#301: How To Stop Limiting Yourself (Backed By Science) with Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal [00:00:00]:
If there's one thing we know is that the brain hates changing its mind. Evolution doesn't care if you're happy. Evolution doesn't care if you make those YouTube videos or write that newsletter. Evolution has one purpose. It just wants to keep you alive.

Jay Clouse [00:00:29]:
Hello my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creators Science. Today I have Nir Eyal back on the show. Nir is a globally recognized authority on behavior change and human potential. His frameworks have empowered millions of people to build better habits, enhance their focus, and unlock greater agency in their lives and work. He's a former lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Platner Institute of Design at Stanford, the D School. Today, near spends his time as a speaker and writer. He's the author of international bestsellers Hooked how to Build Habit Forming Products and Indistractable how to Control youl Attention and choose youe Life, which have sold over 1 million copies in more than 30 languages.

Jay Clouse [00:01:09]:
I first had Nir on this show back in episode 171 in November 2023. Nir just published his third and newest book, Beyond Belief the Science Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough, which became an instant New York Times bestseller and reveals how to identify and replace the hidden beliefs that define our limits. And that is what we are talking about here today. If you've been listening to the show since it was originally named Creative Elements, by the way, you may have noticed that the element featured on the original cover art at the time was belief. It's one of the most powerful forces in my life as a creator. But belief also isn't static, it's never totally done. You'll hear me talk about this with near towards the end of the episode. Belief is an area where I believe I currently need to improve and and maybe you do too.

Jay Clouse [00:01:59]:
I was lucky to read an early copy of this book and I absolutely breezed through it. It's so well written. I was so amazed by the research and the examples which are fantastic and you can get your own copy at the link in the show notes in this episode you'll learn why beliefs are tools and not truths, how to turn limiting beliefs into liberating beliefs, the problems with positive thinking and visualization and why your beliefs are the foundation of motivation. If you enjoyed this episode, tag me on Instagram Clouse and tag Near AR to let us know that you're listening. We'd love to hear from you. We'll get to that full conversation with Nir right after this. Nir, it's Great to have you here on the show. Glad we got some time to spend together last week.

Jay Clouse [00:02:47]:
I love the area you're exploring in this book and it's such a great and I think unique and necessary book. I'm curious to hear when the idea of beliefs and interrogating your own beliefs really entered your world and became something you want to dedicate so much time to researching.

Nir Eyal [00:03:05]:
So, Jay, it started with my last book. I do these office hours. I've done them for years, where anybody who reads one of my books can call me up and I do 15 minutes every week and they can ask me a question about anything they want. And I started getting this strange phone call that every once in a while, maybe 1 out of 20 callers would call me and say, oh, and by the way, there was a bit of a wait. Sometimes, you know, people would have to wait a few weeks, maybe sometimes months to get the time. And what was unusual is that every once in a while someone would call and say, hey, Nir, I read your book. I read indistractable. But it didn't work.

Nir Eyal [00:03:36]:
Didn't work for me. I'd say, oh, wow, that's interesting. You know, I spent five years writing this book and 30 pages of citations to peer reviewed studies. It changed my life. You know, let's go step by step. Let's start with step one. Tell me how that went for you. And they'd say, you know, I read step one.

Nir Eyal [00:03:51]:
I definitely read it. I just didn't. I just didn't do it. So, okay, no problem, I understand. Maybe you just skip that one step. Let's go on to the next step. How did step two go for you? Yeah, you know, I read that one too. I read it.

Nir Eyal [00:04:04]:
I definitely read it. I just didn't do that one either. And so here they were, people who were waiting for months to tell the author of the book that they had read that the thing that they didn't do didn't work. And I thought at first, like, what was wrong with me? Did I write a bad book? Like, do I have stupid readers? I don't know what was going on. And then I realized, actually, it's not that their readers are stupid. It's. It's me. I did the same thing all the time.

Nir Eyal [00:04:28]:
No matter how good the book is, I have tons of books on my bookcase that I have put into practice. I've listened to amazing podcasts and episodes and gurus telling me what to do, and yet I haven't done it. I mean, how many people right now have listened to you for years, know they should be doing all the great things that you've heard from them to do, and yet they're not doing it. Why? Why is that?

Jay Clouse [00:04:50]:
Also guilty.

Nir Eyal [00:04:51]:
All of us are, we all are in one area of our life. What you will see is that people who excel at one area of their life, even when they're incredibly successful. And let me tell you, Jay, I've interviewed billionaires and I've interviewed people who are broke and they all have this same limitation. In one area of their life they'll do very well. And then in other areas they're lacking in some way, even when they know what to do. And what I realized, you know, being in the consumer psychology FIELD for now, 15, 16 years, is that our entire model of motivation is inaccurate. Is lacking something that we tend to think that motivation is kind of the classic economic incentives model that if you want some kind of benefit, you will do a behavior that's all you need, just incentives. But if that were true, then we would all have six pack abs and be multimillionaires.

Nir Eyal [00:05:36]:
Because there's something clearly missing. What's missing is that even when I know what to do, I know the behavior I need to get done. Even when I want the benefit. If I don't have the belief, it just won't happen. So for example, if I don't believe I'm going to get the benefit when I'm working for a boss, right? Let's say I'm working for a boss who doesn't have my best interest at heart. I don't believe they're going to give me that raise or that promotion. Well, how likely am I to work for that person or work very hard if I don't believe that I'm going to get the rewards, If I don't believe I'm going to get the benefits, I'm going to slack off, I'm going to find another job. Conversely, if I don't believe that I can do the behavior right, if I listen to your show and I say, oh yeah, I'm gonna be a multi million dollar creator, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that.

Nir Eyal [00:06:18]:
But then I think to myself, you know what? People like me don't really do that kind of thing. And I'm not the kind of person that I'm not really sure I'm comfortable with that, or maybe I'm not ready, or maybe I just need more information or it's too late, I don't have time. Any of these beliefs we Call these limiting beliefs. If I have those doubts about my own behavior to do those things, I'm also not gonna get it done. So behavior is not a straight line. Motivation is not a straight line. Motivation is a triangle. You need to know what to do.

Nir Eyal [00:06:45]:
The behavior, why you're doing it. The benefit, and most importantly the belief is what holds it all together with that combination together. That's how we sustain our motivation over the long term.

Jay Clouse [00:06:55]:
I love that framework. And if I think about times when I am stuck, I can definitely map my internal state and kind of like the sticking point, the point of failure to one of those legs. Having belief at the bottom of that triangle, does that intuitively suggest that you think that is hierarchically more important than the two? Is that the one that fails most often? How do you think about the positioning or relativity of these three things?

