Presence Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Owen, welcome!

Owen Fitzpatrick
Thank you so much, Pete. Delighted to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about Inner Propaganda. And, wow, I got to hand it to you for writing a heck of an introduction to this book. Introduction: “How to write a suicide note.” Can you take us into that story and share why you chose to open that way?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Sure. So when I was writing this book, this book is I think number 10 in terms of the books I’ve written so far, and it’s the most important one I’ve ever worked on because it’s all driven by an experience I had when I was 14.

So when I was 14, I was very depressed. I was suicidal. I didn’t have many friends. I struggled a lot with my mental health overall. And I had a moment where I was ready to end my life.

And so I started writing a suicide note. And the suicide note was to my parents just to apologize and to say, “I’m so sorry for doing this. I just can’t deal with it. I feel so alone, broken, etc.” And then as I was writing it down, I wrote a line to my parents saying, “I’m so, so sorry. I love you so, so much.”

And I can’t really put my finger on where it came from, but it’s almost like I found myself writing a question which is, “Is this how much you love them?” It was like a sort of sarcastic, edgy type of question back.

And it stopped me on my tracks at that moment. And then I started having a sort of internal war, but it kept coming back to that question. And every time I came across that question, something shifted in me. And by the end of that, I suppose, letter, I had stopped entirely the thought that that was what I was going to do.

And from that moment on, I never wrote another suicide note. I never considered suicide. Not that my life measurably improved the next day. I still struggled with the same situation outside and inside, but I knew that that was off the table. So my belief transformed in one moment.

And so I became, I suppose the cliche is, you know, you learn from your experiences as you get attracted to psychology. So as I started studying psychology, I was just everything I could about why we believe what we believe.

So I wanted to know about cults. I wanted to know about propaganda. I wanted to know about how did Nazi Germany influence so many people back then? How is it so powerful, this experience that I had? How come that changed everything for me? How do beliefs actually change? And why is it so difficult to change minds?

And then as I started working in corporations, working with thousands of people there, once more, the same things came about. Being right is not enough. You walk into a room, you’re trying to persuade your boss of something. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got all the data, it doesn’t matter if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re still going to struggle to change that person’s mind if they’ve already cemented themselves in terms of certain belief.

So that’s kind of what drew me there. And the reason I started the book was that was the origin of the experience. And I want this book to arrest people and interrupt the pattern of thinking that they have and get them to go, “The stakes are higher than you might think. This isn’t just about influence. This is about something that can transform our lives.”

And so I felt that the gravity of the situation I went through is something that I needed to share. And, you know, pretending that everything is perfect, I think, sometimes is just an easy way out. I think we need to talk about real things, and that’s why I decided to start with that story.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, yes, and it is powerful. And thank God you’re here. We’re so glad that you’re with us, and that it is a powerful, powerful story that sets some things up. You say it’s not just influence. We had Bob Cialdini on the show. He’s an endorser of your book. Love him. He talks influence. You’re saying this is something kind of different. What do you mean?

Owen Fitzpatrick
So whenever we talk about influence, and again, Robert Cialdini is one of the most important mentors to me and whatnot, you’re talking about the ability you have to influence what another person believes or thinks or feels. And this is, I suppose, this book is also definitely about influence, but it’s also about mainly the influence that we have over ourselves.

So when I say inner propaganda, I’m talking about the fact that we convince ourselves of things all the time, and most persuasion happens within ourselves. So it’s not that other people automatically will persuade us if they use this tactic or this trick. It’s that they are creating the right conditions, whereby we convince ourselves.

And that matters because I think we walk around with this idea that we are seeing the world as it is. And if someone else doesn’t agree with us, well, that’s because they don’t get it, you know, like, “I see things correctly, Pete,” Well, you know what I mean. “He’s influenced by propaganda.” Like, there’s ways I can go inside my mind and convince myself. This is called naive realism where we see the world as we think we have it right and everyone else hasn’t.

And that matters not just from an influence standpoint, it matters from a decision-making standpoint in the corporate world, but it also matters from a polarization perspective, is in finding commonalities. If you’ve got to work on a team with someone that has a very different way of looking at the world, you have to try hard to be able to figure out, “How can I look at the world from their perspective such that we can understand each other better, such that we can work better and more effectively together?”

And so to me, while the book is largely about influence, it’s not the influence we kind of think of in terms of, you know, “Do this and this immediately will change for them.” That’s part of it, but a big part is, “How do we need to influence ourselves so that our mental health’s better, so we’re making smarter decisions?”

And then if we are going to influence someone, “What are the things that actually work as opposed to the myriad of things that we could do, the tried and tested tactics that we’ve applied before, but yet always seem to to fail to reach the mark?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, man, there’s about ten directions I want to go with this, Owen. Oh, so good. Well, for one, naive realism. Great term. I should have known that earlier, because I’ve been thinking about this concept a lot lately. And, great, there’s a name for it.

I would dare to guess, Owen, that just about all of us have this. We believe the way we see things is as they are and correct, and the way others see things is limited, incomplete, incorrect. I don’t know if you have any stats or research on this, but I think almost all of us have this in most contexts of our life.

Owen Fitzpatrick
I think one hundred percent agree with you. I think when it comes down to it, I mean, I think it’s common sense to know that. The problem is, is that, oftentimes, and there’s all sorts of different sort of quotes in time, the certainty is the poison of an intelligent mind, because whenever we are convinced about a particular perspective or point of view, that automatically means, unfortunately, sometimes the smartest people can have the dumbest takes.

