by the way, that there’s not enough time? What’s a real limiting belief you have?

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, it comes up semi often.

Nir Eyal
Okay, let’s take this one then, okay, “There’s not enough time.” Now what we want to do, and this is a technique offered by Byron Katie that I admire quite a bit. And she actually channeled this technique. This is all the way back from Aristotle. And what she does is she asks us these four questions. So the first question is, “Is this belief true? Is it true, ‘I don’t have enough time’?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I mean, it can be neither true nor false. From a strict logic perspective, it can be neither true nor false, because we have not defined what does that even mean. Like you said earlier, enough for what?

Nir Eyal
Good point. Good point. Okay, so let’s go to question number two, which you’ve kind of started to answer  already, “Is it absolutely true? Can we find any definition, any situation, any scenario where ‘I don’t have enough time’ is not true?”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Nir Eyal
Certainly, of course. Okay, let’s go to the third question, “Who am I when I believe that? How do I feel? How do I act? What kind of person am I when I hold onto that belief that there is not enough time?”

Pete Mockaitis
Just kind of stressed and rushed and frazzled and error-prone.

Nir Eyal
Yeah, a great point, “I don’t do good work when I feel like I don’t have enough time.” Great point. Okay, final fourth question, we’re kind of rushing this here, but just for the sake of demonstration, “Who would I be without that belief?” If I had a magic wand, here’s my magic wand, I’m going to tap you on the head. You no longer have that belief. How do you feel?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I feel relieved and free, but also a little scared, like, “Uh-oh, I hope I don’t accidentally, like, way overdo something,” because I get in a groove or a flow and be like, “Oh, shoot, I got to pick up my kids, arghh,” you know, so I feel liberated and a little spooked.

Nir Eyal
Okay, great. So now we’re going to do the turnaround. So what did we just discover with those four questions? We discovered that that belief that felt really true a minute ago, maybe it’s not true, that holding onto the belief doesn’t feel very good, doesn’t make you enjoy your life. It seems like it increases suffering. And if we got rid of it, there might be some benefits, not a hundred percent, but maybe there are some benefits to getting rid of that belief and trying on a different belief.

So now we do the turnaround. We take that statement that we are absolutely sure is true, “Look at my calendar, there’s no time, clearly,” and we ask ourselves to consider the exact opposite, to do a turnaround. And this technique of a turnaround is way underutilized. It can be utilized in business, it can be utilized in relationships, it can be utilized to bring yourself greater peace and awareness, and just to see reality more clearly.

Again, we’re not changing our mind. We’re just collecting a portfolio of perspectives to choose from. So what’s the opposite of “I don’t have enough time”?

Pete Mockaitis
“I have ample time.”

Nir Eyal
“I have ample time.” Give me one way that might be true.

Pete Mockaitis
I sleep as much as my body allows me to.

Nir Eyal
Okay, great. Somebody else might say, “Actually, I watch TV. I scroll on social media. So if I really didn’t have time, would I be able to do those things? No, I actually have time.” Or another person might say, “You know what? I have time for the things I care about. You know, like I spend time with my kids. That’s non-negotiable.”

Or somebody else might say, “I spend a lot of time at work. That’s non-negotiable. So I do have time for the things I care about,” could be a possible way that’s true. Can you think of any others that might apply to you or any other turnarounds, any other way you could take, “I don’t have time,” and you could turn that around, like, “I do have time for…” blank?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I mean, I think I kind of already said it. It’s like, I do have time for the things that truly matter, necessary, worthwhile, leveraged, you know, life-giving. I mean, yeah, that just is what it is.

Nir Eyal
Yeah. How does that feel when you try that on for size that, “I do have time for the things I care about”? How does your body feel right now?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, it’s a better groove, you know. Kind of breathing a little easier, a little less tension in some belly and such.

Nir Eyal
Yeah, so that’s a very quick and dirty example of how you can collect that portfolio and see and try it on for size. Let me tell you where it changed my life. I had an interaction with my mom a few years ago. It was her 74th birthday, and I wanted to do something nice for her. So I wanted to get her some flowers. The problem was, I was in Singapore and she was in Central Florida where I grew up.