Nir Eyal [00:07:22]:
I think it's the one that's lacking most right now. I think for most people, you know, it used to be that you could say, I don't know, I just don't have the right information. If only I knew the secrets. Right Back when we had, you know, libraries that kept exclusive information or people who guarded secrets. That's just not the case anymore. Now if anybody knows anything, they're yapping about it on social media.

Jay Clouse [00:07:43]:
Right.

Nir Eyal [00:07:44]:
There's no more secrets. Who doesn't know, really? Like, tell me a goal. You want to lose weight, you really don't know how. Really, you know how you want to have a better relationship? Yeah. There's plenty of books and websites, you know, at pretty much anything you want to know, ask ChatGPT, ask AI, ask Google. You're going to pretty much know what to do. So the information part is not scarce anymore. What's scarce is that we keep getting in our own way.

Jay Clouse [00:08:09]:
That's so true. I've been reflecting lately. You know, for the longest time, I've been trading in information for the creator world. And I've been asking myself, is this a solved problem? I feel like information is a solved problem, knowledge is a solved problem, and you're kind of suggesting the same. Or at least if we were to weight these variables, like to a large degree, information is a solved problem, and increasingly, probably will be. So are you suggesting that.

Nir Eyal [00:08:35]:
I think. I mean, I haven't heard it phrased that way, but when I think about it, I think you're right, it is. Now. Then why do people tune in? Well, because they want to be entertained. It's edutainment. Right. There's a certain type of person who for them, the alleviation to the internal trigger of boredom, this uncomfortable state is, you know, I don't want cat videos. I want something a little intellectual.

Nir Eyal [00:08:58]:
I'm a little bit of a nerd, so I need that justification that I'm learning something while it's entertaining. And I can tell you for sure, if this entire interview, all I did was, okay, step number one, step number two, step number three, it'd be kind of boring. But I'm going to weave in stories, I'm going to weave in interesting studies. I'm going to have variable rewards so that you keep listening.

Jay Clouse [00:09:14]:
Yeah, interestingly, to break the fourth wall here, before we started recording, I said, my hope for this episode is people walk away feeling like they have the tools to interrogate their own beliefs and change the stories they have. And as we're talking about this, maybe that's a real value add for anybody who is creating any type of content. Can you inspire your viewers to solve this base problem of belief in themselves? That's really interesting. I watch a lot of documentaries. Not a lot, but I watch a fair number of documentaries. And what I really like are documentaries of people who have achieved very difficult or interesting things. And that could be on one end, like you have the Olympic athletes on Netflix doing their Olympic run. On the other end, you also have the Theranos documentary or Wework or Fyre Festival, which is mostly still unbelievable outcomes, but from a almost cautionary lens.

Jay Clouse [00:10:13]:
And I think to myself, the commonality between both these camps is that the people involved believed they could do it for better or for worse. It's such a powerful. Such a powerful driver of achievement.

Nir Eyal [00:10:26]:
That's right. But I think the differentiation has to do with what beliefs actually are and what they are. Not that there are beliefs. But then beliefs are not facts. Facts are objective truths. Facts are things that are true whether or not you believe in them. The world is more like a sphere than it is flat. That's a fact.

Nir Eyal [00:10:46]:
Sorry, flat Earthers, the world doesn't care what you think. On the other end, you have what's called faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. God rewards the righteous. There is no amount of evidence that I could present to somebody who believes that statement to convince them otherwise. Nor should I. It's a matter of faith. Beliefs are something else entirely.

Nir Eyal [00:11:07]:
Beliefs are convictions that are open to revision based on new evidence, so they're not pulled out of thin air. They are based on evidence. Now, what makes beliefs so powerful, such an underutilized asset, is that, unlike faith, which people almost never change. And unlike facts, which you can never change, beliefs are adaptable. Beliefs are tools, not truths. I'll say it again, it's the most important thing I can leave you with. Beliefs are tools that not truths. They have a different bar for the evidence that's required to prove them.

Nir Eyal [00:11:45]:
Facts are facts. Facts never change. Beliefs, however, are about the future. They're typically predictions. In fact, we can talk about the whole neuroscience of how you see reality is dictated based on your beliefs about the future. And I can prove to you in an instant how your brain does not see reality clearly. I can show it to you again and again with different examples. And I think that most of our problems today, our personal problems, our interpersonal, our relationship problems, our business challenges, even our geopolitical problems, stem from this unfortunate situation we find ourselves in where too many people think that their faith is a fact and don't realize that the things that they think are facts, most of them are nothing more than beliefs.

Nir Eyal [00:12:27]:
And so we need the intellectual humility to admit to ourselves and to others that we don't see reality clearly. We don't see even our own reality clearly. We definitely don't see other people's reality clearly. And that if we are to meet our full potential, and this is really the point of the book, is about enhancing human potential. It's about getting the most out of life. If we are to enhance human potential, we have to understand the power of beliefs.

Jay Clouse [00:12:49]:
Your story, if I trace your career trajectory, you hit all these highlights like, you went to a great school, you published the book, you were a professor, a lecturer at Stanford. It seems like you've checked like every achievement box. You were at Boston Consulting Group out of college. It's just like every box along the way you hit. Which leads me to believe that you had a solid belief system internally pretty early on. Is that true or is that not true?

Nir Eyal [00:13:19]:
Well, this is why I love talking to you. You're always full of compliments, so thank you. It doesn't feel like that on my end, but thank you very much. You know, I think two things. One, my life is full of disappointments. It's full of stops and starts. And I'll give you one example. So when I started public speaking and I wrote my first book, hooked, and I was invited to speak and it was very important to me.

Nir Eyal [00:13:43]:
It was always, you know, whatever I research, whatever I write about is something I think is really going to help the lives of a lot of people. And I wanted to speak about it, but the problem was Jay, that every time I was about to get on stage, I get the heart palpitations and I get the sweaty armpits, and I get the cotton mouth, and I'd start stressing out, I'd start spiraling. All these landmarks that you talked about very generously, they were full of anxiety, they were full of suffering. Everything was really stressful from point to point to point. I remember when I worked at Boston Consulting Group, my first job out of college, I had terrible acne, and I was a nervous wreck. I was constantly anxious, and throughout all these steps, everything was very stressful and very anxiety producing, and especially when I was about to go on stage. And that's kind of how I make my living, is public speaking. I would get into this anxiety spiral, and I would sometimes back away from doing speaking opportunities because I thought, well, that audience is too big.

Nir Eyal [00:14:37]:
I'm not ready. When I would go on stage, I was thinking, well, why am I so nervous? And if I was a real public speaker, then I wouldn't feel this way because I'm probably gonna mess up on my words and people are gonna think I don't know what I'm talking about. And. And so I would descend down this anxiety spiral that was causing a lot of suffering. And it wasn't until I understood how important beliefs are in shaping our reality, how they shape what we see, how we feel, and what we do, that I changed that narrative. So right now, Jay, I still have the same exact physiological symptoms right now. Like, my heart is beating in my chest and I've got the sweaty armpits and the cottonmouth talking to you. I know that a lot of people are going to be listening to this episode.

