Modern WisdomA Masterclass in Changing Your Limiting Beliefs - Nir Eyal
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
90 min read · 18,070 words- 0:00 – 7:43
Why is Belief Shapes Everything
- CWChris Williamson
Nir Eyal, welcome to the show.
- NENir Eyal
Thanks, Chris. Great to be back.
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, 2019, episode 104 all the way to now.
- NENir Eyal
I'm gonna take credit for all your success since then.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs] It was, it was built-
- NENir Eyal
Is that okay? Was I the lucky charm?
- CWChris Williamson
It w- it was built on a foundation of you and Indistractable, that's exactly correct.
- NENir Eyal
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, new one, all about belief. Why is belief so important?
- NENir Eyal
Okay, so beliefs, uh, turns out to be the lens with which we see the world, and I had no idea how profound this research that's been coming out over the past several years has on our day-to-day lives, how beliefs shape what we see, literally shape what we see. I can show the same exact image to two different people, and they will see completely different things. It's called the Koffka illusion. You can look at this piece of paper, and I can show you it to one person based on where they grew up and, and their priors, their beliefs, and they'll see circles. I can show it to somebody else based on where they grew up, they'll see rectangles. It's incredible. Uh, beliefs not only shape what you see, like not, not just figuratively, but they actually shape reality that you see. They shape what you feel, your internal state, and most importantly, they affect what you do. And so everything comes upstream from these beliefs, and so you better get these beliefs right if they're going to run your life.
- CWChris Williamson
What-- I think one of the challenges people have when they hear the word belief is it gets perilously close to Rhonda Byrne, "The Secret" manifestation. You know, you've come from a productivity background, same as me, uh, kind of hardcore, quite sterile almost in a way, very sort of-
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, frameworks, rigid structures. Um, belief sounds very w- almost whimsical as-
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
A topic to get into.
- NENir Eyal
You know, that, that is a great point because, uh, there is a lot of bullshit out there. [laughs] And so part of what I wanted to do with this, uh, research that I've done over the past six years for "Beyond Belief" was to really separate what works and what doesn't. And a lot of it, frankly, I'll, I'll give that crowd some credit. A lot of it works, but not for the reasons they say it does.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- NENir Eyal
[laughs] That, that like-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
You know, I hate to burst anybody's bubble, but no, nothing is m- is, is vibrating and quantum whatevering, and like the universe really doesn't give a shit. [laughs] It is not, you know, the, the, the, all the, the manifesting stuff. It, it, it can work kind of, and, and I, I do dive into some research around how turns out positive thinking can have a very negative effect if you don't do it properly. Uh, so I kinda wanted to dispel some of those myths, and yet I've changed my mind a lot a- about a lot of stuff that I didn't used to do, and I used to kind of... You know, I'm, I'm very science-backed. You know, all my books have pages and pages of citations to peer-reviewed studies. I have to see the study, not just it worked for me. But I need to see the peer-reviewed studies that show that it worked for others in a controlled study. Uh, and so there's, there's, there's a lot of mythology out there, even in the academic community, to be honest. There's a lot of studies that I look through that I thought were kind of, you know, gold standard studies, and you kind of dig into how they were done mythologic- methodologically, and you realize, ugh, they're kinda crappy studies too. So it was a lot of sorting through the, the, the wheat from the chaff to figure out what we can actually practically apply to our lives. The good news is there's a lot of unbelievable research that has come out over the past several years that just absolutely blew my mind. For example, one thing is that we now know that placebos work even when you know they're a placebo, which we didn't used to know before, right? We used to think that placebos had to have some kind of deception effect, right? That you had to t- you, you, you, both people, the, the person prescribing the medication in a double-blind control study, had to not know who was receiving the placebo, and the person, of course, receiving it couldn't know if it was a placebo. Turns out that's not true, that you can get amazing effects. Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard showed this with IBS patients. He gave people a, a, a, a pill bottle that said "placebos" on it. By the way, you can go on Amazon today and buy placebo pills with five-star reviews that say, "Amazing how fast-acting this placebo was." It's incredible.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- NENir Eyal
He told people, "Hey, this is a placebo. It is a completely inert substance. However, it has been shown to show, to, to, uh, uh, help some people with sy- symptoms of IBS." Turns out it performed just as well as the leading medication.
- CWChris Williamson
No fucking way.
- NENir Eyal
Not only that, not only that, wait, the story gets better.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- NENir Eyal
People called up Dr. Kaptchuk ever- afterwards and said, "Hey, that placebo pill was amazing for my symptoms. Can I get some more of those?" So, uh, oh, and even more-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, you gotta make sure it's the right brand of placebo pill.
- NENir Eyal
Yes, exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
Because if you change the strain, the gut microbiome won't respond. But I... Well, dude, it, it is wild. I remember reading a study about, uh, branded ibuprofen being, br- branded painkillers being more effective than own label painkillers. You don't wanna get the CVS own brand. You wanna get the, the Nurofen version of it for the same reason, that despite-
- NENir Eyal
Right
- 7:43 – 11:32
Are Spirituals Beliefs Weaker Than Religious Beliefs?
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think is the reason for spiritual but not religious having the worst outcomes?
- NENir Eyal
I think that it loses the fundamental tenets of, of what religion gives us. So, you know, and, and [chuckles] the, the, the story that I went on, the jour-- the journey that I went on, I should say, was that I, uh, I went to f-- Well, let me back up a second. Let me, let me tell you about the study that inspired this. So I read this study that showed that, uh... They, they took-- They, they called people into the lab, and they had a group that was, uh, religious and spiritual, people who had a faith practice that believed in some kind of higher power, some kind of supernatural. And they also had a group of people who were not spiritual at all, didn't have any faith tradition. And then they had a control group. And they taught the, the people who didn't have a faith tradition how to pray. And the control group, they said, "Do whatever you want." They brought those people later on, uh, i-into a, a lab later on, and they asked all three groups to put their hand inside very cold water. Now, this is kind of a standard assessment. It's a pain tolerance test, and we see how long you can last in that very, very, very cold, almost freezing water. And they also measure, like, facial grimaces and, you know, different expressions and if you say anything about the pain. So they're measuring your pain tolerance and how long you can finally stay in the water.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Well, no surprise, the people who prayed, who had a faith-based prayer practice, they lasted much longer than the control group. But even the people who were taught how to pray, who were-- did not have a faith background, if they could substitute some other word, okay, the universe, the sum of all forces, mother nature, something that was meaningful to them, they also had higher pain tolerance than the control group. And so this fascinated me, and so I went to five religious leaders, and this is gonna sound like the setup of a, of a joke, but this is exactly what happened. I went to a rabbi, an imam, a priest, a monk, and a swami, and I asked them all the same question: "How do you pray even if you have doubts about God?" And, uh, I took away from each of them practices that I think anyone can use, whether you have a, a belief in the supernatural or not. If you do have a faith in the supernatural, that's fantastic. Turns out that a lot of us, I, was missing out [chuckles] because I wanted to have the facts, that I'm not gonna pray unless I absolutely believe exactly what the religion says.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh. Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
And now I've been able to release that, that now every time I go by a place of worship, whether it's a church or a mosque or a synagogue, if they'll have me inside, I go in and pray. And it doesn't cost me anything, and it helps me refocus. It helps me become gr- uh, uh, grateful, and it, it, it, uh, sometimes engages me in a community. All these practices that religion teaches, uh, have, have kind of escaped us. By the way, an interesting point. You asked, you know, why is, why is spiritual but not religious, why does that have these negative outcomes? Not every country is the same when it comes to that regard. In fact, in Japan, I just got back from Japan a few weeks ago. In Japan, it's the exact opposite. They are religious but not spiritual. So the Japanese, they absolutely will go to the Shinto shrines, they'll go to the Buddhist temples, they do all the rituals, but when you actually ask them, "Do you actually... You know, do you really have faith in the supernatural animism?"
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
You know, "W-w-well, not really. Uh, not, not so much." But they do the ritual, and they have-- they, they gain all these psychological benefits that, that come from it.
- CWChris Williamson
That's so interesting. That is so cool. I, I can imagine a lot of people thinking, "Ugh, this is perilously close to wishful thinking." You're asking people to, um, like delusion themselves into see it, believe it, wish it, achieve it, but don't actually have to do anything about it.
- NENir Eyal
[chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Um,
- 11:32 – 16:34
The Power of Choosing What You Believe
- CWChris Williamson
uh, uh, square, square the circle of being a pretty-
- NENir Eyal
Sure
- CWChris Williamson
... grounded, agentic guy who wants to make things happen and realizes that you need to row the boat with not wanting to rely too much on delusion and whimsy.