Because just because you’re intelligent doesn’t necessarily mean you’re always seeing the world the way it is. And the smarter you are, often, the better you are at debating, the better you are at arguing. And so I can convince people who aren’t as sure as I am of what is true, even though necessarily it’s not.”

So the problem is that, oftentimes, we act as if we’ve got, what I call, the objective truth as opposed to, what I refer to, I think there’s five types of truth. I talk about desired truth, which is when we believe something is true because we want to; emotional truth, we believe something is true because we feel it is; past truth, we believe something is true because we remember it that way; or shared truth, we believe it’s true because me and Pete agree that it’s true.

And the reason I call those truths is because that’s how people describe it. It’s not like, you know, when we talk about all of these different forms, it’s not like, “Oh, I’m wishful thinking right now.” I’m saying it as if it’s an objective truth.

Everything is masquerading under this label objective truth. But objective truth is you’re there, you are able to test something and with prediction using, let’s say, in science or engineering, if you’re building a skyscraper or a plane, you need objective truth because if it doesn’t work, people die.

But in most other cases, in politics, in education, in business, there’s an awful lot of subjectivity to the truth or enough room for us to be able to get around it. And even if, for example, you have facts, there’s a difference between the facts and the truth, the facts are what data you have in front of you. The truth is the story you tell about what that data means.

And I think we need to start to get to grips with these ideas because, otherwise, we’re sabotaging ourselves, we’re sabotaging the decisions, and we’re failing to impact the very folks that we’re working with on an everyday basis.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s heavy and it sounds true. Say it again, certainty is the poison of…?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Of intelligence. The speed to your anger is the depth of your programming. In other words, the quicker you get angry whenever your beliefs are challenged, the more than likely you’re programmed in that, like there is zero movement on that.

And we’re all that way. I’m not turning around pretending that I’ve got zero beliefs and I look at everything objectively. I definitely don’t, right? I have a very different, a very extreme sort of bias towards the things that I love and care about and who I am as a person. So I’m definitely not saying that, but I am saying I’m recognizing that more and more.

And I think the first step in any of the work we need to do on ourselves, well, just like self-awareness is a business skill, is something that will help us to be more awesome at a job, we need to recognize we also need to understand we’re not always right. And getting to grips with that means letting go of this need for certainty, which we often have. And there’s other reasons for that from a brain science point of view.

But letting go of this need to be certain about everything all the time, to jump to hot takes to go, “Oh, this is the way it is.” We love to do that because it gives us a feeling of comfort. It’s like a warm blanket of certainty. It’s like, “Ah, I understand how things are.” And the world is far too complicated. It’s not that simple. And I think recognizing that is crucial, especially in an age where there’s so much chaos going on.

There’s a concept called the need for cognitive closure. And a lot of people have this tendency where they really need to get closure on particular ideas. They love when, especially when they’re in a state of uncertainty, they love to get to a place where they go, “Oh, this is it.” They don’t like living in any form of ambiguity.

And so we tend to create these things. Nassim Nicholas Taleb called it the narrative fallacy where we come up with stories to explain the world. And if we just understand the world like this, then everything is okay because, “It fits into my narrative.” But the problem is they’re not accurate. And as a result of that, they can often create more problems than they can solve.

Pete Mockaitis
Owen, this is powerful, beautiful stuff. That quote, “Certainty is the poison of intelligence,” I’ve got a variant of my own, and it’s a joke in one that goes, “Obviously, overconfidence is the most destructive force in the history of the universe.”

Owen Fitzpatrick
Love it. Love it.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, I kind of believe it, and it’s kind of a joke at the same time. It’s like, you know, layers to it. But I’m right with you there. So the beliefs we have do make a tremendous impact for, I think about mental health and, boy, the placebo effect and the nocebo effect, and just the impact of visualization.

And Alia Crum with the milkshakes, and what your ghrelin is doing, if you believe it’s a caloric-rich milkshake versus like a low-cal milkshake, your body is changing. You just think about standing up. Your body is preparing itself with blood pressure and whatnot. And so it’s wild how the beliefs we hold have tremendous impact.

And I would love to hear, in terms of, fundamentally, how is it we come to believe things or not believe things?

Owen Fitzpatrick
So I would, first of all, say if I was to give that answer, we really could be on this for the rest of the year and longer because there are so many different factors, but I don’t want to give sort of just a “it depends” type answer.

So just to give you, I suppose, what my work and research showed is that in order for a belief to, let’s say, change, which is similar to a belief forming, it needs to, number one, feel right. Number two, it needs to fit in with our identity and who we are, and only then will we make it make sense.

The problem with most people, and this is not just in the business world, this is in everyday conversations you have with your partner, with your kids, with your friends, it’s that when you try to change minds, you go to the making sense piece first.

So you go, “Logically, this makes sense to me. Let me explain to you the logic, and then you’ll believe the same thing I do.” Now that will work if you feel open to it, if you’re really like me searching for what’s actually true.

But if you already have a point of view or perspective on something, let’s say, for example, we take AI, right? And we say, you’re trying to convince someone that you work with that AI is a good thing. And they believe that AI is the work of the devil, right?

If you turn around and you think, “Well, let me give you logical reasoning,” what Adam Grant would call logic bullying, “Let me give you all the logical reasons as to why AI is brilliant and why you’re wrong, that it’s dangerous and blah, blah, blah.”

Well, that’s going to fall flat in its face because, and typically the explanation there is, “Well, they’re going to kick in with some biases. They’re going to have confirmation bias where they’re going to look for evidence to prove that they’re right, and they’re going to dismiss evidence that contradicts them, etc.”