So that’s a bit of a challenge, but I called a bunch of florists. I made sure the delivery went out on time. I wanted to make sure that they, you know, didn’t burn in the Florida heat. And I stayed up till 1:00 a.m. and I patted myself on the back and I said, “Oh, Nir, you’re a good son. You did something nice for your mom.”

I went to bed, slept well, called her the next morning and said, “Hey, mom, happy birthday. Did you get my flowers?” To which she said, “I did. Thank you very much. But just so you know, I got them and they’re half dead. So don’t use that florist anymore.” To which I reacted and said something to the effect of, “Well, that’s the last time I ever buy you flowers,” which I later regretted, and that went over about as well as you’d expect.

Now, after the call, my wife turned to me and she said, “Do you want to do a turnaround on this?” To which I said, “No, I do not want to do any of your hocus pocus, touchy feely nonsense. I need to vent,” because that’s what we’re all told. You’re supposed to vent, you’re supposed to get your feelings out, you’re supposed to tell people how you really feel.

But I knew enough at that point, doing this research, that venting does not work, that venting does nothing but solidify this patina that we have around people, this effigy that we build about people, because we don’t see people as they are. We see people as we are. We see them through our beliefs, which is why we treat our family members very differently from how we treat strangers.

So I did not want to vent, because I knew it, I held myself back, I should say, from venting, because I knew that was not going to be helpful. And I did this exact exercise, I asked these four questions.

I wrote down the belief, “My mother is too judgmental and hard to please,” obviously, right? Question number one is a stupid question, “Is it true?” Yeah, obviously. Go to question two, “Is it true? Is it absolutely true that she’s too judgmental and hard to please?” Well, maybe. I mean, there might be possibly a 1% chance that that didn’t happen the way I saw it. Maybe there’s another perspective. Fine.

Question number three, “Who am I when I hold onto this belief?” I’m not really myself, right? I’m short tempered. I regret what I later said, right? So that wasn’t really serving me. And then, finally, the fourth question, “Who would I be without that belief?” If I could do away with that belief that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, I’d be nicer. I’d be more patient. I’d be more myself.

So, A, that belief that I was absolutely sure was true, it turns out maybe it’s not true. It doesn’t really serve me and I’d be much better off without it. Now I could do my own turnaround. Okay, my turnaround number one, “My mother is not too judgmental and hard to please.”

How could that possibly be true? Is there even one way that could be true? Well, she did thank me, so maybe she was just trying to help me by making sure that I don’t get scammed by this florist. It could be. Now, is that true? Is it not true? I don’t know. It’s okay. It’s another perspective.

Here’s another turnaround, “I am too judgmental and hard to please.” Could that be true? Not “My mother is too judgmental and hard to please,” I am too judgmental and hard to please. That could also be true, right, because I had scripted this exact response of effusive praise that I was expecting from my mother, and when it didn’t come, I lost it. So who was being judgmental? Me, because I didn’t get the thanks I needed.

Now there’s a fourth, another turn around, a fourth belief, “I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself.” Yeesh, that’s no fun. What does that mean? Well, the more I thought about it, when something didn’t happen the way I expected it to happen, I thought it was a statement on myself that I was not competent for not buying the right flowers, and so I was judging myself very harshly.

And because of that, there’s what’s called a misattribution of emotion. That when we feel crummy, we look for the first face in front of us and that’s the face we’re going to punch, verbally or physically. And that’s what I did. So now which one of those four beliefs is right? We started with “My mother is too judgmental and hard to please,” we came up with three other perspectives, three other beliefs. Which one is right? Which one is wrong? Which one is true? Which one is false? Who cares?

I tell you what, that first belief gave me only one way to happiness, only one way to peace. She had to apologize so I could feel better. She had to change her behavior so I could change how I felt inside. That ain’t going to happen, right? Stop expecting people to change. It’s not going to happen. The other three perspectives I could do something with.