- NENir Eyal
Totally. So for... Okay, let's, let's address those separately. So first of all, uh, you're already gaslighting yourself. You're already delusional. In fact, none of us actually see reality as it is. Uh, how do we know this? The brain is absorbing about 11 million bits of information per second. So right now, listening to my voice, your brain is actually taking in 11 million bits of information, the sound of my voice in your ears, the, the, uh, s- uh, light entering your eyeballs, the temperature of the room. Your brain is actually absorbing all this, 11 million bits of information. But conscious processingOnly has the capacity for about fifty bits of information. So eleven million bits of information, to put that in perspective, that's like reading War and Peace twice every second. Okay? A tremendous amount of information. Fifty bits of information is about one sentence of information per second. So fifty bits versus eleven bits. That, that's .000045% of the information you're receiving are you able to absorb. The brain just can't deal with it. So what does it do? It has to use what we call predictive processing. It doesn't see reality it-- as it is, it sees reality as it expects it to... Chris?
- CWChris Williamson
Appear.
- NENir Eyal
There you go. Right? A- as you expect it to appear, as you expect it to be. How did you know that that was the next word? Because your brain predicted it-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- NENir Eyal
... based on what we call priors, based on your prior experience, your prior beliefs. And so based on those factors, you are seeing reality not as it actually is in the second, you're seeing it based on a prediction. So you're already living in a simulation. It's not the matrix that we all live in, not like, not, not like the movie. We all live in our own simulation inside our own heads at every sing- single second. Now, what we don't realize is that our beliefs are already d- deluding us through what we call limiting beliefs. These are beliefs that sap your motivation and, and delude you into doing things that oftentimes you later regret, right? I'm not a morning person. Uh, I'm too old. I'm too young. I'm too fat. I'm too thin. It's too late. I have no time. Right? [chuckles] Like all these limiting beliefs that we tell ourselves all the time, they're already a delusion. You're already gaslighting yourself. What I'm advocating for, what I've discovered, is that you can actually choose your beliefs because beliefs are not facts. Okay? Facts are something different. Facts are defined as objective truths. Okay? It's something that's true whether you believe it or not. Uh, the world is more like a sphere than it is flat. Sorry, flat Earthers, the fact. [chuckles] Uh, on the opposite end of the spectrum is what we call faith. Faith is a con- is a conviction that does not require evidence, okay? What happens in the afterlife-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- NENir Eyal
... uh, God rewards the righteous. These are matters of faith. They do not require evidence.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you see these as kind of two opposite ends of the same spectrum?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- NENir Eyal
Because of the evidence required.
- CWChris Williamson
One that requires 100% evidence and one that doesn't require any evidence at all. Okay, cool.
- NENir Eyal
That- that's right. Now, in the middle is a belief. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on evidence. So you can choose your beliefs, and these beliefs shape what you see, what you feel, and what you do, and we carry them around as if they are ultimate truths, as if they are facts. I think the vast majority of our personal problems, our interpersonal problems, our political problems come from the fact that we see these truths, these facts as immutable, when really most of them are beliefs, and those are the beliefs that guide our life. If you think about the decisions we have to make, uh, should I move to this city? Should I take this job? Should I date this person? All of these questions are based on beliefs, not facts. We don't have perfect certainty about answering these questions. They're based on beliefs. And so if we take a step back, we can observe our beliefs for the first time, for most of us, because you can't see your own limiting beliefs. It's like your face, right? You can't see your face even though w- you have it all day long, unless you look at the mirror. So unless we sit down and observe what are these limiting beliefs holding me back, you, you don't even know you have these limiting beliefs. Of course, you can see everyone else's limiting beliefs, [chuckles] right? Like, I bet you every single person you know well, you could probably say, "Oh, I know that person's limiting beliefs." You just can't see your own limiting beliefs, and so that's why we have to pause, take them out, and figure out are they serving me or are they hurting me? So the big aha for me and what's absolutely changed my life over the past, you know, years that I've done this research is this: is that I constantly remind myself that beliefs are tools, not truths. Beliefs are tools, not truths. You can use them, and once they don't serve you, you can put them down like a carpenter. A carpenter doesn't say, "Oh, uh, a hammer. Hammer is the one and only true tool." No. A, a carpenter says, "Sometimes I use a hammer, sometimes I use a saw, sometimes I use a wrench," and you use the right tool for the job, just like you can put down those old beliefs, pick up new ones.
- 16:34 – 20:17
Why You Shouldn’t Treat Beliefs as Fact
- CWChris Williamson
What comes first, evidence or belief?
- NENir Eyal
Uh, evidence [chuckles] because, uh, all of our beliefs are based on past experiences. So if you're defining evidence as past experiences, as priors, then yeah, they come from, from our past experiences in some way.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. In that case, how i- how do we get escape velocity from just this is a pattern from my past, I want a belief that isn't necessarily associated with that? I, uh, have struggled to maintain going to the gym in the past, therefore, I am the sort of person who doesn't really go to the gym consistently. That seems to be a, a dead end, right? If our-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... beliefs are based on past patterns, and that is the evidence, and that's w- well, until we change the pattern, the belief can't change. Is that right?
- NENir Eyal
Well, we can, we can recognize that none of these things are laws of nature, that they're up here, right? That we are making these up. So when we say, "I'm the kind of person who," you should have a big red flag. By the way, also with other people. We don't see other people. Just like we don't see reality as it really is, we don't see other people as they really are. We see our beliefs about people, and it just, it's interesting. The more you know somebody, the more you see their beliefs, which is why it makes... I don't know if you've had this experience. I have this all the time, where I'll meet somebody, and they'll be so nice to me, and then their family member will come around, and they're absolute schmucks to [chuckles] their family member. They treat them like garbage. I see that all the time because it, it tends to be the people we know best that we say, "Oh, she always does that," or, "That's so like him," right? And we start building these, these, uh, uh, effigies of people because of how we see them and, and of course, how we see ourselves. So how do we... What do we do about this? What's the practical tip here? We look for the areas of our life where we consistently get stuck. The New Year's resolution that has been there for ages.The pain and suffering in our life that we can't seem to escape, and I'm talking even the most extreme types of pain. I, I did this amazing research on hyposedation, like people who literally have scalpels opening their bodies, and they can do it without any, uh, any anesthesia whatsoever. Uh, chronic pain, right? People who can-- who have overcome chronic pain, fibromyalgia, all through the power of beliefs. So, so where we look for, we look for these, these, these reoccurring problems that we seem to get stuck on, and that's where we look for underneath what we find are typically these limiting beliefs. And then we have a process to what, what do we do next with them.
- CWChris Williamson
This episode is brought to you by Whoop. I have been wearing Whoop for over five years now, way before they were a partner on the show. I've actually tracked over 1,600 days of my life with it according to the app, which is insane, and it's the only wearable I've ever stuck with because it tracks everything that matters, sleep, workouts, recovery, breathing, heart rate, even your steps. And the new 5.0 is the best version. You get all the benefits that make Whoop indispensable, seven percent smaller, but now it's also got a fourteen-day battery life and has Health Span to track your habits, how they affect your pace of aging. It's got hormonal insights for ladies. I'm a huge, huge fan of Whoop. That's why it's the only wearable that I've ever stuck with. And best of all, you can join for free. Pay nothing for the brand-new Whoop 5.0 strap, plus you get your first month for free, and there's a thirty-day money-back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you do not like it after twenty-nine days, they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand-new Whoop 5.0 and that thirty-day trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. That's join.whoop.com/modernwisdom.
- 20:17 – 28:58
Can Belief Actually Be Engineered?
- CWChris Williamson
What's wrong with the traditional view of behavior motivation and change? Like what-- If motivation collapses without belief, why do most productivity systems just ignore that layer entirely? If belief is the root of success-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... why aren't we taught to build it like we do with discipline?
- NENir Eyal
Because, uh, mot- the, the way we think of motivation, I think is com- is incomplete, that we think of motivation in the traditional economic sense, that it's all about incentives, that it's kind of a straight line, that if I want the benefit of a behavior, then I'll do the behavior to get the benefit, right? It's classic like that's how we pay salaries, right? If you, if you, uh, do the job description, you get the salary. But there's something clearly missing. Motivation is not a straight line. Motivation is a triangle. You have behavior on one side. Here's what I need to do. Then you have the benefit. Here's why I wanna do it. But the thing missing, holding the whole thing together, the triangle together, is belief, that if I don't believe in the outcome, so for example, if I'm working for a boss who I don't think has my best interest at heart, but I don't believe I'm gonna get that promotion, I don't believe I'm gonna get that raise 'cause I don't trust my boss, I don't believe in them, I'm not gonna get the benefit, and so I lose trust in that benefit. Much more likely, and what I see is, is quite often the case for all, for everyone, is a lack of belief in myself to do the behavior, right? That for whatever reason, I don't trust myself to do that thing, and if I lose faith, if I lose the belief in myself, then I also won't do the behavior. So for, for, for motivation to persist over the long term, and we know that persistence is this defining trait, persistence and adaptability, two most important traits in achieving your goals, you will quit unless you have not only the, the, the belief in what you are doing and the belief in the benefit. That's what holds it all together. And I think that, that's a piece that's oftentimes missing.