But to me, it all starts before that. It starts with, “How did they feel about this particular topic, about this argument?” There’s a concept in neuroscience called affective realism, which is that the way we see the world is filtered through our feelings.

So if, Pete, you’ve ever felt hangry, that’s angry when you’re hungry, or tangry, that’s angry because you haven’t got enough sleep, or tanxious, you’re spiraling a bit more than usual because you haven’t really gotten enough sleep or whatever.

If you’ve been in those states, you know what it’s like to physically feel a way that influences the way you perceive the world. And the problem is it doesn’t just start at the physical.

You could be, you know, doom-scrolling on your phone, you see a picture of your best friend in Greece and they’re swimming in the sea, and part of you is happy for them, but another part of you is really jealous. You’re going, “Oh, my goodness, that would be so nice there. Things are so heavy on me at the moment, work is so tough, my boss is annoyed with me,” and then you see your friend swimming and, therefore, you feel bad.

And then that feeling sticks in you a while. You put your phone down. And then whatever is going on in your life, you’re going to filter it through that feeling. So our feelings will influence how we interpret a situation.

Now, belief is a story that we not tell ourselves, but it’s a story we sell to ourselves. And so the stories we sell to ourselves become the beliefs we buy into. So how do we sell it to ourselves? Well, why do we buy anything, Pete? We buy it because, “I know if I buy this, this will make me feel good because it allows me to do what it is that I need to do.”

So you get a new gadget, for example, and you decide, “Right, if I only had that gadget, I would be able to use it in this situation, in that situation, the other situation.” And so it’s not just a logical purchase for most of the things we buy. It’s an emotional purchase.

The same is true of a belief. We feel a certain feeling as a direct result of whatever idea we have in there. And then that drives the decisions we make. And then the second piece is then it has to fit in with who we are. We tend to invest in things, but we also tend to invest in beliefs that align with either who we think we are or who we want to be.

And that’s why often groups can have an undue necessary influence. That’s why groupthink happens in organizations, why Siemens had a terrible experience with groupthink. You know, NASA, of course, in the experience of the Challenger space shuttle, the mistakes made because people didn’t want to be the person to be able to challenge back.

And I think that these are all examples of what it’s like to believe in something and almost the belief in something. It’s like the membership fee you pay to be part of the group, and that’s a problem. And so what I like to do is try to unpack, especially from my own limiting beliefs, “What are the feelings that are dictating what I’m believing right now, both the things I want to feel as well as the feelings that are associated with this idea?”

And then second of all, “What about my identity? How is this preserving my identity? What am I trying to protect here? And what’s going on?” And when I start to unpack that, that’s where change can happen.

Pete Mockaitis
So we talk about ‘fits in,’ that really connects strongly. I think about this documentary “Behind the Curve,” which is talking about Flat Earth folks. And at one point, he said, these hardcore Flat Earthers is like, “Boy, I’m so deep in flat earth now, I don’t know if I could leave it even if I didn’t believe it.” So I was like, “Whoa, like that’s very honest and it’s potent.”

And so the belief needs to kind of check these three boxes: feels right, fits in, makes sense. Could you maybe expand a little bit with some examples on how a belief could pass or fail, like how that might unfold as our brains are kind of trying something on or evaluating something?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Sure. So if we take the example I just started with, which is AI, so you’re trying to talk to your friend about AI and they’re, you know, they believe that it’s the work of the devil. When they talk about AI, the amount of data you put in front of them is not going to influence their decision one bit because it’s not a logical choice. It isn’t that they evaluated all the evidence and they’ve come to the conclusion.

The reason they don’t believe AI is a good thing is because it doesn’t feel like a good thing to them, first and foremost. And that might be because they’re terrified. They’re scared that AI is going to take their job. They’re scared that AI might take over the world. They’ve watched “Terminator 2” on repeat and they are genuinely looking at the future going, “We are in big trouble here.”

And so from that perspective, their feelings are the problem there. They are feeling this way about AI and, therefore, all the information or logic we give them is not going to change their feelings. Second of all, they have more than likely seen themselves as one of the defenders of humanity.

And I’m using a bit of hyperbole there. Obviously, it’s not exactly articulated like that by them, but they will see themselves as, “Look, I’m a human, I value human things, and we cannot let this artificial intelligence to overcome and take us and kick us out of our jobs. This is wrong. This is fueled by the billionaire class or whatever the narrative they are.”

And, by the way, I’m not saying that any of this is wrong. I’m just saying this is more than likely what a lot of people may well be thinking in terms of their identity. And so, as a result of that, all the information you give them, you’re already fighting a losing battle. You’re not actually arguing about the same thing. Because they have one reality in their world and they have their naive realism. You’ve a different reality in the world. You’ve your own naive realism.

And so what that means is that nothing that you say is going to penetrate their belief because anything you say feels wrong and doesn’t fit in with who they are. And so if you’re to have a shot at talking to them, the first step is to try to understand, “How do they feel about it?” and to be able to go, “I understand why AI is terrifying because of this, right, because of this.” And you let them know that, “I connect with exactly what you’re feeling right now.”

The second thing we do is, once we’ve demonstrated, “I get you, I understand the feeling,” is you go, “Here’s what I’m feeling as well.” And then you give stories, which are obviously one of the best ways to be able to… like the Trojan horse of messages. You use the stories to create the emotion of the kinds of reasons why you’re excited about some of the elements of AI. But, again, you keep bringing it back to, “But, of course, we have to be careful, we have to be mindful, we have to figure this out.”