Nir Eyal [00:15:14]:
I still feel those physiological sensations, but I don't suffer from them anymore. Why? Because now I have a different belief. You see, now my belief is that when my heart is pumping in my chest, it's because my brain needs more oxygen so that I could deliver my best possible presentation and hopefully change the lives of millions of people for something that I think is super important. Now, is that true, Jay? I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I don't know if that's why I've got the cotton mouth and the sweaty armpits. Like, I don't know, but does it matter? No. Because it's a liberating belief.

Nir Eyal [00:15:48]:
My past belief. What's the definition of a limiting versus a liberating belief? A limiting belief is a belief that saps motivation and increases suffering. And I was full of these limiting beliefs. I'M not ready for this. I'm not good enough. This isn't gonna work. Blah, blah, blah. There's no time.

Nir Eyal [00:16:04]:
All these limiting beliefs, and now I've adopted these liberating beliefs. A liberating belief is a belief that increases motivation and decreases suffering. And so that's what's changed for me, is that, yeah, I have type A personality and I hard charging and working hard. And I also have a lot of crashes and burnouts and a lot of suffering. And recently I did a webinar for folks who bought the book and somebody, one of my fans had been reading all three of my books, asked this question, which I thought was really interesting, I hadn't considered before. She said, nir, are you happier? Because you seem a lot happier. And I don't actually think I am happier. I think I just suffer less.

Nir Eyal [00:16:41]:
You know, I can still be ambitious. I can still want those things. And I probably always have wanted to do those things, but I no longer have the suffering that accompanied it. And I think that's for a lot of creators. I think that's a tremendous gift to give people. You know, we were recently at this author retreat. It was amazing how a lot of these household name type, type of speakers and authors, a lot of them like me, accomplish things. And yet you can see they're in pain, they're suffering.

Nir Eyal [00:17:09]:
They're not as.

Jay Clouse [00:17:11]:
There's an insatiableness to it.

Nir Eyal [00:17:12]:
Yes. Right, right. And in one way, I don't want to be done. I'm not ready to retire, but I also am ready to stop suffering along the way.

Jay Clouse [00:17:21]:
Yeah. I heard a phrase once that the ideal is blissful dissatisfaction. It's a good bar to pursue, but a very difficult balance to find.

Nir Eyal [00:17:33]:
Yeah, yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:17:35]:
To be dissatisfied and still blissful.

Nir Eyal [00:17:37]:
What changed my mind about why this is now possible is seeing case after case after case of examples of how people are able to disconnect pain from suffering. That I used to think that those were the same things, that those are synonyms and they're not. We can see in the psychology literature that that's not the case. It's actually two separate brain systems. And we see example after example of why that is not the case.

Jay Clouse [00:18:03]:
Say more about that. How are these things different?

Nir Eyal [00:18:05]:
I'll give you an example. Well, let me first back up for a second. You see, your brain is processing right now 11 million bits of information. 11 million bits of information are entering your brain right this second. The light entering your retinas, the sound of my voice in your ears, the ambient Temperature of the room, 11 million bits, is the equivalent of reading every word of War and Peace every second twice. It's a tremendous amount of information. Your conscious attention, what you call reality, what you think is the real world, is only 50 bits of information. That's the equivalent of one sentence per second.

Nir Eyal [00:18:42]:
So your brain simply cannot deal with all that information. And so it has to filter it through this tiny pinhole that you call the real world to create this simulation of reality based on your beliefs. That's how your reality is filtered, because your brain just can't cope with all that information. So what that means is that based on how we are able to move that pinhole around, we can pay attention to certain things and tune out other things. For example, there's a case study in my book where I talk about a guy by the name of Daniel Gisler. Daniel was a commodities trader, very numbers guy, black and white, thinking, super analytical, the opposite of anything woo woo or spiritual whatsoever. And in his early 50s, he has this freak accident and he breaks his ankle bone and he has to have pins put into his ankle. And then a few years later, it's time to have these metal rods removed and he has to go under surgery.

Nir Eyal [00:19:41]:
But in the meantime, he comes across a technique, he comes across this video on YouTube, actually, that introduces him to what's called hypnosed. Hypnosudation is this ability, this practice that he learns to go under surgery without anesthesia. And he is able to tolerate a 55 minute procedure where scalpel is cutting into flesh, where metal screws are yanked from bone and there isn't even an anesthesiologist in the room. He's completely conscious. He hypnotizes himself. Not stage hypnosis wise, this is a very different process. And he's able to undergo this entire procedure without any sedation whatsoever, no local anesthesia, no topical, no general, no anesthesia whatsoever for 55 minutes. And the remarkable part about this is that tens of thousands of people have also done it, that it's in Belgium and France and Italy.

Nir Eyal [00:20:37]:
It's actually not that uncommon. A lot of people learn how to do this. So why do I tell you this story? Jay? I'm not advocating for hypnosudation. I'm not doing it anytime soon. I'm telling you this because we have no idea what we're capable of. That if Daniel Gissler and tens of thousands of other people are able to separate the signal, the 11 million bits of information that his brain was receiving informing that he was going under this surgery, that was undeniable. The signal, the pain was entering his brain, but he didn't turn it into suffering. He was able to move that pinhole of attention so that it didn't register as suffering.

Nir Eyal [00:21:10]:
And if Daniel Gissler can do it for 55 minutes with no sedation under surgery, what can we do when we say, I don't feel like making that YouTube video, I don't feel like doing that webinar right now. I don't feel like making those calls, whatever it might be. I don't feel like going to the gym. Why do we not achieve our goals? You know, the number one reason why we don't achieve our goals, whether it's as a creator, whether it's our relationship goals, whether it's our financial goals, our personal goals, across the board, why don't people meet their goals? There's only one big reason. It's not intelligence, it's not resources, it's not skills. The number one reason we don't achieve our goals is because we quit. Simple as that. Of course.

Jay Clouse [00:21:46]:
Right?

Nir Eyal [00:21:46]:
It's not that persistence guarantees success. It's that quitting guarantees failure. So if we know this, if we know the number one reason we won't succeed and achieve our goals is that we quit, how do we prevent quitting? Well, we stay motivated. Well, how do we stay motivated? And that's what beliefs are all about. That's why we talked about the belief triangle. But really underneath that, the reason we quit is because it doesn't feel good. I don't wanna. Right.

Nir Eyal [00:22:13]:
I don't feel like going to the gym. I don't feel like making those sales calls. I don't feel like doing that content today. Cause I don't feel like it's a feeling. It's pain, it's discomfort. So that's why I tell this story of Daniel. Because if he can do it, in fact, we all can as well.

Jay Clouse [00:22:27]:
How have you been able to identify when limiting beliefs are present? I'm guessing it's kind of a conscious shift in the beginning is recognizing there's this unconscious limiting belief. I have to consciously register that it's there and it's affecting my behavior. And then consciously do the mental judo to go the opposite direction. Am I understanding that correctly? Does it ever become subconscious? And can you give us an example of how you do that? As somebody who's now spent six years living this material?

Nir Eyal [00:22:59]:
It doesn't get easier. You get stronger. If there's one thing we know about the human mind is that the brain hates Changing its mind. The brain hates changing its mind. So we have these limiting beliefs. Why do we have these saboteurs in our brain that are constantly telling us this is going to hurt? You're not going to like it. You're not ready for this. You're not good enough.

Nir Eyal [00:23:20]:
Don't even try. It's too late. You're too old, whatever the case might be. Why do we even have that voice? We all have this voice in our head telling us these limiting beliefs. Because evolution doesn't care if you're happy. Evolution doesn't care if you're flourishing. Evolution doesn't care if you make those YouTube videos or write that newsletter. Evolution has one purpose.

Nir Eyal [00:23:38]:
It just wants to keep you alive long enough so that you can procreate. That's it. It wants to keep you safe. And so whatever served you in the past, whatever belief kept you alive back then, that's what your brain wants you to continue to do. So whether it's in that relationship that's stuck, whether it's in that business that's not going well, whether it's that new content you're trying, that's not happening for you, that you're suffering through, it's because these limiting beliefs are pulling you constantly towards passivity. Because again, evolution doesn't really care if you're meeting your full potential. That's not the goal. So what we have to do is consciously fight that.

Nir Eyal [00:24:16]:
It's almost like your face. Okay? We all have a face. And yet if I asked you, if I said, jay, look at your face. Go ahead, look at your face. Yeah. Where do you look exactly? You can't look at your face.

Jay Clouse [00:24:30]:
You can't face. Mirror.

Nir Eyal [00:24:31]:
Exactly. You need a mirror. You need something outside of yourself in order to reflect. And interestingly enough, we can see other people's faces just like we can see other people's limiting beliefs. Oh, you can tell me everybody. I can tell you my parents, limitations. My spouse's, my kids, my colleagues. I can tell you everybody's limitations.

Nir Eyal [00:24:49]:
I can't tell you my own because to me, they feel like facts. You don't understand. I have this condition in my life, and I have this diagnosis, and this is the trauma that happened to me. And you've never met my parents. You don't know what they did to me. And I had this business partner, and he screwed me this way. And that's why I. It's all because of your brain desperately trying to hold onto its current state of mind, its current beliefs, to keep you safe, because that's what kept you safe before.

Nir Eyal [00:25:12]:
So in order to change these limiting beliefs and turn them into liberating beliefs, we have to have a process. It's not very difficult, but we have to essentially take out these limiting beliefs, see them for what they are, reflect on them the way we would reflect on a mirror to see our face, ask ourselves if these beliefs are actually serving us. And there's a bit of a process to do that, which I'm happy to share, and then we have to, in small doses, see if these liberating beliefs fit us better. And at first it's very difficult because, again, your brain is trying desperately to not get you to change its mind, even if that's what you need to get to the next level, but by repeating those liberating beliefs constantly. That's exactly how I started the answer to this question. It doesn't get easier, you get stronger. What really helped me excel, I think, is when I stopped trying to will the chaos away. That was really a turning point.

Nir Eyal [00:26:02]:
You know, there's Schopenhauer, the philosopher said that life is that which fights entropy. I think it's a beautiful definition. We think of what is life? What does it mean to be alive? Like, why is a piece of coral alive? And why is, you know, what makes things alive? It is that which fights entropy, meaning we should never expect things to, like, fall in place, that things will just be easy one day, that one day there's going to be a perfect afternoon. It just doesn't happen that life is that which fights chaos. And so when I now tell myself that, when I have that liberating belief that I repeat throughout the day, when I've got a bajillion emails and a thousand things to do and things aren't going right and deals fall through or whatever, it's one of those liberating beliefs. This is what it means to be alive. There'll be perfect order when I'm dead and all the atoms and molecules in my body return to the soil. That's when there's peace.

Nir Eyal [00:26:53]:
That's when there's a lack of chaos. Until then, that's what it means to be alive.

Jay Clouse [00:26:59]:
After a quick break, Nir walks us through what he calls the turnaround, the practical steps for changing a limiting belief into a liberating belief, it's really powerful. You'll see it happen live. You don't want to miss this, so stick around. We'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Nir Eyal. Do you still experience this liberating belief? As a step two, meaning, like, you have the limiting belief. You see it, and you're like, that's not a useful story. This is the useful story.

Jay Clouse [00:27:29]:
Or have you usurped the limiting belief entirely with natural, liberating beliefs?

Nir Eyal [00:27:35]:
I've gotten stronger at doing it. So the some things that used to be very hard for me, that were very annoying, that would cause me a lot of suffering today don't cause me suffering at all. Like, basic annoyances. You know, it used to be if I was on a plane and there was a baby crying, ugh, that would drive me crazy. Or there's traffic or somebody cuts me off. That kind of stuff I've practiced now with these liberating beliefs. That kind of stuff is water off a duck's back for me because I practiced again and again and again. Another liberating belief that I constantly repeat to myself is, this is not happening to me.

Nir Eyal [00:28:09]:
It's happening for me. I mean, just this morning, I dropped a cup of coffee, okay? That used to piss me off. That used to cause me suffering. Drop the coffee again. You know, Now I literally said to myself, great, I get to practice patience. That's a liberating belief right now. Does it sound hokey? Is it a little weird? Maybe, but it serves me. It's a tool, not a truth.

Nir Eyal [00:28:34]:
I can choose that belief. I can choose that perspective. So what does that do to my day? I'm free. I don't have to suffer from that kind of stuff. Other beliefs, like, I can tell you what happened with my mom was another whole story there. But I'm happy to tell you about, like. And it's a good illustration of how we change our beliefs around relationships. You know, just as we don't see our world clearly, we do not see other people.

Nir Eyal [00:28:57]:
Clearly, we see our beliefs about people. You want me to share that one?

Jay Clouse [00:29:00]:
Yeah, please.

Nir Eyal [00:29:01]:
So. And you can substitute. You know, a lot of people have issues with their parents, but you can substitute any relationship or any limiting belief for that matter, anywhere where you think you're stuck, you know, you know what to do. But something's not happening. It's not changing. So let me tell you what happened. So, a few years ago, it was my mom's 74th birthday, and I wanted to do something nice for her, and so I decided to get her some flowers for her birthday. The problem was I was in Singapore and she was in central Florida, where I grew up.

Nir Eyal [00:29:28]:
It's kind of a pain to get her flowers, so I had to call a local florist, and I Had to make sure that the flowers were delivered on time and just the right bouquet so that she, you know, she would like it. And I was sure that she would call me up the next morning and say, wow, what beautiful flowers. You're such a good son. That's not what happened, Jay. What happened was, is that I called her and said, hey, mom, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers I sent? To which she said, yes, I did. Thank you. But just so you know, those flowers were half dead, so don't order from that florist again.

Nir Eyal [00:30:01]:
To which I said something like, well, that's the last time I buy you flowers.

Jay Clouse [00:30:07]:
Did you say it?

Nir Eyal [00:30:08]:
I was thinking, did you say it? I hate to admit it. Yeah, no, no, I said it. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I said it. And it went over about as well as you'd expect. Not so good. And my wife, she was sitting right next to me during this birthday call, and she turned to me and she said, would you like to do a turnaround on this? To which I said, no, I do not want to do your touchy feely, hocus pocus mumbo jumbo. I need to vent. Right? That's what we're told to do.

Nir Eyal [00:30:35]:
You're supposed to speak your truth. When someone offends you, you're supposed to tell them how you. How they did you wrong. You're supposed to tell them how you feel. You're not supposed to keep your feelings inside, God forbid. You're supposed to get them out there. Well, that's exactly what the research says. Not to do that.

Nir Eyal [00:30:49]:
Just as we don't see reality clearly, we can't. We're only seeing that 50 bits of information versus the 11 million bits of information. We don't see things as they are. We definitely don't see people as they are. We see people as an effigy of what we think they are. And every time we vent about them, every time we complain, every time we gossip, we are reinforcing the way we see them until we actually do see them that way. That's so like her. She always does this.

Nir Eyal [00:31:12]:
There he goes again. Right. So actually venting is very counterproductive. So I had enough sense not to do that, and instead I used a technique called inquiry based stress reduction. Inquiry based stress reduction is a technique that's been scientifically validated, several studies. Now, it came from a woman by the name of Byron. Katie. This technique has been used for thousands of years.

Nir Eyal [00:31:31]:
Before that, actually, all the way back to Aristotle, used a very similar technique and here's how the technique works. You take the belief that is causing you suffering so everyone listening can do this right now. Think of that thing you know you want, okay? I want to create a course. I want to create more content. I want to start the business. I want to write a book. I want to repair a relationship. I want to go to the gym.

Nir Eyal [00:31:52]:
Whatever it is that you know you are capable of doing, that thing that's been on your New Year's resolution year after year, the thing that where you're somehow stuck, it's just not happening for you. I want you to think about that and ask yourself, what's causing your suffering? Where does the suffering come from? What's the belief that you have that is keeping you stuck? For me, what was causing me suffering was that my mother was too judgmental and hard to please. Okay? And again, you can substitute any limiting belief here for this exercise. I want you to try and follow along if you can, because I think we'll all benefit from it. It's pretty powerful. So you write down that belief. My mother is too judgmental and hard to please with mine. And then you ask yourself four questions.

Nir Eyal [00:32:29]:
The first question is, is it true? Jay, back me up here. You heard what my mom said. Was she being too judgmental and hard to please? Just say yes. It's a rhetorical question.

Jay Clouse [00:32:40]:
Sure.

Nir Eyal [00:32:41]:
Yes, absolutely she was. Jay, that's the correct answer.

Jay Clouse [00:32:44]:
I'm like, I don't know if she was.

Nir Eyal [00:32:46]:
Yes, she was definitely too judgmental and hard to please. It was. Come on, you just say thanks. You don't tell your son who sent you flowers that the flowers weren't nice. That's super judgmental. Stupid question. Let's move on to the second question. The second question is, is it absolutely true? Okay, so now I had to pause for a second.

Nir Eyal [00:33:06]:
Absolutely means in all instances, without exception, every single. There is no possible other explanation. Well, was I 100% absolutely sure? Eh, maybe not. There might be a 1% chance that there was another reason other than her being judgmental. Maybe. Okay, fine. The third question. Who am I when I hold onto this belief? How do I feel? Who do I become? Well, I'm kind of impatient.

Nir Eyal [00:33:35]:
Kind of this 13 year old version of myself that I don't really like. Not very nice. Fourth question. Who would I be without this belief? If I had some magic wand that I could wave and poof, that belief disappeared. It never existed in the first place. I'm totally unaware of even the possibility of that belief existing in the first place. How do I feel, who do I become? Well, just the prospect of that. I felt lighter, I felt better, I felt happier.

Nir Eyal [00:34:01]:
I felt more like myself. Okay, so in just about 30 seconds and four questions, we determined that that thing that I thought was a fact was just a belief that that belief wasn't really serving me, and it would be great if I didn't have it anymore. I feel way better. Okay, so now we do the Turnaround. The Turnaround asks us to consider a portfolio of perspectives. You don't have to change your mind again. The brain hates changing its mind. So just saying I have to change my mind is not going to work.

Nir Eyal [00:34:27]:
Your brain's going to hate it. You're going to find every excuse why this won't work for you, why you're the exception. You're not going to do that. You're just going to say, how do I collect a different perspective? Like I collect Pokemon cards or baseball cards or a stock portfolio, Just other options. Because right now I've only got one. The only belief I have is my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Let's see if I can collect others to do that. I asked myself, could the exact opposite be true? Could the exact opposite be true? That creating content sucks.

Nir Eyal [00:34:56]:
Could the exact opposite be true? That person is annoying. Could the exact opposite be true that I can't go to the gym because I don't have time? Could the exact opposite be true? Whatever the limiting belief that you have, could the exact opposite be true? My limiting belief, My mother is too judgmental and hard to please. The opposite. One opposite could be my mother is not too judgmental and hard to please. How could that be true? Well, she did thank me for the flowers, and she was just saying a statement of fact. So maybe she was just trying to make sure I didn't get scammed by this florist. Maybe she was trying to help, not hurt. Okay, well, now I've got two beliefs.

Nir Eyal [00:35:33]:
Let's do a third. Instead of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. An opposite might be I am too judgmental and hard to please. How could that be true? Well, since the night before, I had rehearsed in my head that I deserved effusive praise. And when it didn't come exactly in the words that I had expected, I lost it. So who exactly was being judgmental? I was. Okay, now here's a fourth. I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself.

Nir Eyal [00:36:08]:
What does that mean? How could that be true? Well, the more I thought about it, when something I had planned didn't go well. I felt like I was incompetent. I felt like it was my fault, like I had messed up. And so this is what's called a misattribution of emotion. Whenever we feel crummy, we look for someone to attribute it to someone outside of us that caused our feelings. You caused my suffering. And that's exactly what I did. So now, Jay, let me ask you.

Nir Eyal [00:36:36]:
Which one of these four beliefs that I've now collected, which one is true, which one is false?

Jay Clouse [00:36:42]:
Hard to say.

Nir Eyal [00:36:42]:
All of them.

Jay Clouse [00:36:43]:
Yeah.

Nir Eyal [00:36:44]:
None of them. Who cares?

Jay Clouse [00:36:46]:
Yeah. Like, if we're talking about the difference between fact and not fact, hard to say definitively that any of those are fact.

Nir Eyal [00:36:54]:
Right. Exactly. It's not one of Newton's laws that my mother is judgmental and hard to please. Although, maybe if Newton had met my mom, maybe he'd agree with me. But these are just beliefs. One belief. The first belief I had, our limiting belief, by definition, decreased my motivation and increased my suffering. How likely am I to work on a relationship with someone when I think they're too judgmental and hard to please? Screw that.

Nir Eyal [00:37:16]:
I don't want to deal with that person. Right. So my motivation to work in that relationship decreased and my suffering increased. Even when she wasn't in the room, I was suffering from what had happened. Why? That's on me because I was holding onto this limiting belief. That's the way it is. And how much time do we spend arguing with people? Well, when you said that, you hurt me because you meant to say we can't even see our own reality. We think we can see somebody else's reality.

Nir Eyal [00:37:40]:
No, impossible. And if you stand there and wait for the other person to change so that you can be happy, it ain't gonna happen. Right. The only way I could get out of that suffering with belief number one was that my mom had to change so I could be happy. You don't know my mom, Jay. But that's not going to happen. It almost never happens with people. But the other three beliefs, I could do something with.

Nir Eyal [00:38:02]:
Now, that's something where I could change the suffering in my life. Right. And so that shift, that perspective changed. Now I could try it on. Doesn't mean I have to be best friends with my mom. Doesn't mean that I always have to hang out with her. No. It just means I don't have to suffer anymore.

Nir Eyal [00:38:18]:
And so that's what this is all about. And you could do this, I'm telling you, with everything, for as many Tips and tricks and tactics we've all collected, we've all seen. If you can't get out of your own way and remove that suffering, you will burn out. You're not gonna sustain yourself. And so the secret, if you look at the top performers in every field, athletics, the arts, content creation, business, these are people who have somehow figured out how to take the same signal, the same pain that we all feel and turn it into something else. They don't suffer from it, they relish it. That's actually the secret of sustaining motivation. And we can do that by turning around our beliefs.

Jay Clouse [00:38:57]:
Is it too simplistic to say that a lot of the magic here is just being aware of the story you're telling yourself and making sure it's a useful story?

Nir Eyal [00:39:05]:
That's certainly part of it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if that's easy for you, awesome. What we find is that for some people, they can do that in one area of their life. I've never met somebody who can do that with all the areas of their life. No matter how successful we are, I mean we know a lot of very successful people and you'll hear them have these type of liberating beliefs around one area, but then in other area they're stuck or they have one goal that they're still stuck on. They have trouble seeing that the belief they have is not useful. But yeah, in simple terms, it's exactly it.

Nir Eyal [00:39:39]:
It's this question actually, this is, you know, I get this question a lot. How do you help someone else change their mind? They love that. People love asking me that question. I don't want to change my mind. How do I change other people's minds? And so you can't change someone's mind. What you can do, however, is prompt them to consider, okay, what is that belief that you think is in your way? What's causing you suffering? And then is that belief useful? Is it helpful or is it hurtful?

Jay Clouse [00:40:06]:
Yeah. After our retreat, I recorded kind of a recap episode of like some of the notes that I took that I'm like, I want to remember these things. And as I'm just recording on air, I mentioned that Sahil Woke up at 4:30 on Tuesday and went for a 12 mile run. And I followed that fact up by saying we are not the same. And I thought to myself, that's not a very useful story to tell myself. That's a very limiting, that's a limiting belief to say that is true. It's maybe reflective of the current reality because of some of these stories. I've told myself, but am I unable to make changes to make similar decisions? No, I can totally do those things.

Nir Eyal [00:40:48]:
Yeah, well, these limiting beliefs, the tricky part is that they're always grounded in something that seems true. I mean, it is technically true that you are not the same. So that's a fact. You are not the same. But what you're implying when you said that is we are not the same people. Fact. So I can't do that. Not fact, belief, because it's about the future.

Nir Eyal [00:41:10]:
You don't know if that's a fact. You probably could. I mean, that's not even crazy at all. That's not impossible. You probably could wake up at 4 in the morning and do a 12 mile run. You may not want to. And even that you could probably change by changing into a liberating belief.

Jay Clouse [00:41:23]:
Because again, and also, maybe he doesn't want to. I don't even know that that's true. Maybe that's something that he's like, this is it, this is part of the practice. Because there's lots of things that I do reliably.

Nir Eyal [00:41:32]:
Yeah, your brain instantly snapped into that limiting belief because you know, if you admitted the truth that actually you probably could do that, you're gonna suffer. It's gonna hurt. Now I have to admit that I didn't run when I could have. Ugh, misattribution of emotion. I feel crappy. It's cause we're different.

Jay Clouse [00:41:54]:
I'm still trying to figure out like what is the way that I can. It almost feels like I need to be living simultaneously in first and third person to do this. Well, to notice when I am having a limiting belief. So at that point I can intervene. How do we start this when we haven't had practice? When you were getting started with this material, how did you help yourself to identify when these limiting beliefs are creeping in and changing your behavior versus just operating at a subconscious level?

Nir Eyal [00:42:24]:
It's funny you should say, have you heard about ilism? You said speaking in the third person. That's actually a known technique.

Jay Clouse [00:42:30]:
No.

Nir Eyal [00:42:30]:
Yeah. Well, you should go into psychology because that is actually a known tactic of speaking to yourself in third person. It sounds ridiculous. You say, Jay is having a hard time at such and such or whatever actually is one of the known techniques where you are distancing yourself from yourself so that you can give yourself a more objective opinion. Almost in the way that you talk to a good friend. I don't know if you've ever tried this, but it works like a charm. If you ever can Find someone who has the same problem you do and give them advice. You will be a fricking genius.

Nir Eyal [00:43:02]:
You would be amazed at the amazing consulting insights that you can give someone who is not you about the same problems you have.

Jay Clouse [00:43:12]:
It's seeing their face, right? I can see their face. So, yeah, I mean, I get that it's a practice, but I'm just thinking to myself, what do I do to give myself the reminder that something might be preventing me here? I think back to that old idea that if you're trying to remember something, tie a ribbon on your finger. And then when you see that, you'll think, what was that for? Oh, that's the thing I was trying to remember. I want to give people some sort of tool to say as you're going about your day, I would love for someone just to identify in real time that this is something that's limiting them. But I feel like there needs to be some sort of trigger. Or maybe it's just an end of day reflection.

Nir Eyal [00:43:51]:
Could be. I'll tell you what I did. So the hardest part is actually not the reminder. The hardest part is finding the limiting belief in the first place, if you can do that. So I call this finding the muck, because the muck is where you are stuck. So that exercise we did, where I shared what I did with my mom, if you were following along as you were listening and you could identify, okay, you know what? I have a belief that making content sucks. I have a belief that starting a business is bad. I have a belief that getting rich means you're greedy.

Nir Eyal [00:44:20]:
I don't know what the limiting belief might be. Whatever. You have a belief that is keeping you from doing what you're doing, and for you, it's gonna feel like a fact. That's where people really struggle. The hardest part is actually not changing into that new liberating belief. It's having the intellectual humility to. To admit that what you are sure is a fact is probably just a limiting belief. That's actually the hardest part.

Nir Eyal [00:44:43]:
After you've done that, it's not that hard. Like, for example, okay, so I used to really struggle with distraction. My second book was called Indistractable. And it's really. It's been a kind of lifelong problem. I've been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. So it's always been a challenge for me. And forever when I was doing something hard, you know, when I was writing and the writing got difficult, I would say, well, we all say, right, I need a break.

Nir Eyal [00:45:11]:
Let me Just check email. Let me look at social media. I just need a quick minute. You know, I need a refresher. I'll get back to this later. You know, all of these limiting beliefs around why I can't, why I needed to quit. And as we know, quitting is the number one reason you're going to fail. So now once I determine that, really, you know what? I wasn't quitting because I was actually spent, right? That's a limiting belief.

Nir Eyal [00:45:31]:
Even the whole idea of willpower now is being challenged in the psychology literature. That turns out to be probably that willpower. Even that concept is a myth, a limiting belief itself. So what did I do? I forged a liberating belief. The liberating belief, every time I get tired at my desk, every time I want to get distracted, I take a second and I repeat my liberating belief, which for years I put as a little post it note near my keyboard. And that liberating belief is, this is what it feels like to get better. That's it. This is what it feels like to get better.

Nir Eyal [00:46:05]:
So that every time I really wanted to go check email or sports scores or stock prices or whatever, I saw that little post it note that said, this is what it feels like to get better. And now it's memorized. Right now I have that liberating belief in my brain. And when it gets difficult, it pops to mind. But what does that statement mean? Well, it means that the same signals are being processed, right? The 11 million bits of information are telling me I'm tired, I'm bored, I'm uncertain, I'm anxious, I'm fatigued, whatever. They're still entering my brain. And you know what? That's not something to run away from. That's not something that I used to say, I can't handle it.

Nir Eyal [00:46:38]:
Let me scroll it away, let me click it away, let me drink it away, let me smoke it away. No, it's something that I can sit with and say, that's what it's supposed to feel like. That signal right there, that means I'm getting better.

Jay Clouse [00:46:49]:
I love that. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the circle of False Promise from your book because this graphic was extremely felt a little bit like a personal attack. In a way that's useful to me. Well, in a way I'm being facetious, but when I saw it, I'm like, oh, this is so familiar to me right now. And I'll read this out for folks who are listening in audio because there's a lot of steps here. And I don't want to put you on the spot to remember all of these steps in order. The circle of false promise as it's shown in Beyond Belief. The first step is positive fantasy.

Jay Clouse [00:47:24]:
The second step, brief emotional lift followed by reduced motivation, followed by minimal action, followed by poor outcomes, then disappointment, then worsening mood, then need for escape. And I find myself embroiled in this, especially in the book process. But I think I could stand this in for anything that takes long term effort. Long term effort in which you've placed a lot of hope and excitement on the outcome. But I would love to hear you talk about this and how you identified this and how you think it plays into a lot of people's lives. Sure.

Nir Eyal [00:48:05]:
So one of the misinterpretations of everything I've been saying so far and about the power of beliefs is that isn't this just positive thinking? Right. It's like manifesting. Right. And that's like the worst put down you can say about my work. Because nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the chapter that you're quoting from, it's called the negative side of positive thinking. Because when we look at the research literature on positive thinking, on manifesting, on visualization exercises, even the research is pretty damning that in fact not only do these techniques not work, they are actively harmful. Why? Well, Gabrielle Ochogen did this wonderful experiment, this researcher, she had people do a visualization exercise where they were visualizing their goals, they were visualizing the end states.

Nir Eyal [00:48:53]:
They're doing like a manifestation exercise. I want a beach body. I want to live in a mansion. I want abundance, I want love in my life. They were doing this visualization exercise about the end goals. Kind of like what you were saying you're doing about the book writing process. I want to have written a best selling book. Okay.

Nir Eyal [00:49:08]:
And what she found was, is that when people did these exercises, as she monitored their heart rate and their blood pressure, they physiologically became more relaxed and they became less likely when she followed up with them to actually do the things that were required to get those outcomes. So, for example, students who visualized getting an A on exam and manifested a good grade, got worse grades and were less likely to study because in a way you've offloaded the work. Well, the universe is. I'm vibrating at the frequency of the universe or whatever, whatever. It's going to bring me these things so I don't have to do that much that doesn't work. So any outcome oriented goal setting process where it's all about the ends is going to flop. It's going to be less likely you're going to achieve your goals. But people say, well, but visualization, there's a lot of evidence that visualization works.

Nir Eyal [00:50:00]:
Don't athletes visualize? Well, what exactly do athletes visualize? It's a wonderful example of how the self help industry took something that is true and made it false. If you talk to professional athletes, many of them do use visualization exercises. But what exactly are they visualizing? They are not visualizing the trophy and the medal. They're visualizing what they are going to do when a difficulty, when an obstacle gets in their way, both physically and psychologically. So I'm on offense and defense is coming at me. What am I gonna do when that happens? I'm skiing down the mountain and I slip up. What am I gonna do to get back on track? That's what they're visualizing. And the same goes for us.

Nir Eyal [00:50:42]:
If you only visualize the outcomes, you're gonna be disappointed because you haven't prepared for the pain. And this is a great summary for everything we've talked about. The reason that these techniques backfire is that if you haven't psychologically prepared for that discomfort as soon as it happens, ugh, I'm not cut out for this, or I'm not vibrating hard enough, or I don't know, whatever people say, you know, this hocus pocus stuff. Because in reality, if you haven't psychologically prepared for that discomfort, it's going to turn straight into suffering and you're going to quit. And we know where that leads. So that's the right way to do it. You know, for example, I used to be clinically obese. That's the kind of stuff you don't get in my resume.

Nir Eyal [00:51:21]:
That I used to be not just overweight, but actually clinically obese. And one of the breakthroughs I had wasn't visualizing a beach body. That wasn't helpful. That didn't get me to the gym. That didn't get me to eat right. What was very effective was visualizing what am I gonna do when I go to this party next week and someone offers me a piece of chocolate cake and I really want the chocolate cake, and I feel bad telling the person no. That's what I had to visualize. I had to prepare myself psychologically for the discomfort that I needed to overcome.

Nir Eyal [00:51:52]:
Not the obstacle per se, but the feeling. In my way, it's more like practice

Jay Clouse [00:51:58]:
or rehearsal in your head more than it is actually like visualizing the End state. It's getting more reps in a way.

Nir Eyal [00:52:05]:
That's right. That's right. That's exactly. But. And physically, like, if you look at fighter pilots, when the fighter pilots, you know, the Blue Angels, when they literally will sit there with their eyes closed in formation, in chairs, and they will physically practice in their minds what's going to happen in the air. So that's practicing physically, and we can do the same thing psychologically. Okay, I'm feeling really tired and really bored. I know it's going to happen when I'm making my content.

Nir Eyal [00:52:27]:
What am I going to tell myself? What am I going to say? What am I going to do to make sure I don't go off track? That now becomes the obstacle.

Jay Clouse [00:52:34]:
Last question I'll ask you here. And I don't quite know how to phrase it, but it actually stems from the retreat we were on last week. The fact that I was at that retreat was evidence that people there believed in me and maybe even believed in me more than I believe in myself sometimes. So what do you do when you recognize that other people have more liberating beliefs for you than you have for yourself?

Nir Eyal [00:53:02]:
That's a good one. Well, I think you ask yourself, is what you believe a fact?

Jay Clouse [00:53:10]:
Same process, right?

Nir Eyal [00:53:11]:
Yeah. Why are you the authority? Yeah, why are you the authority, Jay? Who says that you get to make this judgment about yourself? Why make that judgment of yourself? Is it helpful?

Jay Clouse [00:53:24]:
Right.

Nir Eyal [00:53:25]:
What's more helpful?

Jay Clouse [00:53:26]:
Right.

Nir Eyal [00:53:27]:
What gives you more motivation? Thinking, I'm an imposter. I don't deserve to be here. Which, by the way, imposter syndrome. Ugh. God damn you, Imposter syndrome. People think it's a syndrome. People think it's a thing. Because you put the word syndrome and it sounds like it's an official diagnosis.

Nir Eyal [00:53:40]:
It is not. Okay? Stop saying imposter syndrome. Completely a limiting belief. It does not exist, people. It's totally made up. It's not in the dsm. No psychologist is going to diagnose you with imposter syndrome. Stop it.

Nir Eyal [00:53:51]:
It's not helping you. And we do this all the time. And I'm not saying you specifically, but you know, I have imposter syndrome. I'm a Sagittarius. I'm an entj. This is my anagram. This is my diagnosis. This is my label.

Nir Eyal [00:54:04]:
Your labels become your limits. Your labels become your limits. Now, there are some labels that can help you, right? If you say, I'm really great at my job, which you are. Right. Like you would agree. You think that's a fact. And that's fantastic. That's something that can enhance you when you have this label of who you are.

Nir Eyal [00:54:22]:
But if it's a label, that becomes your ceiling, that becomes your limitation. Who says you need it? And thinking, well, I'm an imposter here. I don't belong here. Everybody's more successful than I am. Is that a fact? Is it really? Absolutely, 100% True?

Jay Clouse [00:54:37]:
No, no, no.

Nir Eyal [00:54:40]:
That's right. That's exactly right. And what would be. I'm just curious. What would be. Let's turn it around. Let's do it. Okay.

Nir Eyal [00:54:47]:
So we can skip through the four steps. You see, now, it's not a fact. It's just a belief. What does it feel like when you hold onto the belief that I don't deserve to be here? Ah.

Jay Clouse [00:54:58]:
Defeating. Awful. Suffocating.

Nir Eyal [00:55:01]:
Okay. And now here I have this magic wand. You see this? This is a magic wand. I'm gonna tap your head, and I want you to imagine you never had that belief, and I want you to tell me how it feels. You never even had that notion.

Jay Clouse [00:55:12]:
Way better. Much more empowering. Every piece of information is viewed through a different lens, you know? Yeah, totally. It's been a journey. And this is why I think this work is so important right now. I agree with you that this is one of the biggest, most missing areas of people's lives. Especially now that we have perfect ability to compare ourselves to anybody, anywhere, anytime, who is at any stage of their career, and we feel like we should be there.

Nir Eyal [00:55:43]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:55:43]:
So I think this is a great antidote.

Nir Eyal [00:55:45]:
Yeah. You know what was interesting about what you just did, which I want everybody to notice, you held onto this belief that I don't deserve to be here. I'm an imposter. I'm not as successful as everybody else is. And you had that belief because it served some purpose. Right. You kept ruminating on it and thinking about it. You weren't even exactly sure how to say it, because I could tell it was kind of causing you that suffering that made it difficult to express.

Nir Eyal [00:56:10]:
And yet there was nothing helpful about that belief. Right. You told me you felt defeated, you felt demotivated. Right? And then when I suddenly said, here's this magic wand, it disappears. Did you see how your body changed? Did you see how you started smiling? How you. I think you said empowered. You felt more motivated. So this belief that we hold onto, that we think is the truth, we think is factual, and we think actually is making us better somehow, that I need to.

Nir Eyal [00:56:40]:
By the way, this is super common among creators that they have this another limiting belief. If I'm not suffering, I'm not working right. If I don't feel bad, then I can't do anything good. But it's the exact opposite. It's when you feel good, it's when you feel awesome. It's when you feel, this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Hell yeah, this is where I'm supposed to be. Do you see what you did with your arms? You, like, did this victory lap thing.

Nir Eyal [00:57:06]:
That's actually when we do our best work. That's when we live up to our full potential.

Jay Clouse [00:57:17]:
If you enjoyed this episode, I recommend you pick up a copy of Beyond Belief. There's a link in the show notes. That link also goes to support this show. And of course, I am once again asking you to please consider leaving a rating review on Apple Podcasts. I've been sharing those reviews on my Instagram. They are making my day and we're getting step by step closer to 500. That means a lot. I also love seeing your comments on Spotify.

Jay Clouse [00:57:39]:
If you're listening on Spotify, leave a comment there. You can leave a review there as well. We're getting close to 300 on Spotify and Spotify is very algorithmic. Your comments and your reviews make a big difference on Spotify to help grow the show. Thank you. Thank you. If you want to learn more about near, visit his website@nearandfar.com that's n I r a n dash dash far dot com. There's a link to that as well as a near's social media in the show notes.

Jay Clouse [00:58:04]:
Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next week.