- CWChris Williamson
I guess as well, the set point that we're coming into this with around belief is it doesn't feel quite as in our hands.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
It doesn't, it doesn't feel like the sort of thing that we can engineer because, again, it, it is further away from the, the discipline, the productivity system, the five steps to get you there. Uh, can you engineer belief is a question that probably a lot of people have. I wish I could believe in it, uh-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... but they've struggled with it. So yeah, I think we've got a bit of conceptual inertia coming in-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... from where we were previously.
- NENir Eyal
To me, that's, that's the fun part, is that you can try on the craziest beliefs, and they always sound crazy. Whatever that liberating belief is, it always sounds ridiculous because we love our limiting beliefs. They served us at one point. They're comforting. We don't have to change, and we don't wanna see, uh, any other potential way. I-- and I'll, I'll share, I'll share what happened to me, uh, doing a similar exercise. Uh, and this, this has to do with a, a very personal relationship with my mom. Um, she had her birthday not that long ago, uh, her seventy-fourth, and I called her. I, I-- and I wanted to do something nice for her, so I wanted to get her some flowers. Problem was I was in Singapore at the time. She was in Central Florida where I grew up. And, uh, I wanted to, to do something special, so I, I, I, I stayed up till one in the morning calling up florists, making sure that I found the right one that had good reviews, that they could get there in time, that despite the Florida heat, they wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't shrivel, that they would get there. I went to sleep one a.m. I patted myself on the shoulder and I said, "Okay, good job, Nir. You, you, you, you did it. You're a good son."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
And, uh, I called my mom up the next morning and I said, uh, "Hey, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers?" And she says, "Yes. Thank you very much. I got the flowers, but you should know that they were half dead, and you really shouldn't order from them anymore." To which I blurted out something that I would have said when I was thirteen. I said something to the effect of, "Well, that's the last time I ever buy you flowers." And Chris, that went over about as well as you think. [chuckles] It didn't go over very well at all. Now, after the call, uh, my wife turned to me and she said, uh, "Hey, do you wanna do a turnaround on this?" And I said, uh, like I, I definitely did not want to do the turnaround, this mumbo jumbo, you know, hocus pocus, uh, touchy-feely crap. I didn't need that. I wanted to vent. I wanted to tell her why my mom was being way too judgmental, and, uh, I wanted her to let me vent. Well, it turns out the research shows that venting does not work, that venting does nothing but cementThe vision that you have of people, the beliefs that you have about people, it just makes them m-more, more vivid. So venting we know does not work, even though that's kind of the conventional advice, that you have to blow off steam, you have to say how you really feel, don't hold things back. Turns out it's not so great. I knew that at the time, and so I did one of these turnarounds. So I took out these four questions, and, uh, I started with, you know, what, what is the belief? The belief was very clearly, I wrote it down, "My mother is too judgmental and hard to please." Okay? Now, the first question, like we just did with you, is it true? Obviously, Chris, you're on my side here, right? Right, my mother-- what, what mother doesn't thank their son for, for their flowers? Who says that? Clearly, she was too judgmental and hard to please. Absolutely, it was true. Second question, is it absolutely true? Meaning, is there no other possible explanation other than my belief? Well, if I'm honest, m-maybe. Okay, whatever. Maybe there's another explanation. Okay, I don't wanna think about what that explanation could be, but perhaps. Then the, the third question, who am I when I hold this belief? Well, when I believe my mother's too judgmental and hard to please, I'm kind of a jerk. I'm judgmental. I'm short-tempered. I'm not myself. I'm embarrassed about what I do. And then the fourth question is, who would I be without that belief? And I-I- if I'm honest, I would be much happier. If there was a magic wand and I could erase that belief from my head, that'd be great. I wouldn't be so judgmental. I'd, I'd be me. And then I did this turnaround. So I took that belief, "My mother is too judgmental and hard to please," and I, I turned it around. I asked myself, could the exact opposite be true? As, as ridiculous as that sounds, I mean, to your question, how do we possibly believe something if we just don't believe something? You-- we're confusing facts with belief. It doesn't matter if it's true. That's how we do it, to answer your question. So is there any possible truth in it? Could it, could there possibly a, a way that my mother was not being too judgmental and hard to please? Thought about it for a few minutes, and I had to admit, maybe she was just trying to save me some money. Maybe she just didn't want me to be scammed from this florist. So okay, that could be true. There might be another explanation. Then I did another turnaround. I am too judgmental and hard to please. Could that be true? I am too judgmental and hard to please? Well, kinda did demand in my head in the script of when I called her and said, "Hey, happy birthday. How are the flowers?" I had already scripted out exactly the way I wanted her to respond. I wanted her to say effusive thanks. And when she didn't do that, I lost it. So who was being judgmental and hard to please? Me. And then the third turnaround, I was being-- uh, um, uh, not my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. I am being too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. Now, really what was happening, this actually turned out to be the most true, even though I did not want to accept it at all, was that when the flowers didn't arrive exactly the way I wanted them to, I took that as a statement on my competency, that I had done something wrong, that I messed up. So really, I was being too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. Now, when you take out those four beliefs, the original belief and these three new ones, those three new ones sounded absolutely ridiculous. I did not want to accept them at first. But that first belief of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please only left me with one option to get through it. She had to change in order for me to be happy, right? And you know, like with your example around life having to change, well, that's pretty tough, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
For, for her to change was not a possibility. Now at least I had other options. So what did I, what did I start doing? I started trying on those beliefs for size, you know, for a week. Okay, I, I'm not... I'm going to take that perspective of that I was being too judgmental and hard to please, and all of a sudden, this weight was lifted. Like, I didn't have to believe that anymore. I didn't have to have these standards because I didn't even see I was holding myself to those standards. And all of a sudden, I did become more patient. I did become nicer to my mom. I, I was a better, I was more of the person that I wanted to be. And so the way you change these beliefs is you try on a different belief as an experiment. Just try it on for size. You see what happens, and as ridiculous as it, as it feels at first, when you start building more agency, when you start proving to yourself in small steps that, hey, that could also be true, you can choose at some later point to keep that belief or chuck it for yet a new one.
- 28:58 – 30:57
Rumination: Productive or Destructive?
- CWChris Williamson
Why, why does rumination feel productive when it's actually destructive then?
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, what, what is it that's happening inside of our minds that causes us to want to do that?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. It's a, it's a few things. So one, rumination feels like problem-solving, but it's rumination about the past, right? Rumination comes from what cows do to their cud, right? They, they ruminate, they chew, chew, chew on a problem, uh, endlessly. And oftentimes that can feel productive because it feels like we're putting time and attention towards something. But when it becomes rumination, when we're talking about the same thing again and again, and people-- we see this all the time when people think about their past, right? Rumination is always about something that hap- has happened in the past. It, it moves from constructive problem-solving into, uh, some-- many times an escape from reality, that if I'm constantly thinking of a problem, I don't have to do what's currently in front of me, right? That it's something that, that, that almost becomes a, uh, a pacifier in a way. So a pr- very practical solution, what I've started to do, which also sounds nuts at first, is I've actually started planning time to worry. So now my brain doesn't have to ruminate about the problem. It doesn't have to ruminate just as much about when will I have time to think about and solve this problem because now I have time in my calendar for worry. Now, here's what happens nine times out of 10. You know, I'll write down, "Here's what I need to worry about. Very, very important thing. I keep ruminating in my head about this thing that I definitely, definitely need to, need to think about. Very, very important, this thing that I messed up on in the past, and I need to think about how do I fix it." And then when that worry time comes, nine times out of 10, what, what the heck was I worrying about? [chuckles] Why did I keep, uh, ruminating on it? I didn't need to. In fact, you know, it, it, it's something that got crushed under the weight of, of some other priority.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, uh, the, the addiction to venting and, and rumination is, um-It feels so satisfying. You know, it's the same as, as stretching that torn or, uh, strained muscle. You just keep on checking, checking, checking. We'll go back to it. We'll go back to it. We'll go back to it. So
- 30:57 – 38:28
How to Rebuild Belief After Failure
- CWChris Williamson
I have to imagine that rejection and failure when it comes to belief is, uh, uh, somewhat of a challenge, right? How, how do people rebuild belief after repeated failures?