And then when you talk about it from the identity perspective, you paint a picture, whereby, the way you see it is, “Yeah, I know that AI could take over my job.” Let’s say I’m a coder, right, “I went to university, I’m a master coder, I’m brilliant at doing this, and all of a sudden now you’re telling me that AI can code better than I can. What does that make me? I’ve lost my identity.”

And so if I’m trying to convince my friend that feels this way, I can share my vulnerability about my thoughts about it, but then I, again, tell them a different story. And the story that I would use for that would be, “Who could I be if I was able to be masterful at using AI?”

In other words, “If I adjusted so that I saw AI as an incredible tool that allows me to do the things that I can do to the best of my ability. And also because of my skills in coding, I have an an edge that nobody else has, or very few other people have, in terms of how I can use AI better than anyone else out there.”

And when I start to paint a picture of a desired potential identity for them to have, it, at least, gives me a shot at helping them to change their mind in that context. Because, again, they’re not making up their mind based on evidence. People don’t do that.

Instead, what they’re doing in that context is they’re holding on to their identity. So our goal is to be able to expand their identity so they’ve got more choices available to them. Just on this particular point, I’ll give you one sort of side example if that’s okay.

Years ago, I worked with a coach and it was at a coaching seminar. I was helping people to change habits. And this lady came up and she was a smoker. And she said, “Look, Owen, I know all the techniques. I know how to stop, but I will never stop.” And I said, “Why?” And she goes, “Because I’m just a smoker.”

And so I said to her, “How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?” She said, “About 20.” I said, “How long does it take you?” She said, “About three or four minutes.” I said, “So you spend about 80 minutes of your day smoking.” She said, “Yes.” I said, “How much time then do you spend not smoking?” She said, “About,” whatever, “22 hours and 40 minutes.” I said, “If you had two jobs, one of them you did for 22 hours and 40 minutes, and the other you did for 80 minutes a day, which one would you describe yourself of?”

And she said, “Well, the one I did 22 hours and 40 minutes.” I said, “So that would make you a non-smoker who smokes for 80 minutes a day.” And at that moment she sat back and she goes, “I never thought about it like that before.” But that opened up everything.

I saw her six years later at another conference. She came up to me and she said, since that day, she hadn’t touched a cigarette. And again, she had all the tools. But what made the difference for her in that context was opening her identity and realizing it doesn’t have to be this way.

We limit ourselves so much what’s possible at your job. One of the most important things, for example, this podcast does for so many people is it isn’t just about the skills that you give them, about presence or communication or relationship or productivity. It’s also the fact that they know, by listening to it, they hear the stories, the examples.

It opens up the possibilities and they go, “You know what? I think I could be more awesome at my job. I think I could communicate better.” You know, it’s the idea of this growth mindset that, “I think it is possible for me to be better.” And having your identity expanded like that gives you a real shot to be able to actually improve.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And it makes sense. It’s just about like the logical stuff. which you know there’s a lot of and, in a way, it’s almost straightforward in terms of like facts, data, supporting evidence, you know. there’s that.

Owen Fitzpatrick
It’s table stakes. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
There’s that. Okay. So, you also make the point that certainty can be manufactured. How does that happen? And what have we got to be on the lookout for?

Owen Fitzpatrick
So I’ll answer the question by, first of all, saying, “Why does it happen?” and then, “How does it happen?” So why does it happen is because we want to feel certain. We have a desire. So our brains are basically prediction machines. And our brains look around the world, it’s trying to make the best possible predictions to keep us alive.

So our brains are optimized for safety more than anything. They want to keep us safe. And that’s why we have a negativity bias, why we’ll be more likely to overthink on the negative things than the positives as a natural tendency.

But we also have a desire for stability. Our brains like things simple and stable. They like to use as little energy as possible. Our brain, typically, uses 20% to 25% of the calories we take in, even though it only represents 2% of our body mass. So it’s constantly using shortcuts.

Now, with those shortcuts comes not just biases or whatever, you know, cognitive biases that are occurring, like confirmation bias, but also comes this desire to make everything certain and clear, “I love to jump to conclusions because once I have a conclusion, I can rest. I know the way it is.” And the problem is we don’t like the level of uncertainty.

In a world of uncertainty, which is this world is constantly becoming more and more, I suppose challenging our levels of certainty, more unclear, more uncertain. In a world like this, our brains need certainty more than ever. Therefore, people are jumping to conclusions more than they ever have.

So that’s why, in terms of how we manufacture certainty, by, first of all, demonstrating the certainty we want. So whenever you demonstrate a sense of certainty in something, people are craving that. And that’s why, oftentimes, in uncertain times, they will crave a strong leader with a definite point of view and a sense of certainty. It doesn’t make it right, it just means that that tends to be what people gravitate towards whenever there’s a lot of chaos moving around.

We love clear instructions. But also, once you have the person with the level of certainty, you want a clear, simple message. You want to make it as easy as possible for the person to buy into. And then you want to make sure that they’re on the right side of it.

So the reason conspiracy theories work, for example, is largely because the conspiracy theory makes me feel smarter than everybody else and it fulfills that for me. I know, like, “Pete, you know, he doesn’t realize this is actually the way the world works. The world is flat, it’s a conspiracy. And they don’t, all these smart people don’t know it.”

So it makes me feel smart. It makes me feel like the hero of the story. And the people in the story, they’re the victims. All these being villainized by the powers that be that are convincing you that the world is round.

And I think once we understand the mechanisms of this, we have to start to make it, especially in the business world, we have to start to make a better effort at being better specifically with the way in which we take on information.