So in any interpersonal conflict, whether it’s in the home with our families or in the workplace, taking on that portfolio of perspectives, you don’t have to agree with it, you don’t have to change your mind about anything, but you can collect that portfolio of perspectives about any of your limiting beliefs and try them on for size, just like glasses, right?

You try on somebody else’s glasses and things are blurry, they don’t look right. You try on the right prescription, “Oh, things look better. Things look more clear.” And so the idea here is that by trying on those different perspectives, you can pick the ones that serve you best, that help reduce suffering, that bring you closer together to people and improve your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. Thank you. And so this rigorous question, consideration, turnaround approach is powerful. I’m curious if there are any other power tools in your toolkit for working with these beliefs?

Nir Eyal
When it comes to rumination, you know, we get into this cycle of when we mess up and we do something that we later regret. “Oh, why did I do that? Why did I say it that way? What did he mean when he said that?” You know, we ruminate again and again and again.

It turns out, one of the best things you can do is to make time in your schedule to worry, that the solution to rumination is actually scheduling worry time. So when I get in that loop of, “Oh, what if this doesn’t work out? Maybe I said this wrong or whatever,” saying, “Okay, I write down that thing I’m worried about, that thing that I’m ruminating on, and then I have time in my schedule, like literally worry time scheduled where I will get back to it.”

Now why is this so powerful? The reason the brain keeps ruminating about a thought is because it doesn’t know when it’s going to have another time to solve it. It keeps thinking and thinking, it becomes an intrusive thought because if not now, then when? But, amazingly, when you give the brain time to worry later, it can relax. It’s like, “Okay, I wrote this down. I will schedule time with myself to worry about it.”

Now here’s where the magic happens. Number one, you stop ruminating. Two, when that time comes to worry about it, nine times out of 10, “What was I worrying about again? Why did that matter so much? What’s the big deal?” And so you benefit twice.

Another technique is called illeism. Illeism is when you talk to yourself in the third person. It’s not about cheesy affirmations. Affirmations don’t really work because they tend to affirm things that are not true. So just telling yourself it’s true doesn’t really work. But, Ilism, talking to yourself in the third person, has been shown to be very, very effective.

So instead of saying, “I’m terrible at this,” or, “I’m no good at public speaking,” or, “I’m not a morning person,” or, “I’m this or that.” Rather, if you can actually insert your name, so, “Pete is working on his public speaking,” “Pete is getting better at this task,” “Pete is challenged by this.” It’s amazing.

When you can talk to yourself in the third person, what it allows you to do is to give yourself advice as if you were in the third person. So by giving yourself what’s called self-compassion, it turns out that self-compassion, studies have found, is a defining trait of people who are more likely to meet their long-term goals.

So if you can talk to yourself the way you can talk to a good friend, it’s amazing, when a friend comes to you and says, “Hey, I have this problem.” “Oh, I’m full of good advice. Let me tell you exactly what you should do.” But when it comes to our own problems, we’re really challenged by this because we can’t see past our beliefs.

And so using this third-person technique, talking to yourself as if you were your own friend, which you should be, can actually uncover and unlock a lot of these hidden truths.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Well, now let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Could you kick us off with a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Nir Eyal
This actually comes from the Talmud, which is that, “You don’t see things as they are. You see things as you are.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Nir Eyal
I really enjoyed Rory Sutherland’s book Alchemy. I thought that was a fantastic read.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that audiences really eat up, they retweet, they Kindle book highlight, they say, “Wow, Nir, this was awesome”?

Nir Eyal
What I would want people to recognize and re-share is that beliefs are tools, not truths.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Nir Eyal
Yeah, so my website is NirAndFar.com. Nir spelled like my first name, that’s N-I-R , AndFar.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Nir Eyal
Yeah, I think the best thing we can do is to recognize that we don’t see reality clearly, we don’t feel reality as it is, and we are capable of doing so much more than we know.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Nir, thank you.

Nir Eyal
My pleasure. Thank you, Pete.