- NENir Eyal
Mm. Yeah. So, uh, i- if you are failing, that's not necessarily a bad thing, that, uh, y-y-y-you... What I, what I want to change in, uh, my life w- and what I hope I can help with o-others is to give them more persistence because we know that persistence is the defining factor. You've met lots and lots of successful people in your life. I've, I've interviewed billionaires for this book. I've interviewed people who are broke for this book. And what I discovered was is that unsuccessful people are not those that fail more. Unsuccessful people are those who fail less. Successful people fail more. It's the billionaire who tried again and again and again and again until they hit it big. They do more of these experiments. They have more shots on goal. And so that's turns out to be a, a defining trait, that persistence. There's a, there's a wonderful study that, uh, really blew my mind, uh, this Kurt Richter study back in the 1950s where he took these rats and he put these rats in two cylinders of water, and they were filled about halfway full. And he took these, these rats, he put them in the cylinder of water, and he stood there with a time wa- a timer to see how long the rats would swim for. It turns out, in case you were curious, a wild rat can swim in a cylinder of water for about 15 minutes before it gives up and dies. Very nice. Then he wanted to do another study. He did a f- a follow-up study. By the way, you can't do these kind of unethical studies anymore, but we-- they did it so we can learn from it. Then he took these w- a new batch of wild rats, and he put them in the cylinder of water, and he watched them swim, swim, swim for f- uh, for about 15 minutes. And right before he knew they would give up and sink under the water, he reached in, pulled out the rat, dried it off, let it catch, catch its breath for a minute, and plunk back into the, the cylinder it went. And now he wanted to see if he did that a few times and he conditioned the, the wild rat to know that salvation might be possible, what would happen? Could the rat swim for longer? Now, you've read the book. I know you know the answer. But when I ask people how much longer did the rat swim for, people say maybe double, okay, maybe triple, right? Maybe four times longer. Wouldn't that be amazing if the rat went from 15 minutes to 60 minutes, an hour? Think about that, right? If, if you're running a marathon and now you have four times the endurance, if you're on working on that hard task, if you're, whatever that challenge is, you can sustain four times longer, that'd blow your mind. That'd be amazing. What kind of crazy intervention would that be? Well, the rats didn't swim for 60 minutes. They ended up swimming for 60 hours. They swam for 240 times longer, and that ability was in them the whole time because their bodies didn't change. The experiment didn't change. What changed was we think. We can't ask, uh, these rats what they believed. We think that something must have changed in their minds. The fact that they saw that hope and salvation were possible kept them persisting, persisting, persisting. And so it all of a sudden became unlocked because of a belief. They believed that salvation maybe might be possible.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
And so the goal here is to realize the practical application of this is not to quit at the 15-minute mark. That for the vast majority of us, myself included, when it gets uncomfortable, when it gets difficult, when it gets painful, that's our limit. But your limit is so much further than you actually think. So the most important thing is to quit when it's the right time. That not that-- Quitting is not wrong. There's nothing wrong with quitting. Quitting too soon is a destruction of human capital. That's what we have to prevent, right? Quitting too soon. I've quit many things. I've quit relationships. I've quit businesses. I've quit all kinds of things. It's not that quitting is wrong. It's quitting when it's too soon that's the problem. So, and one of those criteria for when not to quit is when it, when it hurts, right? That pain is just a signal. Remember we talked about 11 million bits versus 50 bits of information. That, those pain signals, that's just information. That's not necessarily a bad thing. So if we can disconnect the pain from the suffering, the interpretation of that pain, and only quit when it's time. So for example, one of the criteria for when is it a good time to quit is not when you're failing. That is a bad reason to quit a task. The failing is not, uh, the right reason. It's when you stop learning. That if the failures are teaching you something, keep going, right? That's not necessarily... There's two other criteria about when, when is the proper time to quit. But failure itself, in and of itself, is not necessarily the right criteria for when to quit.
- CWChris Williamson
What are the other criteria?
- NENir Eyal
The other two criteria, number one is you have to meet a checkpoint. So it w- so most people don't set checkpoints. They set deadlines, and that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about a deadline. We're talking about a checkpoint is when I say, "I will endure this suffering for a fixed period of time." Now why do we do that? Because if we don't do that, as soon as it gets uncomfortable, we're going to interpret the pain as suffering, and we're gonna wanna quit. Instead, when we say, "I'm gonna try this perspective," right? "I'm gonna try this crazy view of my mom," like I was describing earlier, "or this crazy view of my life that life is not for ticking off tasks." Okay, doesn't sound right. I don't agree. Maybe it's not true, but I'm gonna try it for one week, 30 days, whatever. You make up the number. And I'm not gonna stop until I hit that checkpoint. Then at that checkpoint, I can say, "Okay, let me, let me take a step back. Would I continue this experiment past that checkpoint if I were to start today?" But don't quit until the checkpoint [chuckles] right? Whatever that, that hard task might be, 30 days of exercise, 30 days of posting YouTube videos, 30 days of writing your book, whatever it is, make sure you have that checkpoint. That's criteria number one. Criteria number two is are you still learning through failure? We talked about that earlier. And then the third and the most important criteria is does persistence make a difference? Many things in life, persistence does not make a difference. If you're in a crappy work cultureAnd it's awful, and the people are sucking out your energy, and you, uh, on Sunday evening, you are dreading waking up on Monday morning because you know you have to go to work. Persistence ain't gonna help. Those people are not gonna suddenly leave just because you stuck around longer, right? You're gonna die by the time those people leave, so persistence is not gonna make a difference. However, when it comes to fitness, for example, you're, you're a jacked guy, you know this. You hit plateaus, and then if you persist, hey, you'll bust out of that plateau. You'll make progress eventually, right? So there are certain things in life where persistence really does make a difference, even if you're not seeing progress, but if you meet those three criteria, that's fine. The most important thing is that you're not quitting too soon. You're not quitting at the 15-minute mark like those rats, even when you have 60 hours of potential.
- CWChris Williamson
Before we continue, I am a massive fan of reducing your alcohol intake, but historically, non-alcoholic brews taste like ass. You don't need to be doing some big reset. Maybe you just want to crack a cold one without feeling like garbage the next morning, which is why I am such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co. They've got 50 types of NAs, including IPAs, goldens, and even limited releases like a cocktail-inspired Paloma and Moscow Mule. And here's the thing, you can drink them anytime, late nights, early mornings, watching sports, playing sports. Doesn't matter. No hangover, no compromise. And that is why I partnered with them. You can find Athletic Brewing Co.'s best-selling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you, or best option, get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped right to your door. Right now, you can get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom. That's athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom.
- 38:28 – 41:19
Can You Really Manufacture Luck?
- CWChris Williamson
It feels to me like there's a relationship between luck and the rejection thing here, that people are always trying to engineer it, and some people in life seem to be a little bit more lucky. What did you find out about luck?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah, that luck is not chance. [chuckles] That luck, in fact, uh, can absolutely be engineered. The most... L- like let's, let's be honest here. The, the most lucky thing is your birth, right? That if you are lucky enough to be born in an industrialized democratic country, you won the genetic lottery, right? As, uh, uh, um, Warren Buffett used to say. Other than that, after you're born, it turns out there's no such thing as like, uh, particularly lucky people. We see, we, we see successful people, we say, "Oh, they just got lucky." And of course, lucky things happen to all so- kinds of people. But it turns out what's much more important is how they manufacture their luck. Uh, that, that, uh, we know that entrepreneurs, they have this phenomenon called entrepreneurial alertness, where we know that, that successful entrepreneurs literally see the world differently. They metaphorically see $100 bills all over the floor, and there's, uh, there's actually a wonderful study that, that showed this. They took two groups of people. One was self-identified pessimists, and one were self-identified optimists. And in this study, they asked people to look at a newspaper, and this newspaper was, was specially designed for this experiment, and the goal of the experiment, they asked them, "We want you to count for us how many photos there are in this newspaper. Okay? How many photos do you see in this newspaper? Count as quickly as you can and then tell the, the proctor, and you'll get a monetary prize." Now, people who are self-identified optimists took about 11 seconds to finish this experiment. People who were self-identified pessimists took two and a half minutes. Why? Why the difference? Right? That's a huge advantage. What happened? Turns out that on page two of this newspaper was a, a photo that said, "There are 48 photos in this newspaper." That's all it said. Then halfway through the, the paper, it said, "There are 48 photos in this paper. Collect your prize." Okay? Optimistic people saw that. They saw this thing staring them in the face. They got up, they said, "There's 48 pictures in the, in the newspaper," and they collected their, their prize. They walked off in 11 seconds on average. The pessimistic people sat there and said, "One, two, three, four." They didn't even see the opportunity staring them in the face. They were completely oblivious to it. And so this is a wonderful b- example of how we don't see what we believe. That's kind of what, what we think is common knowledge. We see what we b- we, we have to, uh, see something in order to believe it. Turns out the exact opposite is just as true, that in order to see something, we have to believe it.