And so there’s a number of techniques you can use to ensure that you’re not jumping to conclusions as quickly and you’re not falling for this sort of temptation of certainty that, again, the powers that be know only too well will give you exactly what it is that you want.

Pete Mockaitis
The temptation of certainty. Owen, you got a way with words. Yeah, we do want it. And I think it’s funny, sometimes, we’ll pay a lot of money to get it when, honestly, many things are just unknowable.

And so I think that’s a dangerous risk factor, and I think I found that on both sides of the coin as a client and as in a client service business. We help launch people’s podcasts and produce their episodes. They’re like, “So what’s the answer to get a huge audience?” It’s like, “Well, I mean, you can make something great that people love and value and it’s distinctive from other things.”

It’s like, “Okay, so then how long should the episode be?” It’s like, “I mean, as long as it needs to be, about two, four…” and it’s very unsatisfying in terms of the desire for certainty, it’s like, “You’re supposed to have all the answers.”

It’s like, “We have many answers but other things are unknowable. And, hey, man, Disney and Netflix don’t know how to crank out hit shows. They do their best and have plenty of flubs and foibles and cancellations after one season, so that’s just sort of how it is.”

The future is unknowable and yet we crave it. So give us some pro tips on how we can be wise and inoculated against the temptation of certainty to our peril.

Owen Fitzpatrick
I think the first step is to recognize when someone is trying to influence or manipulate us in terms of, let’s say, the way they communicate. There’s a fascinating study that was done by an ecologist, Marten Scheffer, and his colleagues. They did this in 2021.

And what they did was they analyzed millions of pages or millions of books, actually, that were written between 1850, and some newspapers as well, between 1850 and 2019. And they looked at rational language and emotional language.

And they found between 1850 and 1980, words like judgment, conclusion, and rational type of words was on the increase and was continuously increasing until the 1980s. Around about the 1980s or so, it changed and emotional language started to take over and more and more emotional language was used up to 2007 when it just went even more, like it accelerated even faster than ever, right?

Now, when you look at that data and you look at the study that was done, and I presented this on one of my Instagram reels a few weeks ago and it did very well. But the response in the comments, there’s thousands of comments, and the comments were all about, “This is why. Let me tell you why. It’s because of this, it’s because of that, it’s because of this, these people.”

And they were demonstrating the very phenomenon because all of the descriptions they were using were full of all of this emotional language. And so when we’re in a situation where we’re reading or consuming information, and this isn’t just in the news, this is also in the business world.

If you’ve got a colleague that uses a lot of hyperbole, uses a lot of emotional jargon, recognize it and understand it. And it doesn’t mean that they’re wrong, it just means using that particular term is influencing you in a particular way.

And the flip side is if you want to be more impactful in communication, what are the choice of words that you can use that would influence people in a more impactful way? How do you generate more emotion or more feeling through the words or through the language that you use and recognizing the power of emotion as an influence tool?

And then the other important technique I would have would be around our own thinking is that instead of looking at beliefs as being, “I believe this,” or, “I don’t,” start to see it on a sort of a continuum. There’s a great book called Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke about behavioral economics. It’s a wonderful book.

She talks about, if you are betting on your belief, how much money would you put that that belief is true? And as soon as people put money down, all of a sudden, they’re not quite as sure as they were beforehand.

And so I like the idea of asking the question, you know, “On a scale of zero to a hundred, how sure are you of this particular belief?” And there’s going to be certain things like, you know, “I believe I love my family.” Okay, that’s 100%. Great. But you’re not going to be challenging that anyway.

But for all of the other beliefs, especially in the business world, you start to evaluate and you go, “Okay, I’m 90.” And then you look at the evidence and you ask, “Whatever is going on, does that increase my percentage? Does it decrease?”

But the mere fact that you have it as a percentage, “I am 80% certain,” and we start to use that in the vocabulary, “I’m 80% certain that this is true. Or from my available evidence, I believe this with 80% certainty.”

The more we start to talk like this and think like this, the more we build flexibility into our beliefs, which means we’re less likely to fall into a trap where we have to defend with this level of certainty. Because as soon as you start to see it as, “My certainty can move,” now, all of a sudden, it’s not a case of a binary, “I believe,” versus “I don’t.” Now it’s, “Well, I have certain evidence that suggests this.”

And this is also based on something, I think, 300 years old, a guy called Thomas Bayes had what we call Bayesian reasoning, which is you walk in there with a prior, like a belief I have currently today. And then if information comes along or evidence comes along that challenges it, “Well, now I’m going to adjust it.”

And I think there’s a beautiful freedom we have when we stop playing the game of certainty versus, you know, chaos. We don’t always have to walk around certain about everything. We can focus on what we can control in the moment, but we can accept, “Look, this is how I’m feeling right now.” But a belief is an idea we feel certain about.

And so because the word feel is there, changing that feeling means not seeing it as this thing that’s stuck or this belief that it’s constructed or created by facts or logic, which often logic is the one that arrives last and takes all the credit, right? It’s just what our brains are good at using in order to be able to justify whatever it is that we believe.

And that’s also why it makes sense comes at the end, because you can find logic. I mean, there’s Flat Earthers believing in the flat earth. There’s people that believe all sorts of stuff. And when you listen to them talk, they sound convincing when they start to use all of their logical reasoning skills, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, when I watched the Flat Earth documentary, and maybe I’m just so suggestible, but I was like, “You know, they’re making some pretty good points.” And then I was like, “How do I really, really know the Earth is round?” But then some of the very claims they made about flights never going in a certain direction, I was like…

Owen Fitzpatrick
Debunk it, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, “No, I see the flights going in that direction you say they never go right now. What? Okay.”

Owen Fitzpatrick
Yeah. And, again, these things are, it’s easy for us to see, but again, to your point, they can sound so compelling and convincing. And that’s why I say, you know, there’s an arrogance, oftentimes, we’ll have where we think, “Oh, my goodness, I can’t believe they fall for this.” We’re falling for stuff all the time. We’ve all got our inner propaganda going on.

And again, this work didn’t come out of me going, “Oh, my goodness, I’ve figured out the way people are and lucky I don’t have that.” I have to challenge my inner propaganda every single day. I’ve got beliefs that change regularly because I’m constantly aware that just because I feel it’s true doesn’t necessarily make it true.

And, again, I’m not trying to lull us into a sense of epistemological uncertainty or subjectivity where it’s like, “Well, it depends on what you mean, and it’s everything’s up for interpretation.” It’s not. But we need to stop this, I suppose, again, the temptation that we have to be able to succumb to an easy explanation because it’s easy. Sometimes things need nuance, and to me nuance is needed more now than it ever has been in terms of human history.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, tell us about that inner game, the inner struggle there. If we identify some beliefs that we’d prefer to not be there, or we want to adopt a belief that seems true-ish and would sure be beneficial if we claimed it and owned it and had it installed into our operating system, how do we shape, build up, adopt, positive internal beliefs, or usurp, break down negative internal beliefs?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Sure. So, first of all, we have to cultivate what I call a belief growth mindset. So, obviously, Carol Dweck talked about the growth mindset. We have the ability to improve our ability or intelligence if we put in the effort, if we take feedback, if we challenge ourselves, right?

The belief growth mindset is simply an adaptation of that where my main message is we need to be more comfortable with changing our minds. We need to be more comfortable with changing our beliefs because currently we’re not.

Because if I change my mind, if I don’t buy in fully to this thing, people can catch me out. And I think we need to start to see the fact that I have changed my mind on something as a positive, as a benefit. It shows strength of character to be able to do that.

And the belief growth mindset is comfortably recognizing that you can update your priors as Bayesian theorists would say, you can update your beliefs, you can change your mind. Once we acknowledge that, once we sort of recognize that, then the next step is to be able to do what I call a belief audit.

And the belief audit has four steps. The first one is to identify what belief we have. Now, this is trickier than it sounds because, often, we will say, “Well, that’s not a belief, that’s a truth.” And so the reality is we don’t often distinguish between the two.

But the way in which you know it’s a belief is pretty much everything is a belief, and it’s only true if you’ve objectively witnessed it time and time again, and you can make accurate predictions 100% of the time. So we know gravity, for example, exists. That’s an example of an objective truth or a fact. Most other things are beliefs. And that doesn’t make them wrong. It just means they’re beliefs.

If it’s a belief that’s holding you back or causing you problems, that’s the one that we’re selecting. So if I believe that I’m useless at talking on camera or I’m no good in an interview and I have an interview coming up with Pete, that belief is not going to serve me well.

Now, what most people do then is they will go into the whole challenging for evidence, they’ll go, “How do you know you’re useless? Have you ever tried this before? What if you’re not useless? Are you useless every single time?” So these are all great questions that we would use in terms of a therapeutic setting to work on building and challenging the beliefs.

I go in a different direction because I think the big problem we have is that we’re looking at the belief as if it’s a truth that the person will change their mind based on evidence. And if it feels right to them or if they’re open to it or their identity is moving or changing as a result of a therapeutic endeavor, then that will help. But in most cases, that’s not the situation.

So in the moment, it’s not about whether it’s true, it’s about whether it’s useful, right? I can find evidence to prove I’m useless in lots of areas, but I can also find evidence of the opposite.

And so when I can find any evidence I like and I can make it fit like a Flat Earther, I can make it fit my argument. Then in this context, what I need to do is stop for a second and go, “Since I can pretty much prove anything, the question isn’t, ‘Is it true?’ The question, ‘Is it useful?’”

And so the first question is, “What is the belief that I’m holding?” And then let’s say I believe, “I’m not good enough as a speaker,” or let’s say, in terms of presentations, “I’m just not good with people, and that’s why I’ll never succeed in my job.” And then you go to the second question, which is, “What are you trying to achieve by believing this? Like, what is your goal in believing this?”

And, automatically, it’s like, “Well, I suppose it gives me a sense of certainty that this is who I am and it protects me from rejection and it protects me from trying and it protects me from putting myself out there.” Then you go, “How is that working for you? Like, is it successful?” “Well, it’s doing that, but it’s sabotaging my career and I’m not getting anywhere as a result of it. Like, it’s destroying my chances to be able to thrive in my career. And it means I’m missing out on so many opportunities.”

“Okay, so what’s a better belief that would help you, that would still protect you, but would help you to be able to get better and to do better?” “Well, I suppose if I believe that I could become really good at this, and even when I make mistakes or I don’t do a great job, that doesn’t mean I’m no good with people. It just means that I haven’t yet learned the skills and every negative experience I have could serve to be feedback to help me to become better and better and better, so I do become great eventually.”

Taleb talks about the concept of anti-fragility, things that gain from disorder. I like the idea of an anti-fragile identity, which is, instead of seeing yourself as how you want to be, you see yourself as the kind of person that, whatever happens to you also happens for you.

Whatever challenges you go through, whatever adversity, whatever uncertainty, whatever complexity, whatever mistakes you make, all of that can be transfused into lessons, learnings, feedback that helps you to get better next time.

And so, therefore, my belief about myself is, “I’m constantly updating my beliefs. I’m constantly getting better. And every time I make a mistake, it can just teach me a valuable lesson. But because I have that belief, nothing can get me down because whatever happens to me, again, can happen for me.”

And the more we start to see that as a potential new belief, that becomes a lot more useful than the old-school belief, which is, “You know, I’m useless with people,” which is just a narrative we’ve been spinning for years, just because we had two or three examples of it and it also is convenient. It means we don’t have to try. It means we can hide away from the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so that’s a nice process there. It’s like, “Hey, let’s shift the focus dot from ‘Is it true?’ to ‘Is it useful?’ And then we kind of think through the implications of the different beliefs and where they go.”

I’m curious with regard to the ‘feels right’ and ‘fits in’ perspectives of that, I suppose, at the stage of what would be a more useful belief, there’s many to choose from. And so, perhaps, those that’ll be the most resonant will be the ones that best feel right and fit in. Can you speak to that?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Yeah, so if we take the same example, and we look at the ‘feels right’ and ‘fits in.’ If I go, “I’m great with people and everybody loves me,” well, that’s a nice belief, but, ultimately, when it comes face to face with reality, you’re probably going to notice it gets knocked down.

Because if you haven’t been great with people or if you haven’t spent much time with people, you probably haven’t cultivated the skills yet. So just believing in something positive is not necessarily going to hold mustard in that context. It’s not going to keep you safe because you’re going to get rejected and you’re going to have negative experiences.

And that’s the thing about just blind positive thinking is you always have to deal with reality eventually. And so my way of thinking is something that’s useful is something that is great whenever things are going well. But even when things aren’t going well, it’s all part of the story.

And that’s why I look to make, because in order for something to feel right, the person has to go, “Yes, I can get behind this. This feels right.” And whenever they have a negative experience, it fits nicely into that story because, again, the belief is a story.

So if something goes wrong, “Well, I knew that this might happen, and all it means is this. I knew that this might occur, and all it means is this.” So it maintains this feeling of rightness. So people are more open to it because it’s something more plausible, but also, when it’s tested, it works.

And then in terms of identity, again, if you see yourself as the kind of person that constantly improves and gets better, well, it doesn’t really matter what happens because it’s not like, again, the problem or the mistake we might make is we go, “I’m an amazing communicator and people always listen to me, and that’s who I am as an identity.”

But the challenge is that when people don’t listen to you, then that again creates a cognitive dissonance, a tension in your mind, because now, all of a sudden, “I believe that I’m this person, but yet reality is saying I’m not. Maybe I’m wrong.”

And what I believe is much more useful is to go create a version of yourself where whatever happens, it serves to make you better.

And that’s something I think all of our identities can get behind because, “I’m not pretending something’s true when it’s not.” I’m simply saying when you start to look at the negatives as the potential lessons or learnings that can help you to thrive in the future, that’s way easier to get behind and your brain is a lot less likely to push back on that because, well, what’s it pushing back on, right? There’s no real way to prove it wrong.

And I think that’s the problem. The flip side is when people say, “I’m not good enough,” there’s no real way to prove it wrong because you’re not even telling me what you’re not good enough to do. Some people go, “I’m not good enough.” “Good enough at what?” “Well, at work.” “In what way?” “Well, in terms of my performance.” “What do you mean by your performance?” “Well, well…”

Like, the more we start to knuckle down, good enough is just one of those empty statements that’s very hard to disprove because it just feels bad, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. And as a result of that, every time you’re in a bad state, it feels right to you, it goes, “Yeah, you know why this is? It’s because I’m useless, because I’m not good enough, right?” and that becomes part of your identity. And, therefore, you filter the world through it.

When you see yourself as constantly a work in progress, it changes the game because I think the reason people think of it in terms of, “I’m not good enough” is because they see this static identity. It’s like, “Do I have what it takes?” Well, you won’t know until you give what it takes. But that could be a long process.

But this speed that we have to get a sense of certainty as to whether or not I am this person, this isn’t the X factor. Life isn’t like that. You aren’t like, “I’m going to get the buzzer or I’m not.” This is real life. And real life means complexity and confusion and getting rejected when you should have been accepted, and getting accepted when you should have been rejected, and people not as good as you and doing better than you.

Like, this is life and we have to navigate this uncertain world the best we can. And to me, that means taking charge of the stories that we sell to ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
I think that’s very handy in terms of there are many beliefs that are useful or unuseful to make sense of the reality in front of us and our experience of it and we really do get to choose what we’re going to grab and they’re going to be way stickier if it feels right, fits in, and makes sense.

Owen Fitzpatrick
Exactly. And I think we have to recognize we do have the ability to do that but, first, we have to acknowledge just because we believe it, it’s not necessarily true. And I think that’s the most important of all.

And the reason I call it the inner propaganda, and I talk about what I call the inner dictator, and I know there’s lots of terms, there’s like inner critic and there’s the different saboteurs, and I think all of that is great.

The reason I call it the inner dictator is because whenever I was depressed and whenever I struggle with my mental health, it didn’t feel like it was a negative thought. It wasn’t like a voice telling me negative and then I would push back with positive and we’d have a nice little debate. It felt like the truth. It felt like the reality. And so the dictator was organizing my attention and convincing me, “This is the way it is. There is no other reality. This is a fact,” and it’s me experiencing that.

And when I went to North Korea and I walked around there and learned what it was like to be inside a regime, completely blatant propaganda everywhere, I recognized what was going on inside my head because I was like, “The same thing that I’m doing inside my head is what’s happening out here. I’m being convinced by this voice that everything is wrong.” My inner state media showing me, only what maintains this negative feeling I feel.

And recognizing that and understanding this is propaganda, that was the saving piece. Because now I knew, whenever I was in this dark mode and I believed that this is what needed to happen, I’ve now learned that whenever I’m in that mode now, I’m recognizing I’m going, “I’m not in a good place to deal with this.”

Like, a few weeks ago, I had a big sort of setback. And immediately, my brain was like, “Why did you do this? This is the worse.” Like, it was just telling me all these things. But because of the work that I’ve done, I knew, “Okay, this is propaganda.” And it didn’t mean that it didn’t still hurt, but it meant I knew I was not in a place then and there to make any decisions, right?

Whatever I would decide there was going to be dictated to by this absolute convincing vibe that I had inside my head that was like, “Owen, you are wrong or you are bad or the future is hopeless.” Knowing that, as soon as you spot the propaganda, and you recognize you’re experiencing it, that’s the freedom.

When I realized that, it stopped me from making stupid decisions in those states, but also gave me a distinction that I needed, which is just because you believe it doesn’t make it so. And in order for me to be able to make smarter decisions, to be able to perform better, to be able to be happier, I need to recognize when the propaganda is trying to sabotage myself and my life.

It’s like a double agent. It pretends it’s always working for you and it does amazing things. But it also sells you a reality that you don’t always have to buy.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m intrigued. So Kim Jong Un, North Korea, so we know what he’s trying to achieve via the propaganda. What’s our brain up to when it gives us this nonsense propaganda?

Owen Fitzpatrick
It’s up to those two things. It’s up to feeling safe and it’s up to feeling certain, right? It wants to keep things stable and it wants to make sure it has nice, easy ways of seeing the world. And whenever we feel bad, we don’t always attribute that bad feeling to what it belongs.

So you could have a problem or crisis in one area of your life and then you take it out in another area. So you’re struggling with your job and you take it out on your partner, and then you start to create problems in your relationship, or vice versa. You have problem in your relationships, you start to take it out in terms of your job.

So we aren’t always aware as to why something feels wrong in the moment. But our feelings aren’t categorized like that. We don’t just switch into different human beings in different parts of our life. And that also happens through time as well.

So as we grow up, we develop certain habits or certain patterns, and they affect us later on in our relationships. So you’re cheated on by one person. That doesn’t just affect you with that person or create a negative feeling. It changes the way you think about that type of person, right, a partner. And, therefore, the next partner you meet, the same feelings are dictating what your attention is putting on. So it’s harder for you to trust that person in that situation or scenario.

In the business world as well, you’ve had a boss that’s treated you really badly. The next boss that you have, almost anything that they say, you might look into or overanalyze or worry more about because your brain is focusing on what could go wrong as well as going, “Okay, what’s the story here? I need a sense of certainty. I need to know why this boss is treating me this way.”

And so we will grab onto any story that fits. And that’s the problem. We make up our minds too quickly. I believe we need to doubt ourselves more in order to believe in ourselves more.

Pete Mockaitis
So much good stuff. Owen, let’s hear in rapid fire about a few of your favorite things. Can we hear a favorite quote?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Sure. Favorite quote is actually by Rainer Maria Rilke, which is, “The purpose in life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” And to me, it’s kind of like the epitome of this anti-fragile sort of identity. It’s like whatever hell hits me, it’s just going to help me get even better as a result.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Owen Fitzpatrick
My favorite research, I mentioned earlier, Martin Schaefer, and that study. I absolutely love it. I found it fascinating. There’s also some really cool AI studies that have been coming out in the last couple of years about the impact of, I think, they had 900 people arguing against ChatGPT 4.0. And ChatGPT 4.0 was like 60% more persuasive, but it was more persuasive for two main reasons.

Number one, it knew how to pick the right kind of ethos so it knew what character to pretend itself to be. So it gave itself the right qualities to make it as persuasive as possible. And, number two, it was able to analyze the actual profiles of the person they were arguing against in real time. And they were able to use their moral framing and use their language against them.

So when that was taken away from them and they’re just using logic, there was no discernible differences between the humans and the AI. So I found that was really fascinating, stuff like that.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Owen Fitzpatrick
There’s obviously Influence with Cialdini, there’s Think Again, which is Adam Grant. But my favorite over the last few years has been a fictional book called Address Unknown, and it’s set in the 1930s. I think it’s Kathrine, I think it’s Kessler, I think. But it’s just a fascinating book. It’s a short enough book, but it blew my mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Owen Fitzpatrick
It’s going to seem nerdy, but whenever I have a new thing I want to learn about, what I’ll do is I’ll do deep research on Claude and ChatGPT. I’ll put the two deep researches together, then I’ll have an argument with, you know, both, get all of that, and then I’ll put it into Notebook LM and have a podcast created for it, and then I’ll listen to it on my runs.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they quote it back to you often?

Owen Fitzpatrick
It’s the stories that we sell to ourselves become the beliefs we buy into is the thing I hear the most.

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

Owen Fitzpatrick
OwenFitzpatrick.com. I’m also on LinkedIn, Instagram and whatnot. And InnerPropaganda.com is its own website, but OwenFitzpatrick.com is the best place to learn more.

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

Owen Fitzpatrick
Think about the beliefs that you hold and evaluate the level of the percentage of certainty, like we said, and start trying to be more flexible with your beliefs because the more flexibility you build into it, the better your thinking, the better your decision-making, the better your relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Owen, thank you.

Owen Fitzpatrick
Thank you very much, Pete. A pleasure.