- CWChris Williamson
That's wild. That is so crazy. What, um-
- NENir Eyal
Tip of the iceberg. [chuckles] There's so
- 41:19 – 46:24
If You’re Looking For Negativity, You Will Find It
- NENir Eyal
many of these.
- CWChris Williamson
What other, what, what other ways does this show up in people's lives?
- NENir Eyal
All over the place. I mean, we know that people who are on a diet physically see food as larger. They see, uh, that, uh, people who are afraid of heights see distances as farther away, right? So i, i, i, back to, to this keyhole of attention, that when we are forced to see reality through this itsy bitsy T hole, uh, keyhole of, of reality, w- we, we can't help it, right? That Koffka illusion I talked about earlier, it's crazy. I'll show it to people, and they will absolutely swear there is nothing here but squares [chuckles] right? Whereas you show it to other people, and they'll say there's nothing there but circles, and it's completely determined. We think. We don't exactly know why this is happening. We think it's because of where you grow up, that people who grow up in urban environments see sharp edges, right? Buildings and streets, they see sharp edges. These are not natural. But people who grow up, for example, where they did this study that, that they showed the Koffka illusion to people in, uh, in sub-Saharan Africa, and they see circles because that's what they have been conditioned to see. They see organic shapes. They don't see hard edges. And so it absolutely affects time and time again what you are able to see based on your past experience. And of course, uh, you know, we s- we, we, we make up problems for many of us where they don't exist, right? That, that it's no coincidence that this is... I-- people are gonna think I'm crazy, and when I say this, know that the crazier you think an alternative belief is, the more you should actually explore it, right? Because that's your brain with your b- with your, uh, belief immune system. It's trying to keep out foreign antibodies. It's trying to keep out these, uh, these beliefs you don't like.The fact is the world is getting better, and it's in fact better than it's ever been, right? But the average person, if you say, "Is this the best time in history?" The average person will say, "No, it's terrible. We have wars, we have crime, we have this, we have that. Things are terrible, and they're getting worse." Well, that's not true. [chuckles] And if you don't believe me, read this wonderful book, uh, by Hans Rosling, Factfulness, where he interviewed university professors, and he gave them an exam about the state of the world, the state of all the things we care about, the state of education, the state of the environment, the sa- state of female empowerment, the state of democracy. These professors on this exam did worse than if monkeys would have taken this test. They did worse than chance on a realistic portrayal of how the world is because of this negativity bias that we all have, because of these existing beliefs that we seek to confirm time and time again. So if you are looking for negativity, if you believe that the world is getting worse, you're gonna see all the ways the world is getting worse.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
You're gonna tune into the media that does nothing but reinforce that fact because, you know, if it bleeds, it leads. You're gonna see all the crime stories, the hatred, the, the, the animosity, the wars because that's what you're turning into. That's what you're paying attention to. Um, I'll give you one more quick study that I love is these, uh, the Dartmouth scar study, where they took women, and they, uh, they, they said, "We're gonna do a study on how people treat those with facial disfigurements. We wanna see how people are treated differently, how are they are discriminated against. So we're gonna put this fake scar on your face, and we're gonna put you in a room with, with somebody else, the, the, the, the person we're doing the study on, and we want you to report how you're treated with this facial scar." And they made this very realistic, you know, like one of the ones that you would see in a, in a horror film, this huge gash on their face. And they said, "Okay, now you're gonna walk into this room, and we want you to take careful notes on how people treated you when you had a conversation. Except wait, wait, wait, come back here for a quick second. Before you go into the room, let me just do a quick touch-up." And what these women didn't know in the study is that they completely removed the scar. Now, the women didn't know that. They saw the scar in the mirror, but then when they did the touch-up and removed the scar, they didn't know that the scar didn't exist. It wasn't there. And yet these women in the study reported that they were stared at, that they were discriminated against, that the people they were talking to seemed disgusted and averted their eyes many times, and they felt very uncomfortable, all for a scar that didn't even exist. It wasn't even there. Because they expected a response, and when you expect something to occur, you will see it.
- CWChris Williamson
It's like living in a simulation. It's like we create a simulation of the world and kind of disregard what the actual world is showing to us.
- NENir Eyal
That's right. Now we don't have to, right? So the, the-- through this consistent practice of making ourselves see the world, uh, differently, we hopefully can see truth. I mean, how, isn't it crazy how, uh, at le- at least in, in, in many cultures, not all cultures, disagreement is seen as rude, right? That like when someone disagrees with you, they're kind of... you don't like that person, right? When someone challenges your feelings, ugh, that's, that creates a little icky feeling. Or if someone does change their, their perspective, they're called a flip-flopper.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
Is that not the stupidest thing ev- ever? I mean, now that's become my love language. Like if you can change my mind about something, can you think of a better gift? Like I s- I was lying to myself about reality, about myself, about my relationships, and now you've helped me see the world more clearly. Can you-- like what better gift could there possibly be?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it's a strange one that we're so attached to our points of view that losing them or letting go of them is kind of tantamount to destruction, at least to the ego.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh,
- 46:24 – 52:29
How Our Strongest Beliefs Can Physically Manifest
- CWChris Williamson
I'm thinking about beliefs that people have now which might be useful, but that, or that create success or whatever, but in the future quietly limit you later on.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
Or beliefs that people hold now that previously were effective or, or helpful in some sort of a way but now are holding us back. That kind of blind spot with regards to belief and the tool, where it was then, where we are now. How do you come to think about updating beliefs over time in that sort of a way?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. Where do we begin? I, I think one of the, uh, challenges that I think is, is becoming more and more prevalent is that we have these cultural nocebos. So placebos come from the, the Latin, "I will heal." Nocebos come from, "I will hurt." And it turns out these nocebo effects are contagious, that when we tell people that they might be suffering from some kind of malady, it spreads. Uh, I'll give you a great example. There was this case in, uh, I think it was Portugal, if I'm not mistaken, where, uh, on one particular night, there was this epidemic. The hospital rooms were filling up with young girls with intense intestinal discomfort. They were filling up the ERs. And people thought it was some kind of virus. People thought there was something in the water, like what had happened? But it was really weird that it only affected girls of a certain age, and nobody knew what it was. Turns out there was a very popular TV show, I think it was called "Strawberries and Cream," and, uh, on that show, the main character, the protagonist, had some kind of similar intestinal dis- uh, malady where she was very sick, and that actually caught on and created this, this kind of mass nocebo effect. And this goes-- we see this repeated again and again. Every few years somewhere in the world, there'll be some kind of outbreak of some kind of psychosomatic disorder. Uh, w- in the literature, one, one case that really blew my mind, there was this guy, uh, they call him Mr. A. He became, he was anonymized. And Mr. A, uh, had a very difficult breakup with his girlfriend, and he decides that he wants to end his life. So he takes a bottle of pills, opens it up. He takes the entire bottle of pills, swallows everything, and a few minutes later, he changes his mind. He decides he wants to live. So he rushes over to his next-door neighbor. He tells him he took all his pills. Neighbor rushes him to the ER.Mr. A barges through the emergency room, cra- you know, crashes on the floor. He's almost unconscious, and he says, "I took all my pills. I took all my pills. Help me." They rush him into the operating room. His blood pressure is dangerously low. His heart rate is plummeting, and they're trying to figure out what did he overdose on. Well, they, they look at the, the, the jar of pills, and all there is on the jar of pills is a number to call. It turns out that Mr. A had been part of a clinical trial for depression, and he took all these pills that he was, he was given in the study. They called the number, and they say, "What is this drug? What did he just overdose on so that we can try and resuscitate him?" And again, all the physiological symptoms of overdose-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm
- NENir Eyal
... the, the heart rate, the plunging, uh, uh, uh, blood pressure, all the things that you would expect with an overdose are happening to Mr. A.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
On the other line, the doctor says, "Um, this person took placebos. He did not get the active ingredient." They tell Mr. A this, that he took nothing but placebos. Within 15 minutes, Chris, Mr. A is completely revived. His heart rate is back to normal. His blood pressure is back to normal, and he's fine. He's ready to walk out of the ER. Now, if we can have these incredible physiological effects solely based on our beliefs, solely based on our expectations of what we think will happen in this crazy simulation that's running in our heads, if that can be done to this extent, what does that mean for all the other nocebos in our life? What happens when we assign ourselves all kinds of labels that we keep tossing around? If you open up social media, people are prescribing the hell out of each other with all kinds of maladies that let alone have no s- you know, actual psychological basis. Impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome is not a thing. [laughs] It's not in the DSM. There's nothing that makes the impostor sy- you can't get diagnosed for impostor syndrome, but it sounds so official, people think it's a diagnosis. But when you think you have impostor syndrome, guess what? Now you have impostor syndrome. You've manufactured it. Whether it's true or not, that's not what I'm arguing about. What I'm arguing about is does it serve you? I'm a morn- I'm not a morning person. I'm, uh, I, I'm having a senior moment. Uh, uh, I'm no good at public speaking. I'm whatever. I-- When we create this identity, that's the problem, out of a label, that label becomes our limit.
- CWChris Williamson
In other news, you've probably heard me talk about LMNT before, and that's because I am frankly [laughs] dependent on it, uh, and it's how I've started my day every single morning. This is the best-tasting hydration drink on the market. You might think, "Why do I need to be more hydrated?" Because proper hydration is not just about drinking enough water. It's having sufficient electrolytes to allow your body to use those fluids. Each grab-and-go stick pack is a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium. It's got no sugar, coloring, artificial ingredients, or any other junk. This plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing brain health, regulating your appetite, and curbing cravings. This orange flavor in a cold glass of water is a sweet, salty, orangey nectar, and you will genuinely feel a difference when you take it versus when you don't, which is why I keep going on about it. Best of all, there's a no-questions-asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. Buy it, use it all, and if you don't like it for any reason, they give you your money back, and you don't even have to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of LMNT's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom.
- 52:29 – 1:03:38
How to Break Free From Limiting Beliefs
- CWChris Williamson
The example that you used with the mouse, uh, it believed that it was going to be saved. I have to assume that in order to work out how long a mouse swims for before it drowns, you have to let it drown. So in a lot of these studies, it actually didn't get saved. So it had an erroneous belief, and that erroneous belief-
- NENir Eyal
Well, it was a, it was a new, it was a new group of rats
- CWChris Williamson
... Yes. Uh, the, it, it lifted the ceiling on, uh, when the rat was w- w- was going to be able to swim for.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
So you can spiral belief up toward a version of you that you want, one that you broadly gets better outcomes in life. But you can also spiral it down, which is I took sugar pills, and now I think I'm having a heart attack, and my, m- m- my brain's gonna explode.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
In both situations, the interpretation and the belief is causing an effect within the person.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And both are very powerful. I think when it comes to something like impostor syndrome or, um, concerns about public speak-- sexual performance, right? Some-
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... guy that gets-
- NENir Eyal
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... real nervous before he gets into... I think that's, like, psychos- not psychosomatic, um, mental impact on guys struggling to get it up is-
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... a vicious spiral that happens to dudes-
- NENir Eyal
That's right
- CWChris Williamson
... and then they can't get out of it. They're worried about it, and this thing's gonna happen, and eh, eh, eh, it goes all the way down.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. Insomnia, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic, uh, fatigue, IBS. Many of these things are highly responsive to both nocebo and placebo effects. But sorry, I interrupted you. Continue.
- CWChris Williamson
Just someone is on the spiral going in the wrong direction.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
How do they intervene? How do they intervene and reverse that direction to go back in the other? Because one of the things that I imagine a lot of people think is, "Oh, God. Well, yeah, there's some contributing elements that are grounded in reality, but much of this is filtered through my perception, my expectations, my own simulation, my beliefs. What a piece of shit am I that I can't fix. It's all on me. I'm-
- NENir Eyal
Hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... causing this problem. This means I'm even worse than I thought I was." So I think getting practical about, okay, someone feels that they have one of these beliefs, and it is spiraling in the wrong direction. It's their erectile dysfunction or inability to wake up on a morning, or it's their mood, or it's their whatever.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Take me through the steps that someone-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... goes through to, to halt the downward spiral and turn it into one that works for them.
- NENir Eyal
Absolutely. So this comes a lot from the research around chronic pain. And there's, uh, we, we've-- the, the medical community is really, um, in the, in the middle of a, doing a 180 on how to approach pain. And there's this, uh, uh, new technique that's been quite validated called pain reprocessing therapy. And, and the reason I like to talk about this extreme version is because if we can do it in the most extreme versions, right, when people are suffering through chronic pain, like the kind of debilitating pain that comes from, from these type of conditions, then we can also do it for more minor mal-maladies like erectile dysfunction or insomnia or anxiety, right? So, so I-- that's why I like to talk about those more extreme cases. But the, the way pain reprocessing therapy works starts by understanding that pain is not the same as suffering, okay? Pain is always real. Even though all pain is in the brain, all pain is in the brain. Where else could pain live? Pain is not in your arm, it's not in your back, it's not... Pain, all pain receptors lead to an interpretation in your brain, okay? But pain is nothing more than signal. Pain does not necessarily mean that anything is broken because there's a difference between a sickness and an illness. Sickness is in the body, illness is in the mind.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
So for many co-conditions, there is some-something broken, some kind of, of, of malady that has to do with, with sickness, something in the body. But you can be sick without being ill, and you can also be ill without being sick. How can that happen? If you have cancer, you know, we all have tiny cancer cells. But let's say you have some kind of malignant tumor, but you haven't kn- you don't know you have it yet. God forbid that this should happen to anyone, but it does. You can be sick but not realize that you have any symptoms, so you're not ill. Conversely, and what is very, very common, in fact, it accounts for about eighty percent of our healthcare expenses, is the symptoms, the illness which is in the mind, okay? The s-
- 1:03:38 – 1:08:18
Why Changing Health Beliefs is So Hard
- NENir Eyal
it went away.
- CWChris Williamson
And the same, I imagine, would be true, um, for people with chronic fatigue, ME/CFS. Uh, uh, again, assuming that you've not got underlying-
- NENir Eyal
Assuming
- CWChris Williamson
... whatever that's going on. I feel like we need to do this throat clearing so it doesn't sound like fucking victim-blaming-
- NENir Eyal
Yes
- CWChris Williamson
... all of the people who-
- NENir Eyal
Right. Right
- CWChris Williamson
... let's say that you've... A good example. I, I, me and half of Austin apparently live in houses that have got toxic molds. Toxic mold is particularly brutal for certain people with a genetic susceptibility to it, and it causes them to be really tired. You get out of-
- NENir Eyal
Mm
- CWChris Williamson
... the houses, you follow a Shoemaker protocol, you detox all of the mold or most of the mold from you. And now, oh, hey, the system is more functional, but my expected work capacity hasn't caught up to where my real gas tank is. And-
- NENir Eyal
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... that repatterning of the pain, of the fatigue, of the lack of fatigue, the inability to sleep. I, I, I'm not a good sleeper. I, I, I wake up lots of times throughout the night. Um, I need to go to the bathroom all the time. That's the, a, kind of a, a, a real common one for people-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... who just think, "I, I, I need to wake up and go to the bathroom two or three times throughout the night, even if I haven't had that much to drink, even if I know that when I go to the bathroom, oh, the, the, it's a problem, it's the prostate, it's whatever." It's like, well, you know, if you've had all of the things checked, it's not.
- NENir Eyal
It could just... Yeah. That's exactly right. I mean, one, one of the things that I've adopted is these mantras, these prayers that, uh, they're not, I... Maybe they're not prayers because they're, they don't have a religious connotation, but I have many mantras that I repeat throughout the day. And I used to have terrible insomnia, and I tried everything. I tried the pills. I tried the... I, I tried all kinds of things. And then as I was, a-as I was doing this research around the power of the mind and, and beliefs to, to change our bodies, that your beliefs really do become your, your biology, and it... I'm sorry it took me, you know, so long. I'm forty-eight now, but, uh, it took me a long time to realize this. I, I try to eliminate the fear, and when you eliminate the fear, you also eliminate the suffering. So my mantra when I wake up at two AM and, uh, and I, I, I start ruminating about, "Oh my gosh, if I, if I don't get to sleep soon, I'm gonna have an awful day tomorrow, and I've got this big interview with Chris, and what if I don't do well, and, uh, I better get to sleep, and I can't get to sleep." Well, it turns out the number one cause of insomnia is worrying about insomnia. That is the number one cause of insomnia. [chuckles] And so we take medication to knock us out, so we stop worrying. But really, I found the most effective thing I ever did was to replace the fear with a new belief. That new belief is, and this is what I literally say to myself every time I wake up at two AM, I close my eyes, and I s- repeat to myself, and I take a deep breath on the way in, I say it, and then, then I, I say it again on the way out. I say, as I take a deep breath, I say, "The body gets what the body needs if you let it. The body gets what the body needs if you let it." So that's a deep breath in, a deep breath out. And what I'm doing is reminding myself that, you know what? If I don't get a good night's sleep tonight, my body will, will make up for it the next night, right? That, that if I let it. Now, the biggest problem is why do I say if you let it? 'Cause if you went to bed at one AM and you need to get up at six, that's on you, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
You didn't plan properly.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
But if you let it, if you give your body the time it needs to rest, it's gonna rest, or it doesn't need itAnd if I stay up for an hour or so and I read my Kindle in bed, that's okay too. That's fine. That there's nothing necessarily wrong with it, because it means the next night I probably will get to sleep. So repeating those simple mantras, and I, I read the Kindle after I've tried that mantra, and if it doesn't work, then I read the Kindle. That works 99% of the time. I always have a boring book on my Kindle, by the way, which is amazing because it scrambles that rumination cycle, and then you can finally get back to sleep.
- CWChris Williamson
We'll get back to talking in just one second. But first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, focus, and performance, but most people have no idea what theirs are or what to do if something's off. Which is why I partnered with Function, because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. Seeing your testosterone levels and dozens of other biomarkers charted across the course of a year with actionable insights to genuinely improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands and be a nightmare. But with Function, it's just 499 bucks, and now you can get an additional $100 off, bringing it down to $399. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save 100 bucks by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's at functionhealth.com/modernwisdom.
- 1:08:18 – 1:13:05
You Have More Agency Than You Think
- CWChris Williamson
Talk to me about the neuroscience of agency, because we're talking about an interesting balance here.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
One element is almost a letting go. It's my body will give me what it needs if I let it. So [clears throat] that's a relinquishing of the need to be the person that's pushing specifically around something like sleep, right?
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Or I, I, I don't need to check on the pain. Uh, but at the same time, we know that agency is the thing that most people desire. Uh, uh, it's one, one of the top three, even if nobody knows what it means. Uh-
- NENir Eyal
[chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
... I think it's, it's what they want, right? They want the i-independence-
- NENir Eyal
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... action, the ability to happen to life as opposed to let happen, uh, life happen to them. Talk to me about neuroscience of agency.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. So agency is what I call the third power of belief, that beliefs can change not only what you see, we talked about how they can sh- how beliefs shape your vision of reality. They shape how you feel internally, if it's, whether it's chronic pain, whether it's, uh, going through surgery w-without anesthesia, and most importantly, beliefs change what you do. Now, it changes what you do based on what you think is possible for you to do. And so, uh, not only can you have these nocebo effects that we talked about earlier, just as a, as a quick recap of how your labels can become your limits and make you more... Uh, sorry, make you less agentic because you think, "Well, that's impossible. I can't do it." C-certain beliefs allow you to be more agentic. Uh, so for example, uh, one of the, one... I, I interviewed this guy by the name of David Fajenbaum, who had this incurable disease, and, uh, uh, he, he, he was... Uh, I mean, he tells me how the, a nurse came in and told him, "Hey, guess what? You have this disease. I've never, ever heard of it, but at least it's not cancer." And then he does a Google search, and he figures out actually the mortality rate is even worse than cancer for this disease that he has.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, God, you've got super cancer.
- NENir Eyal
You've got super cancer. Exactly. And so he finds the one expert in the world who knows this disease backwards and forwards, and-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, agency
- NENir Eyal
... he told me that he... Yeah, exactly. He, well, it, kind of. He, he tells me about how he had this Santa Claus theory that h-his whole life, he thought, "Well, if I just find the right person to send my wish into, just like Santa Claus, well, surely they'll have a solution." So this doctor recommends a medication, does not work, and, uh, and, and then he asks the doctor, "Well, okay, what's the next course of treatment?" "Nothing." Uh, "Well, but what's the research that's being done about this?" "There is no more research." Says, "Well, what are next steps?" "There are more, no more next steps." And so his whole Santa Claus theory that someone's gonna save him never materialized. And he decides that night that he has to do something. And he spends the next several years combing through all the research he can possibly find, throws away this, this theory that someone's gonna come and save me, and he does everything he possibly can. It turns out he finds a medication that has been already approved for years, that's sitting on the shelf, that nobody tried for his condition, and it saves his life. Uh, now he actually has a foundation that does this through AI and has saved countless thousands of people through a similar methodology. Now, what David demonstrated was understanding that there, you have a lot more agency that you think. That most of us kind of accept, well, a good patient should just take lessons from the doctor. They should do what the doctor says. You shouldn't do your own research because we're the experts. Well, David said, "BS," and he tried to do his own research, and he tried his own experimentations, even when he wasn't sure if they would work. So big picture, we have a lot more agency than we think. And so there's two kinds of, of agency. We call this an internal locus of control versus an external locus of control. And so this is, this, you know, people kind of know this research already, that, uh, external locus of control is about thinking that your, your life is controlled by things outside of you. Internal locus of control means you think you can affect change in the world. Now, what's interesting about this is that even when the cards are stacked against you, even when you have all the right in the world to say that things aren't going well and, uh, you know, external factors are controlling you, you still are better off than having an internal locus of control. People with an internal locus of control live longer, they have more friends, they contribute more to the community, they're happier, they have fewer mental health issues. Internal locus of control seems to be protective in, in so many different ways, even when the cards are stacked against you. The only case where it's not helpful to have an internal locus of control is when you judge other people.
- CWChris Williamson
[chuckles]
- NENir Eyal
So for yourself, you want to have an internal locus of control. For others, you want to try and give them the grace of thinking, "Well, they must be operating un-under circumstances that they can't control."That turns out to be a much, much healthier, uh, point of view.
- 1:13:05 – 1:15:37
Why the Brain Defaults to Helplessness
- CWChris Williamson
Why does the brain default to helplessness then? If-
- NENir Eyal
Mm
- CWChris Williamson
... helpfulness and agency is so great, w-why is that not a set point?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. Well, this is-- what, what you just said is actually the exact opposite of what everybody thought for fifty years in psychology because we, we thought that helplessness was learned. We called it learned helplessness. Um, uh, Seligman and Maier did these studies with dogs, and they could show that you could train dogs to give up, that they would learn helplessness. That we were born hopeful, and then life beats us down, and we give up. Just a couple years ago, these same researchers completely-
- CWChris Williamson
I saw the study
- NENir Eyal
... changed their mind.
- CWChris Williamson
I saw the [chuckles] I saw the study.
- NENir Eyal
Right?
- CWChris Williamson
I watched it.
- NENir Eyal
They said-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- NENir Eyal
"Oops." [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
So-sorry, just half a century of learned helplessness being in the lexicon. Who was it? It was Scott Barry Kaufman, uh, on his pod that, that first talked about this and, uh, learned hopefulness is-
- NENir Eyal
Yes, exactly
- CWChris Williamson
... yeah, dude, fucking wild.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. Wild. Wild because we built entire philosophies about, you know, why, why the poor are poor and why, you know, th-these conditions lead to th- uh, built out of this research that everybody thought was true. Well, it turns out that we don't learn helplessness. That's our default state. I mean, if you think about it, that's how we come out of the womb. Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... for human beings, we are absolutely defenseless. We require our parents to take care of us. A baby doesn't have claws, doesn't have teeth, can't run away. We need someone to take care of us, so maybe the-- we, we think perhaps the ev-evolutionary adaptation is that you want, when a baby's in danger, you want a baby to be passive and helpless so that they can be taken care of, uh, perhaps, and that there is safety in passivity because safety is what you know, right? So there is this fight, flight, or freeze response, and so that freeze response is that passivity response. What that means, however, is that we have to learn hope. We have to learn hope. I mean, it would kinda make sense that in a tribal environment, you almost don't want people to be too radical. Like, if you think-- you know, if you don't want too many people to challenge the, the, the tribe chief and to, you know, think that they're, uh, that they can change things up, you kinda want stability in a society, so maybe that's where that comes from. I don't really know. I'm not a evolutionary psychologist. But what we do know is that there is a circuit in the brain that Seligman called the hope circuit, that is, is how we learn our agency, that we have to learn through tiny steps what is possible, what we can do, but that must be, in fact, taught.
- 1:15:37 – 1:21:46
We Need to Believe We Can Maximise Our Potential
- CWChris Williamson
George, my housemate, is currently writing his book, which is all about agency.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh, the, the idea that, the idea that you don't always-- y-you're not always in control, but you can believe that you are, to me, like-
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... 'cause I'm just hearing him unload these stories over and over again. There's another one-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... from, um, Johann Hari. Did you look at that study of the pain wand? Was it in the 1800s? So there was a-
- NENir Eyal
Tell me more
- CWChris Williamson
... special wand where it was wood wrapped in metal with wires around it and an electro-
- NENir Eyal
Mm
- CWChris Williamson
... special electricity box.
- NENir Eyal
Oh, the mesmerism stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
Is that what this is? And they'd wave it over people-
- NENir Eyal
It was mesmerism
- CWChris Williamson
... and then they slowly, they slowly took away one element of the wand, and they took away-- they unplugged the electricity, then they took away the box, then they took away the wires, then they took away the metal, then they took away the wood, and it was just a guy waving his hand over patients.
- NENir Eyal
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
And [laughs] it had the same effect.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I used to poo-poo this stuff and think, "Oh, this is crazy. These are stupid people. They're gullible." I don't say that stuff anymore-
- CWChris Williamson
Wow
- NENir Eyal
... because, uh, if it works, and it's cheap, and it's not hurting anybody, maybe it's okay. Maybe those placebo pills that are on sale on Amazon are not such a bad idea. I'll give you, I'll give you another one about a non-pharmaceutical one that blew my mind. Do you know the story of, uh, of Serena Williams at Wimbledon and her, her coach, Patrick?
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- NENir Eyal
Have you heard about this one?
- CWChris Williamson
No, no.
- NENir Eyal
So, uh, Serena Williams was not doing well at, at Wimbledon. Uh, she was gonna lose. And her coach comes up to her, and he says, "I have some amazing news for you. When you rush the net, you make eighty percent of your-- of, of the points." She says, "What are you talking about? I suck at the net." He's like, "Wait, look, hey, uh, I don't... You know, the stats don't lie. The stats said that when you rush the net, you make eighty percent of the points." Now, what he had noticed is that she was lying to herself. She was already delusional. She-- Her confidence was broken because she wasn't doing well, and she wasn't doing what she had to do, and so she was telling a story in her head. She had a limiting belief that, "I shouldn't rush the net," okay? So he, he knows this. He can see it in his player.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
And he tells her what turns out to be a hundred percent fabrication. It's not true. [laughs] She is not scoring eighty percent of, uh, of the points when she rushes the net. He tells her this. He says, "Can't lie with the stats." She then goes on to start rushing the net, and turns out wins Wimbledon. So he likes to say, he, he has this quote where he says, "You see, sometimes the lies can become reality."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
And so that's, that's the real takeaway here. Beliefs are tools, not truths. Is it true that she wasn't good at rushing the net? Kinda, sorta, not really. Is it a fact? No, it's a belief. Is it true that she's good at rushing the net and scoring points? Kinda, sorta. It, it's a belief, right? Neither are facts. Neither are laws of physics.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
So based on what you believe, you can turn that belief into reality, not in a metaphysical way. There's no-
- 1:21:46 – 1:26:34
The Placebo Prayer Protocol
- CWChris Williamson
What is your guide for secular rational prayer, placebo prayer?
- NENir Eyal
Hmm. Placebo prayer.
- CWChris Williamson
Take me, take me through the, the protocol for placebo, placebo prayer.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. So I think w- you have to find what works for you. And what, uh, worked for me was engaging in some kind of, of, of regular practice. And, and what I was particularly, uh, curious about is what to pray for because I, I, I didn't think that, uh... I didn't wanna ask for stuff. I, I don't believe in some kind of cosmic slot machine that Santa Claus is gonna give me, you know, give me this, give me money, give me health, give me wisdom, give me all that stuff. Um, what I was asking for was not even for life to get easier. I was looking for ways to get stronger, to reinforce the, the tenets, the attributes that I want to cultivate myself. So patience, tolerance, um, uh, gratitude. That's what I pray for. You know, I, I pray to be cognizant of how incredibly lucky I am to live on this tiny marble dot in the universe that's swimming around in a vacuum of space, that we live in this time and, and, and place to even have this conversation in-- with conscious awareness. Uh, you're in Austin, I'm in, I'm in Spain, and we're talking over the internet right now. Like, how amazing is this future that-- Or is this what, what I would have thought would have been a science fiction future, and today we're actually living it. So to be consciously gracious and, and humble about that, that's something I try and remind myself through a, a practice of pa-prayer. And it turns out that doing that on your own has benefits, of course. It's a form of-- It's also a form of problem-solving. So many times when I pray, it's a little bit different from meditation. So when I, when I used to meditate, I medita- I used to meditate quite a bit, and I don't, I don't really meditate as much as anymore. It's, it's not that I'm anti. I think it has all kinds of benefits. But the, the role of meditation, at least the kind of meditation I would practice, was being aware of your thoughts and then letting your thoughts go. That's not what I do anymore. Um, again, not that it's bad. I think it helps lots of people. There's a lot of great research about how wonderful it is. I've kind of moved on to a point now where now prayer almost becomes a form of, of problem-solving, where by, by just thinking, by just letting my mind think about the problem in a specific time and place, not in between tasks, not, you know, for a minute here, a minute there, but just to contemplate. Uh, sometimes I even do it through writing. You know, that can be a form of, of prayer for me. That problem-solving of, of... And even, you know, religious people who have a faith tradition, when they have that conversation with God, many times it can open up those, those opportunities for them to make change in their life, that if they had not made that time to have that conversation with their maker, that they wouldn't have found those opportunities. Now, when you layer on top of that a community, that's amazing. This is, this is what the Catholic priest said to me. He said, "You know, people come to, to mass, and they come with all kinds of requests. They say, you know, 'God, please, uh, help my, uh, help my daughter, help my business, uh, help me heal, help me this.' What they don't realize is that many times the way God answers these prayers is with the people next to you, that when you'rein church with people in the pew who could help you with the business, could help you with your health, could help you with that relationship you're seeking to, to mend or build or find. And so there is a place for that community that I think many times secular people, free thinkers like, like I am, uh, we miss out on. And so what, what I now do is to take part in those communities, whereas before I was so wedded to the fact that it had to be true, that I had to believe everything.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
And frankly, I think congregations also demanded that. Like I, I kind of felt that if I don't, you know, it, I don't belong unless I believe everything they tell me.
- CWChris Williamson
You're an imposter.
- NENir Eyal
I'm an imposter. But now I've, I've kind of relaxed that, right? Like it's don't ask, don't tell. Nobody asks the Pope exactly what he believes, [laughs] right? Nobody questions him.
- CWChris Williamson
There's no, there's no-
- NENir Eyal
So why should-
- CWChris Williamson
... faith test on the way out-
- NENir Eyal
Exactly
- CWChris Williamson
... to ensure that you... Yeah. Well, it, it's a very-
- NENir Eyal
Some, some places do that. [laughs] But I don't wanna be part of those places. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
It's a very utilitarian view of this. Look-
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... it seems to make people live longer and be healthier and, and, and enjoy life more. Uh, but why, why would I not try this particular tactic? Okay, so you're doing it on a nighttime, are you doing it in the morning? Are you saying it out loud? Are you doing it with a partner? Are you doing it on your own? What, what have you found?
- NENir Eyal
I do it whenever I pass a religious institution. So I, if the door's open, I walk in. Uh, I didn't know you could do that, [laughs] but you can. You can just walk in, even if you're not a member of that congregation, even if it's not your background, and you can go in and you can pray.
- 1:26:34 – 1:27:55
Where to Find Nir
- CWChris Williamson
Unreal. Dude.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I, uh, I think this is a much needed book. I think it's a... And I appreciate that you managed to balance the, you have got control of this with the way that you feel is not unreal and not fake. And I think that walking that line is a really difficult one because it, it switches people off immediately if they feel like they're being victim blamed for something that they feel.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And being able to empower somebody to, you can make changes to this, and also everything that you're going through is completely 100% real, uh, that is a, it's, it's not an easy one, so congratulations man. Where should people go-
- NENir Eyal
Thank you
- CWChris Williamson
... to check out everything you got going on?
- NENir Eyal
I appreciate it. Thank you. So, uh, my blog is nirandfar.com. Nir is spelt like my first name, that's N-I-R and far.com. And, uh, we actually have a, a special bonus. We put together a five-minute belief change plan, which you don't have to buy anything, you don't have to sign up for anything. It's completely free. We just couldn't fit it in the book, and that is at nirandfar.com/belief-change. That's nirandfar.com belief... Uh, sorry, nirandfar.com/belief-change.
- CWChris Williamson
Heck yeah. Nir, until the next time, get writing. We'll talk again.
- NENir Eyal
Appreciate it. Thanks, Chris. [outro music]
- CWChris Williamson
Congratulations, you made it to the end of an episode. Your brain has not been completely destroyed by the internet just yet. Here's another one that you should watch. Go on.
Episode duration: 1:27:57
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode Gh3U8GWuNAw
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome