The Art of Manliness - The Invisible Limits Holding You Back (And How to Change Them)

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00:02:03.280 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AOM Podcast,

00:02:06.760 which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders

00:02:11.400 that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler.

00:02:15.860 The AOM Podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues

00:02:20.080 through thought, word, and deed.

00:02:22.080 Also, be sure to explore our articles in ArtOfManliness.com, read the deeper dives we do in our Substack

00:02:26.900 newsletter at DyingBreed.net, and turn our content into real-world action by joining the

00:02:31.260 Strenuous Life program at StrenuousLife.com.

00:02:33.780 Now on to the show.

00:02:35.120 When we fail to make desired progress in life, most of us put the blame on physical and

00:02:46.520 environmental limits.

00:02:47.660 But my guest says that what's really holding people back is what's in their heads.

00:02:51.380 Nir Eyal is the author of Beyond Belief, the science-backed way to stop limiting yourself

00:02:55.240 and achieve breakthrough results.

00:02:57.360 Today in the show, he argues that much of how we think about ourselves, our abilities,

00:03:00.820 and what's possible becomes our reality, and that getting what we want in life often comes

00:03:05.060 down to changing how we perceive it.

00:03:06.840 Drawing on research in neuroscience and psychology, Nir shares the three powers of belief and how

00:03:11.560 they direct your attention, alter your expectations, shape your sense of agency, and determine whether

00:03:16.360 you stick with hard things long enough to see results.

00:03:19.160 Along the way, he shares ways to identify and challenge the limiting beliefs that can sabotage

00:03:22.820 your goals and relationships.

00:03:24.620 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash beyondbelief.

00:03:43.640 All right, Nir Eyal, welcome back to the show.

00:03:46.180 Thanks, man.

00:03:46.820 Great to be here, Brett.

00:03:47.620 So we had you on way back in 2019.

00:03:50.180 You're out with a new book called Beyond Belief, the science-backed way to stop limiting yourself

00:03:55.940 and achieve extraordinary results.

00:03:58.460 And this is about human motivation, and you think you found a missing factor that we need

00:04:04.320 to consider when we think about motivation.

00:04:06.560 How did your struggle with losing weight lead you to explore human motivation?

00:04:11.700 What's that story?

00:04:13.120 Yeah, so let's go all the way back to the beginning.

00:04:14.860 So for me, I struggled with my weight for a good chunk of my life.

00:04:20.880 Chunk being the right word, that would have been descriptive at the time.

00:04:23.200 I was the kid who never went into the community pool.

00:04:25.960 You know, when I was a kid, we had like one pool in our condominium complex, and all the

00:04:30.400 kids in the neighborhood shared it.

00:04:31.600 And I was the one who never went in without my shirt on, because I didn't want anyone to

00:04:34.740 see my belly rolls.

00:04:35.920 And I was super embarrassed by that.

00:04:37.760 And I finally decided to do something about it.

00:04:40.000 And I wasn't just overweight, Brett.

00:04:41.460 It was much worse than that.

00:04:42.740 I was actually clinically obese.

00:04:44.520 And I started dieting.

00:04:46.160 And over the next 30 years, my bookshelf became this graveyard of diet books.

00:04:51.420 First, I started with low-fat.

00:04:53.100 And I don't know if you remember those days of low-fat everything and snack wells.

00:04:57.360 Yes, snack wells, the devil cake.

00:04:59.040 Yeah.

00:05:00.280 All right.

00:05:00.820 So we're about the same age, if you remember snack wells.

00:05:03.120 And I would scarf those down.

00:05:04.680 And then after that, we determined that was not a good idea anymore.

00:05:07.660 So I became vegetarian.

00:05:08.920 And I ate nothing but tofu and potatoes.

00:05:11.140 And then after that, the pendulum swung.

00:05:13.540 And now it was low-carb everything.

00:05:15.960 And I went keto.

00:05:17.400 And then after that, let's see, what came after that?

00:05:19.300 After that, it was intermittent fasting.

00:05:20.920 That was the way to go.

00:05:22.320 And honestly, every diet worked until it didn't.

00:05:26.720 And I was on this rollercoaster ride of yo-yo dieting, because as soon as my belief

00:05:33.520 was shaken in that plan, as soon as someone said, oh, keto is bad for you because it's

00:05:38.200 bad for your kidneys, or vegetarians don't get all the nutrients they need, or whatever

00:05:41.340 the plan was, as soon as my confidence was shaken, I'd abandon the plan altogether.

00:05:46.500 And I'd go for a slice of pizza thinking, ah, you know, it's not going to hurt whatever

00:05:50.280 one slice of pizza.

00:05:51.080 And then, of course, the what-the-hell effect kicked in.

00:05:53.240 That's the real name of that psychological phenomenon, where I would say to myself, ah,

00:05:56.380 what the hell?

00:05:56.860 I already had the slice of pizza.

00:05:58.580 I'll start on a new plan tomorrow, so let me go ahead and chase it with the French 1.00

00:06:02.680 fries to complement the pizza.

00:06:04.560 And what I realized was that, you know, after 30 years of dieting, that I got control of

00:06:10.340 my weight.

00:06:10.660 Finally, I'm 48 years old, and this is the first time in my life that I'm in the best

00:06:13.200 shape I've ever been, and I, for the first time, consistently watch what I eat and see

00:06:17.320 results.

00:06:18.100 It's because my beliefs changed, is that I had a new conviction that I could do something

00:06:23.440 about the next thing that goes in my mouth, as opposed to the what-the-hell effect that

00:06:26.520 kept saying, okay, I'll start tomorrow, I'll start next week, I'll start in the new year,

00:06:30.320 et cetera.

00:06:31.160 And this has kind of led me to this discovery around why we don't put good knowledge into

00:06:37.040 action.

00:06:37.860 And we see this all the time.

00:06:39.080 You know, we have all kinds of advice books.

00:06:41.240 We have the internet.

00:06:42.160 We have now we have AI to answer our questions around what we should do.

00:06:44.960 And I think the main problem is that it's not that we don't know what to do.

00:06:48.260 The answers are all around us, right?

00:06:50.040 I basically know what to do to diet.

00:06:52.240 You have to eat, write, and exercise, like for the vast majority of people, unless you have

00:06:55.020 some kind of severe hormone imbalance.

00:06:57.060 That's pretty much the plan.

00:06:58.580 But we don't implement.

00:06:59.900 And so I think before, you know, I wanted to read another self-help book that I didn't

00:07:03.820 do anything with, I wanted to fundamentally understand what was missing.

00:07:06.780 And what was missing is that motivation is not a straight line.

00:07:10.040 We tend to think of motivation as if I want the outcome, if I want the benefit, I have to

00:07:14.500 do the behavior, right?

00:07:15.900 It's kind of a straight line.

00:07:17.200 Do the behavior, get the benefit.

00:07:18.500 But there's definitely something missing here.

00:07:19.860 Because I can want the benefit, and I can even know what to do, what behavior to do.

00:07:25.780 But if I don't have the beliefs in place to support what I call this motivation triangle

00:07:31.020 of on one side is the benefit, one side is the behavior, at the base of that triangle

00:07:34.840 is the belief.

00:07:35.740 For example, if I don't believe that my boss has my best interest and is going to give

00:07:40.040 me that promotion, for example.

00:07:41.360 If I don't believe in my own ability to do the behavior and that the behavior will reach

00:07:46.480 those outcomes, then the behavior triangle falls apart because the beliefs aren't there.

00:07:51.220 And I think that was what was missing for me and I think for millions of other people

00:07:54.620 who basically know what to do, and yet we don't implement what we know is good for us.

00:07:58.060 And I think that is the reason that we miss out on these powers of belief.

00:08:01.580 That's interesting because I can see that in my own life.

00:08:03.920 So I've had instances with my physical practice of weightlifting where I get injured,

00:08:09.580 a tendon injury.

00:08:10.360 And I'll go to the physical therapist and they'll recommend, okay, you need to do this

00:08:16.440 stuff for rehab.

00:08:18.520 And I do it and I'm like, I'm not seeing anything.

00:08:21.500 This seems so piddly. 0.94

00:08:22.600 Like, why am I doing these little dumb stretches? 0.94

00:08:24.980 And I stopped believing. 0.86

00:08:26.120 I'm like, yeah, this is not going to work.

00:08:27.560 And then I stopped doing the thing and then I don't get better.

00:08:29.920 And then finally, I have to go back to my physical therapist and he has to tell me, look,

00:08:33.160 I know it doesn't seem like it's working in the short term, but I promise you,

00:08:37.880 if you keep doing it, it will work.

00:08:40.740 And once I believe him, like, okay, I'm going to trust this guy.

00:08:44.200 I'm going to do the thing.

00:08:45.580 And then the rehab works.

00:08:46.980 It might take a while, but it does work.

00:08:49.840 Bingo.

00:08:50.480 You really hit the nail on the head here because what you've identified is the key

00:08:54.720 determining factor between who reaches their goals and who doesn't.

00:08:57.820 If you look at, okay, why do people not reach their goals?

00:09:00.680 The number one reason is not that they don't know what to do.

00:09:03.620 It's not a lack of resources.

00:09:05.660 It's not bad timing.

00:09:07.100 The number one reason people don't achieve their goals is that they don't persist.

00:09:11.640 How obvious is that?

00:09:12.680 We quit.

00:09:13.340 That's why we don't achieve our goals.

00:09:15.180 Why do we quit?

00:09:16.120 Even though we know it's good for us, even though we know what to do, why don't we do it?

00:09:20.620 And the reason is, is that there's a fundamental lack of belief.

00:09:23.800 And so if you don't know how to use these powers of belief, what I call the power,

00:09:28.800 the first power of belief is attention, the power to change what you see, power of anticipation,

00:09:33.200 the power to change what you feel.

00:09:34.240 And then the third power, the power of agency, the power to change what you do.

00:09:37.620 If you don't harness those beliefs and realize how powerful they are, how essential they are

00:09:42.160 to get you where you want to go, you're going to quit.

00:09:44.560 And that's what I did year after year, goal after goal.

00:09:47.480 Not that quitting is always bad.

00:09:49.080 I'm not anti-quitting.

00:09:50.000 Lord knows I've quit diets.

00:09:51.560 I've quit book projects.

00:09:52.860 I've quit businesses.

00:09:53.720 I've quit relationships.

00:09:54.700 It's not that quitting is necessarily the wrong thing.

00:09:57.140 It's that quitting too soon is a problem.

00:10:00.100 That's terrible.

00:10:00.840 When you know persistence could have made a difference and you quit and now you regret

00:10:04.920 looking back and saying, oh man, if I just had persisted a little bit longer, I would

00:10:08.480 have had all these benefits.

00:10:09.500 That's when we are destroying human capital.

00:10:12.260 And that's really what I'm fighting against.

00:10:13.880 Okay.

00:10:14.440 So you have this motivational triangle, benefit, behavior, and belief is the foundation of that

00:10:19.660 triangle.

00:10:20.380 How are you defining belief?

00:10:22.200 Like how is belief different from fact and faith?

00:10:26.660 Great question.

00:10:27.360 So a fact is an objective truth.

00:10:30.180 It is something that is true whether you believe in it or not.

00:10:32.500 So the world is more round than it is flat.

00:10:35.040 That's an objective truth.

00:10:36.340 It doesn't care what you think.

00:10:37.980 Sorry, flat earthers. 0.86

00:10:39.380 It's a fact.

00:10:41.140 Faith is the other end of the spectrum.

00:10:42.800 Faith is a strongly held conviction that does not require evidence.

00:10:47.180 So what happens to you in the afterlife?

00:10:49.260 No evidence is required.

00:10:50.660 God rewards the righteous.

00:10:51.940 If that's something that you have faith in, no evidence is required.

00:10:54.620 That is an element of faith.

00:10:55.940 Now, a belief is something different.

00:10:59.080 A belief is something in between a fact and faith.

00:11:01.940 It is a strongly held conviction open to revision based on new evidence.

00:11:06.340 A strongly held conviction open to revision based on new evidence.

00:11:09.140 And so the big aha, the thing that blew my mind doing this research was that beliefs, unlike facts or faith, beliefs are tools, not truths.

00:11:19.140 I'm going to say it one more time.

00:11:20.520 Beliefs are tools, not truth. 1.00

00:11:22.660 So many of our problems, our interpersonal problems, our personal issues, our geopolitical issues as well.

00:11:29.980 It goes all the way up there are caused because far too many people think that the things that they think are facts are nothing more than beliefs.

00:11:38.760 And we are bound by these beliefs that we refuse to look at, that we refuse to consider, thinking that they are facts.

00:11:47.160 And we put ultimate faith in many of these things, unfortunately, sometimes, while we restrict ourselves to have the freedom to take out these tools, look at them, assess them, and say, hey, are these helping me or are they hurting me?

00:11:58.640 So, for example, it's like a carpenter.

00:12:00.880 Would a carpenter say, oh, this hammer, this hammer is the one and only ultimate hammer?

00:12:05.580 No, a carpenter says, okay, sometimes the right tool for the job is a screwdriver, sometimes it's a saw, sometimes it's a hammer, but not always.

00:12:13.340 And so what I've learned is that being able to look at those beliefs critically and understand which ones serve me and which one hurts me is a life-changing practice.

00:12:24.040 It absolutely has changed my business.

00:12:25.820 It has changed my relationships.

00:12:27.320 It has changed my physical fitness.

00:12:28.700 Certainly, all of these things have been revolutionized because I am now able to get out of my own head, consider the things that were invisible to me.

00:12:36.660 I think in the metaphor to think about your limiting beliefs, and by the way, limiting beliefs are beliefs that sap your motivation, while liberating beliefs are beliefs that supply motivation.

00:12:46.360 And the best way to think about these limiting beliefs is that they're like your face.

00:12:51.580 You carry around your face all day long.

00:12:54.000 You know other people see your face, but you can't see your own face.

00:12:57.740 Unless you look in a mirror, you can't see your own face.

00:13:00.740 And that's exactly the same case with our beliefs, that the beliefs we most need to change are the ones we refuse to question.

00:13:08.440 They're the ones we can't even see.

00:13:10.540 We don't even realize, just like you can't see your face the way you can see your hands or your feet, you can't see your limiting beliefs.

00:13:16.520 Of course, other people can see them, and I can prove it to you.

00:13:19.440 Think about any random person you know close, like somebody you know well, your family member, a good friend.

00:13:25.060 I guarantee you, you could probably think of at least one limiting belief they have, something that saps their motivation to do the things that they know they want to do.

00:13:32.060 We can see them in others, but we can't see them in ourselves, and that is a huge impediment.

00:13:37.000 And the good news is, we can learn to take out those limiting beliefs, examine them, and then choose the ones that serve us.

00:13:43.080 This idea of beliefs as tools, and you look at your beliefs and ask, is this serving me or limiting me?

00:13:51.640 It reminded me of William James and the American philosophy school of pragmatism.

00:13:57.980 Are you familiar with pragmatism?

00:13:59.820 Yes, yeah, a little bit, yeah.

00:14:01.140 Yeah, so their whole idea is, I mean, the extreme version of pragmatism is truth is determined by what works in the world.

00:14:11.060 But I think you can take a modified view.

00:14:12.900 It's like, okay, you look at your beliefs and say, does this work for me?

00:14:17.020 Is it allowing me to achieve my goals, to live a flourishing life?

00:14:20.660 If yes, that's a good belief.

00:14:22.660 If not, bad belief, you need to change your belief.

00:14:26.020 So I think, I thought it was interesting.

00:14:27.200 I made that connection in your chapter describing beliefs.

00:14:29.920 There's so many good things that we, in modern psychology, come from William James.

00:14:34.440 I mean, he's really the granddaddy of all this.

00:14:36.820 And I think the wisdom there is that the vast majority of the decisions we make in our life, they're not based on fact.

00:14:44.640 They're not even based on faith, really.

00:14:46.100 They're based on beliefs.

00:14:47.460 They're based on these convictions that we stay open to revision based on evidence.

00:14:52.880 Should I marry this person?

00:14:54.380 Should I take that job?

00:14:56.040 Should I move to this city?

00:14:57.280 Should I read this book?

00:14:58.120 These are all not based on facts.

00:15:00.500 We like to think they're facts, but they're not.

00:15:01.900 They're based on beliefs.

00:15:03.280 And so you better choose those beliefs wisely, knowing that they have such an outsized impact on all the important decisions we make in our life.

00:15:10.440 All right.

00:15:10.520 So you mentioned earlier there are three powers of belief, attention, anticipation, and agency.

00:15:15.420 Let's go deeper into the attention aspect of belief.

00:15:18.500 How do our beliefs shape our attention?

00:15:21.120 So this research really blew my mind.

00:15:24.220 And it all starts from the fact that we don't see reality clearly.

00:15:27.280 If there's one thing I wish people understood about their beliefs, it's that your perception of reality is a simulation, that we all live in a simulation.

00:15:36.860 We don't live in the same simulation.

00:15:38.380 We all live in our separate simulation, so it's not quite like the matrix, but we are creating a simulation in our minds every single second.

00:15:45.620 Because the brain can only process about 50 bits of information consciously.

00:15:51.280 That's about one sentence per second, 50 bits of information.

00:15:54.000 That's your conscious attention.

00:15:56.060 However, your brain is taking in, it's absorbing about 11 million bits of information per second.

00:16:02.260 So 11 million bits versus 50 bits of information.

00:16:05.520 So you're only consciously processing 0.000045% of the information entering your brain.

00:16:11.340 What kind of information is not being processed, at least not consciously?

00:16:14.800 The sound of my voice right now compared to the hum of the room or the light entering your retinas or the temperature on your skin, this information is being collected.

00:16:24.440 And in fact, if you focus on it, if you place attention to those things, you will actually experience them.

00:16:29.200 They will enter conscious control, kind of like a security camera going through a surveillance of different cameras.

00:16:34.520 You can pay attention to those things, but the problem that the mind has in terms of conscious attention is that it simply is too much information.

00:16:41.900 It can't process all this information that's entering the brain consciously.

00:16:44.680 So what it has to do, it has to create a simulation.

00:16:47.620 It has to predict what it's going to see.

00:16:50.180 This is called predictive processing rather than what actually is.

00:16:53.660 So we all live in the simulation in our own minds.

00:16:56.240 And what the brain decides to filter, and here's really the key takeaway, is how the brain decides what 50 bits of information are entering your conscious attention are beliefs.

00:17:08.200 Your past experiences, what we call priors, these lenses with which we see the world, that determines your conscious attention, all determining this power of beliefs of attention.

00:17:17.320 Which means that two people can see the exact same thing, literally the exact same thing in front of them, and come up with completely different explanations as to why they're seeing.

00:17:27.640 For example, there's an optical illusion.

00:17:29.720 It's not really an illusion.

00:17:30.500 It's just an image called the coffer illusion.

00:17:33.680 And I can show this image to one person, and based on where they grew up, they will see rectangles.

00:17:39.900 I can show the exact same image, the same exact image to someone else, and they'll see circles.

00:17:46.680 We know that people who are on a diet see food as larger.

00:17:50.440 People who are afraid of heights see distances as further away.

00:17:53.960 We've all probably experienced going to some kind of athletic event, a football game, and the ref makes a call, and one team, all the fans see the call one way, and the other team, all the fans see it a different way.

00:18:05.540 Of course, when you think about geopolitics, the same exact thing can happen in the news, and based on your nationality, you will have completely different interpretations of what just happened.

00:18:15.100 So this goes on and on and on.

00:18:16.520 I mean, interpersonal.

00:18:17.660 There was an instance a few weeks ago where I came home, and I wanted to have a glass of water, and my wife saw that I was looking for a glass of water, and she said something like, all the glasses are in the sink.

00:18:28.260 And I immediately felt judged, like she was saying something as if I was supposed to have washed all the dishes.

00:18:33.860 But really, she was just saying a statement of fact.

00:18:36.540 But I heard it differently.

00:18:38.240 I experienced that.

00:18:39.600 I perceived what just happened completely differently than how she did.

00:18:42.820 She was just saying a fact, and I was seeing it as being judged.

00:18:46.480 So this goes on and on and on.

00:18:47.680 So what we pay attention to, what we believe is happening, literally can change what we see.

00:18:53.100 And so unless we gain power over that, we are essentially blinded to what is actually happening.

00:18:58.600 We're blinded to reality.

00:18:59.660 All right, so seeing isn't believing, believing is seeing.

00:19:04.140 That's exactly right.

00:19:04.880 That's perfectly said, or at least as much.

00:19:07.680 You know, we like to say that I'll believe it when I see it.

00:19:09.740 But really, just the opposite is also true, that you'll see it when you believe it.

00:19:15.440 How can our faulty beliefs limit ourselves and create problems for ourselves that don't really exist or may not exist?

00:19:22.900 All the time, we have extensive research around how people see problems that aren't there.

00:19:30.240 There's some beautiful classic studies.

00:19:31.820 So, for example, they showed people angry faces, a series of angry faces mixed with neutral faces, real images of people.

00:19:39.420 And all you had to do was click a button every time you saw an angry face.

00:19:43.260 And in this experiment, they showed, you know, it would be angry face, angry face, neutral face, neutral face, neutral face, angry face, right?

00:19:50.200 So it got some kind of random appearing order.

00:19:53.160 What the participants didn't know is that they actually reduced the number of angry faces over time.

00:19:57.760 And yet, people saw a consistent number of angry faces in this study because they started creating a reality that wasn't really there.

00:20:05.540 They literally saw things differently.

00:20:07.000 And we've seen this repeated time and time again.

00:20:08.860 You know, we want to replicate these studies.

00:20:10.600 We see this when we show people different colors.

00:20:12.220 So based on what they expect to see, they saw a circle that was more purple or more blue because they were different gradients based on what they expected.

00:20:20.520 I'll give you another wonderful example that demonstrates this.

00:20:23.280 There was a study done at Dartmouth where they took women and they told them,

00:20:27.540 we are going to do a study on how people treat those with facial disfigurements.

00:20:33.280 And so they created this very realistic scar, realistic looking scar on these women. 0.53

00:20:37.640 And they got them all ready.

00:20:38.860 And they said, okay, you see this scar?

00:20:40.020 They showed them in the mirror.

00:20:40.700 Here's the scar we put on you.

00:20:41.680 Now we're going to put you into a room with a study participant and we want you to observe how you are treated.

00:20:46.920 Okay, note how you are treated because of this scar.

00:20:50.100 But wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:20:51.100 Before you go to do this, can you just sit back here for just a quick second?

00:20:54.940 We just want to touch up the scar.

00:20:56.600 And what they didn't know was that the study was on them, was on these women with the scar, not the people they were talking to.

00:21:01.640 Because in that instant, they actually removed the scar without the participant knowing.

00:21:07.240 They didn't show them what their face actually looked like in the mirror.

00:21:10.160 So these women went into a conversation with someone they thought they were observing how that person would behave based on their scar that did not exist. 0.99

00:21:19.520 There was no scar on their face.

00:21:21.300 And what many of these women reported was what they expected to find.

00:21:25.660 They saw reality differently.

00:21:27.240 They reported that they were discriminated, that people looked at them funny, that some people couldn't stand looking at their scar and looked away and fidgeted and did all these things that made them feel very uncomfortable because of this scar that didn't exist.

00:21:39.960 And so in many ways, we see what we believe we will see.

00:21:44.680 We experience reality in a way that we expect, based on what we pay attention to.

00:21:49.200 So many of us, unfortunately, create problems that don't even exist.

00:21:53.500 I'm sure people experience this on a personal level.

00:21:56.100 I know public speaking is the biggest fear for a lot of people.

00:22:00.620 And I think what happens is you get really self-conscious about something, about the way you speak or the way you look.

00:22:06.600 And so you go into the event thinking, oh, my gosh, people are going to be paying attention to my stutter or how I say um a lot.

00:22:14.240 And then you're looking out in the audience.

00:22:16.120 And because you have that belief, like I am a bad public speaker, you think, oh, that person smiled because they're laughing at me.

00:22:23.360 Or that person fell asleep because they're bored because I'm boring.

00:22:27.780 And usually it's not that.

00:22:29.800 People aren't really paying attention to those things.

00:22:31.660 In fact, I think studies have shown people in audiences, they're actually rooting for the public speaker.

00:22:37.700 They want you to succeed.

00:22:39.440 All the time.

00:22:39.900 All the time.

00:22:40.340 That's so true.

00:22:41.260 That's so true.

00:22:42.100 But we have this limiting belief like, oh, these people want to see me fail and they're going to pay attention to my weaknesses.

00:22:46.780 But that's not happening.

00:22:49.040 No, not at all.

00:22:49.900 I mean, one of the first rules I learned about public speaking, which I do quite a lot now, is never apologize to an audience.

00:22:56.380 Most people, they get up on stage, oh, I'm sorry.

00:22:58.800 I have trouble preparing this presentation.

00:23:00.800 I'm sorry.

00:23:02.200 And that's not what people want because people want to cheer for you.

00:23:05.180 You're exactly right.

00:23:06.360 And in fact, what's so important about this, even if an audience doesn't like you, I don't know why.

00:23:11.540 Right.

00:23:11.660 Like, let's say you're delivering bad news and you think, oh, people are going to hate this message.

00:23:15.480 What the research shows, and this is really the takeaway of the book, beliefs are tools, not truths.

00:23:20.000 Because even if that is true, let's say that's true, and it's a belief we don't really know, right?

00:23:26.000 Does that mean everybody in the room is not cheering for you?

00:23:28.260 No, you don't have that kind of evidence.

00:23:29.780 That's not a fact.

00:23:30.740 But let's say you have this hunch.

00:23:32.200 It serves you to choose the opposite.

00:23:35.320 It serves you to use these beliefs as tools, not truths, and belief, everybody in this audience wants me to succeed.

00:23:41.380 Because how much better will you perform will change in how you perceive reality and therefore how you act when you believe what serves you.

00:23:50.380 So, for example, if you're running a marathon, is it true that you may not finish?

00:23:54.340 Yeah, that's true.

00:23:55.140 A lot of people don't finish marathons, right?

00:23:56.940 So thinking to yourself, I can't do this, you're guaranteed not to finish the marathon.

00:24:01.180 As opposed to, I can do this, you're going to persist.

00:24:04.400 So that's a perfect example of a limiting belief versus a liberating belief.

00:24:07.900 A limiting belief is the one that saps your motivation, whereas a liberating belief is one that gives you more motivation, enhances your performance, helps you persist longer, and, of course, eventually accomplish that goal.

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00:27:28.700 And now back to the show.

00:27:30.540 So something that can amplify these limiting beliefs that will change what we pay attention to

00:27:36.580 and kind of create this vicious cycle of poorer performance is rumination.

00:27:40.940 For those who don't know what rumination is, what is it, and then how does that just entrench ourselves more in limiting beliefs?

00:27:48.200 Yeah, so rumination is when we have an intense focus on some type of past event that we keep thinking about again and again and again.

00:27:55.800 It comes from how a cow chews its cud just to keep chewing and ruminating and chewing and chewing.

00:28:00.580 And it turns out the research shows it's not very helpful.

00:28:03.100 It's associated with all kinds of bad psychological symptoms to continue to ruminate over and over and over.

00:28:07.940 And the more we ruminate, this also happens with this bad advice that I'm very guilty of, venting.

00:28:14.160 We've been told from the popular psychological interpretation out there that you have to get stuff off your chest.

00:28:20.680 You have to tell people how you really feel.

00:28:22.760 You're not supposed to keep things inside.

00:28:25.140 It turns out in many cases that's terrible advice.

00:28:27.360 That, in fact, when we vent about people, when we ruminate about how we've been injured in some way, it makes us more likely to see those bad elements in people.

00:28:38.580 Because just like we don't see reality as it is, we see our beliefs about reality, we don't see people as they really are.

00:28:45.540 We see our beliefs about people, and we think that's how people really are.

00:28:49.300 And the really tragic thing is that this happens to the people we are closest to.

00:28:54.340 I see this all the time.

00:28:55.260 I'll meet somebody who's so nice, who's so kind to me as a stranger, and yet when I meet their spouse, when I meet their family, oh, my God, they're so rude to them.

00:29:03.760 They're rude to the people who they're closest to because to that person, they see the worst aspects of that person.

00:29:10.360 They don't see the person as they really are.

00:29:11.940 They see what they have been conditioned over and over.

00:29:14.480 He always does that.

00:29:15.900 She always says that.

00:29:17.020 There she goes again, and they've built this construct, this effigy of this person that doesn't really exist.

00:29:24.460 Yeah, you have a whole chapter about how this rumination on our negative beliefs can really mess up our relationships.

00:29:31.480 You talk about, this experience was funny, with your mother.

00:29:34.620 You sent her some flowers for her birthday.

00:29:36.760 You want to go there, huh?

00:29:38.080 Yeah.

00:29:39.300 Talk about how your faulty beliefs about your mother got in the way of you having a good relationship with your mother.

00:29:45.700 Then we talk about how can you mitigate our tendency to ruminate on faulty beliefs so that things improve for ourselves personally and with our relationships.

00:29:57.020 For sure, yeah.

00:29:58.220 This has really changed my life in many ways, but it was a long, painful road to get there.

00:30:02.820 A few years ago, my mom had her 74th birthday, and I was in Singapore.

00:30:08.500 She was in Central Florida, where I grew up, and I wanted to send her some flowers for her birthday.

00:30:13.120 Getting flowers from Singapore is not easy, and so I had to stay up until 1 in the morning finding the perfect florist with good reviews to make sure they could get it there on time just the way I wanted it so that I'd make sure the flowers were fresh and they wouldn't get burned in the car and the Florida heat and all that.

00:30:26.700 I went to sleep at 1 a.m. I patted myself on the shoulder, and I said, okay, Nir, good job. You're a good son.

00:30:34.260 I called her the next morning, and I said, hey, mom, did you get the flowers I sent?

00:30:37.620 She says, yes, I did. Thank you very much.

00:30:40.140 But just so you know, the flowers were half dead, and I wouldn't order from that florist again.

00:30:46.160 To which I saw what she said through a particular lens of belief, and I blurted out something to the effect of, well, that's the last time I buy you a birthday present.

00:30:58.960 And, Brett, that went over about as well as you think.

00:31:01.800 That did not go over too well.

00:31:03.380 And to be honest, I regretted that.

00:31:05.500 That was not what I intended to say, but that's what came out in the moment.

00:31:08.420 So, anyway, after the call, my wife turned to me, and she said, hey, would you like to do a turnaround on that?

00:31:15.720 To which I said, no.

00:31:18.300 I don't want any of your psycho blabble hocus pocus nonsense. 0.97

00:31:22.620 I want to vent. 0.96

00:31:23.600 I want to tell you how my mom was rude and wrong and how I was right.

00:31:27.100 And, yes, maybe I didn't say the exact right thing, but can you blame me?

00:31:29.420 I mean, come on, Brett.

00:31:30.040 You heard what I just said.

00:31:30.780 Like, what mom tells their son that the birthday present they just sent didn't meet expectations, right?

00:31:35.780 Clearly, my mom was being too judgmental and hard to please, right? 1.00

00:31:40.300 So, I sat down with that for a minute.

00:31:41.920 I didn't vent because I had done the research on how venting is not actually all that helpful.

00:31:46.280 And I sat down reluctantly with a piece of paper and a pen.

00:31:49.200 And I did this process called the turnaround, which comes from work by Byron Katie.

00:31:54.040 And Byron Katie really channeled thousands of years of practice, even Aristotle, actually.

00:31:58.980 This is an over 2,000-year-old practice, starting with Aristotle, of inquiring about your beliefs

00:32:04.360 and seeing are there alternative interpretations.

00:32:07.380 So, here's how it works.

00:32:08.100 It's basically four questions that Byron Katie has developed.

00:32:10.500 And I kind of have updated some of them to better suit our needs.

00:32:13.860 But here's what the four questions are.

00:32:15.440 Question number one starts with, first, you write down the belief.

00:32:18.740 Okay, the belief is, my mother was too judgmental and hard to please.

00:32:22.360 Now, the first question is, is it true?

00:32:25.480 Duh.

00:32:25.880 Did I just tell you what happened?

00:32:26.820 Clearly, I mean, I just told you, my mother was very clearly too hard to please here 0.91

00:32:32.020 and very judgmental because of what she said.

00:32:34.440 Okay, next question.

00:32:35.220 Come on.

00:32:35.520 Let's keep moving here.

00:32:36.560 Next question was, is it absolutely true?

00:32:40.580 So, in that instance, was she actually, is it absolutely, absolutely means every single

00:32:45.360 time, without exception.

00:32:46.700 Beyond a shadow of a doubt.

00:32:48.420 Beyond a shadow of a doubt.

00:32:49.680 No other interpretation could possibly be true other than, my mother was being too judgmental 0.52

00:32:54.680 and hard to please.

00:32:55.220 Is that absolutely true?

00:32:58.720 I mean, that's a tough one, right?

00:33:01.020 Because maybe, maybe there's another interpretation.

00:33:03.720 I don't know.

00:33:04.060 Maybe, maybe there's a 1% chance that she was trying to be helpful.

00:33:07.920 Maybe she was trying to not be rude.

00:33:09.960 She wasn't being judgmental.

00:33:10.860 She was just trying to maybe protect me from getting scammed.

00:33:13.520 Could that be possibly, maybe, in some kind of alternative universe true?

00:33:17.940 Okay.

00:33:18.560 All right.

00:33:18.980 Fine.

00:33:19.380 Okay.

00:33:19.580 I'll give it to you.

00:33:20.160 Maybe there's an alternative explanation.

00:33:21.580 Okay.

00:33:21.800 Question number three.

00:33:23.080 Who are you when you hold these beliefs?

00:33:25.300 So, how do you feel?

00:33:26.140 What do you become when you hold onto that belief?

00:33:29.280 Well, to be honest, when I held onto the belief that my mother is too judgmental and hard to

00:33:32.660 please, I was short-tempered.

00:33:35.200 I can't say I was nice.

00:33:36.500 I was probably pretty rude.

00:33:38.040 And frankly, I was a little embarrassed that that's what I said.

00:33:41.040 I regretted that.

00:33:42.020 I would prefer to not have said that.

00:33:44.660 And then the fourth question is, who would you be without that belief?

00:33:48.820 And if I could let go of that belief, if I really thought about it, I would probably

00:33:53.240 be at peace.

00:33:54.480 I wouldn't be so angry with her all the time.

00:33:56.620 I would probably be more myself, to be honest.

00:33:59.840 And so, what we establish with just those four questions, which, by the way, you can not

00:34:04.360 only use with relationships.

00:34:06.300 I do this at least once a day in some kind of interpersonal relationship, whether it's

00:34:11.120 with a client, a business customer, you know, whether it's somebody on the street who did

00:34:15.360 something annoying to me, it doesn't matter, you can ask those four questions to very quickly

00:34:20.400 ascertain that the way you saw things, that your belief, one, may not be true, may not

00:34:26.760 serve you, and getting rid of that belief and adopting an alternative perspective may

00:34:31.520 benefit you.

00:34:32.640 Okay, so what this does is basically just crack open the possibility that there might be another

00:34:37.240 interpretation of what happened.

00:34:38.460 That's all it does.

00:34:39.160 So now, the next step is to actually do the turnaround.

00:34:42.380 And so, the turnaround asks us to think about the exact opposite of that belief.

00:34:49.400 It's not to change anybody's mind.

00:34:50.800 You're not trying to change your mind here.

00:34:52.060 You're just trying to collect what I call a portfolio of perspectives, just alternative

00:34:56.360 points of view, whether or not they are true.

00:34:58.860 It doesn't matter if they're true, because again, beliefs are tools, not truths.

00:35:03.840 Okay, so we're just going to collect a portfolio, other tools in our toolkits.

00:35:07.400 So, what's the opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please? 0.98

00:35:10.540 The opposite is my mother is not too judgmental and hard to please.

00:35:14.580 Okay, so in that instance, could that be right that she was not too judgmental and hard to

00:35:18.580 please?

00:35:19.300 Well, the more I thought about it, I kind of had to admit that maybe she wasn't being

00:35:23.160 too judgmental and hard to please.

00:35:24.120 Maybe she was actually trying to help me just not get scammed.

00:35:26.580 Maybe that was her real intent.

00:35:28.000 So, it could be true.

00:35:29.740 I may not agree with it, but there might be an alternative explanation.

00:35:33.200 Okay, so now let's do another turnaround.

00:35:35.000 This turnaround might sound something like this.

00:35:37.420 This, I am too judgmental and hard to please.

00:35:41.120 Ugh.

00:35:41.660 How could that possibly be true?

00:35:43.320 I am too judgmental and hard to please.

00:35:45.020 Now, my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. 1.00

00:35:46.560 I am too judgmental and hard to please.

00:35:47.900 How could that possibly be true?

00:35:49.520 Well, if I'm honest, Brett, you know, when I called my mom and she didn't respond exactly

00:35:55.580 the way I had scripted in my mind that a mother is supposed to respond, I kind of lost it.

00:36:01.980 And so, who was being hard to please?

00:36:05.000 I was, right?

00:36:06.180 Because I didn't get the kind of reaction I had rehearsed in my head that I expected.

00:36:11.320 And when that didn't happen, I was disappointed and I lashed out.

00:36:14.620 So, I was actually being hard to please.

00:36:16.980 All right, there's another turnaround here.

00:36:18.200 There's a third one.

00:36:19.740 A third turnaround might sound like this.

00:36:21.920 I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself.

00:36:26.000 Oof.

00:36:26.820 So, what would that, how could that possibly be true?

00:36:29.920 The more I thought about it, what really happened was that I had these very high expectations

00:36:34.680 of how I was supposed to do things for my mom and how I should do things in general.

00:36:39.700 And when I spent all this time and effort and things didn't go exactly the way I'd planned,

00:36:43.620 that was a statement on my competency.

00:36:45.240 That was a sign that I was not doing a good job at this thing, that somehow I was lesser

00:36:51.480 because I had screwed up.

00:36:53.680 And so, what really I learned was that I had these unrealistic, it wasn't my fault that

00:36:57.620 the flowers didn't appear exactly as I'd wanted.

00:37:00.340 And that doesn't mean I'm a bad person.

00:37:01.900 It just means sometimes stuff happens.

00:37:04.140 It didn't have to get worse from there.

00:37:05.360 I didn't have to make all these assumptions, all these beliefs that says that's, you know,

00:37:08.700 that it's called the misattribution of emotion, that I was feeling crappy about myself,

00:37:12.820 about something that had happened, and then I had attributed that crappy feeling with

00:37:17.200 the thing that was right in front of me, my mom.

00:37:19.820 And so I had, through my lens of belief, I had misattributed how I was feeling and placed

00:37:24.240 blame on her, which did not help the relationship at all.

00:37:26.940 Now, now I have four beliefs.

00:37:29.300 Not just one.

00:37:30.680 That one belief of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please wasn't serving me.

00:37:33.880 Why?

00:37:34.660 Because the only way out, the only way that I could be happy was if she changed.

00:37:40.220 She had to do something different so I could be happy.

00:37:43.200 That's not going to happen.

00:37:45.080 The other perspectives now gave me freedom.

00:37:47.940 Now, I could stay on my side of the net.

00:37:49.860 Now, I could do something to interpret that situation differently so that it served me rather

00:37:54.400 than hurt me.

00:37:55.520 Even if it wasn't true.

00:37:57.340 Even if it wasn't true.

00:37:58.160 It doesn't actually matter.

00:37:58.900 What matters is, does it serve me better?

00:38:00.360 And so that type of thinking, that type of practice that now has become part of my daily

00:38:05.220 life has changed everything for my business, for my relationships, for my health and well-being.

00:38:10.620 That type of turnaround again and again has absolutely brought so much peace, joy, happiness

00:38:17.080 to my life in a way that I never thought possible.

00:38:19.560 Yeah.

00:38:19.600 So what these questions do, it gives you a portfolio of perspectives to choose from.

00:38:25.100 And you'd be like, well, that one's probably better in this situation.

00:38:28.160 I'm going to go with that one.

00:38:29.180 And again, the beliefs we most need to change are the ones we refuse to question.

00:38:35.000 The easiest thing to do and what the vast majority of us do the vast majority of the

00:38:39.520 time is we never question these things because it feels so comforting, right? 1.00

00:38:42.940 Of course, that person's being a jerk. 1.00

00:38:44.480 Of course, that person messed up. 1.00

00:38:45.600 I didn't mess up.

00:38:46.340 That person messed up.

00:38:47.440 But of course, it's our problem.

00:38:48.940 It's in our head.

00:38:49.700 It's causing us suffering needlessly.

00:38:52.260 So what I constantly do is to question whether the suffering is needed.

00:38:56.380 And this goes super, super deep.

00:38:59.040 You know, we think about emotional suffering, but it doesn't stop there.

00:39:02.100 I mean, we have incredible research around how this affects your perception of pain, of

00:39:08.460 physical pain.

00:39:09.520 And for the research for this book, I documented these cases of hypnosedation, which is where

00:39:16.660 patients will go under the knife.

00:39:18.380 They will have full-fledged surgery.

00:39:20.380 There's this gentleman that I followed who I saw the entire recording of his surgery where

00:39:25.840 this guy by the name of Daniel Gisler, 54 years old, I think he was.

00:39:29.320 He had this freak accident.

00:39:30.760 He broke his fibula and his tibula.

00:39:32.800 He had to get metal screws put into his leg.

00:39:34.820 And then a few years later, he had to have them removed.

00:39:37.480 And in that time, he learned this practice of hypnosedation.

00:39:41.000 And he managed, he started practicing by just watching a few YouTube videos.

00:39:44.680 And then he, you know, started practicing by having this clamp on his hand to test his

00:39:49.060 pain tolerance.

00:39:49.640 And he progressed over time to be able to have these screws wrenched out of his bone,

00:39:57.900 scapel cutting into flesh with zero anesthesia, not even local anesthesia, nothing, no general,

00:40:05.780 no topical, nothing.

00:40:07.680 For 55 minutes, he went under the knife and he didn't as much flinch.

00:40:11.120 And not only does he report that he didn't experience the kind of pain that you and I would

00:40:15.220 expect to make the experience.

00:40:16.200 We know his vitals never spiked, his heart rate never went up, his blood pressure never

00:40:20.000 went up, all the things you would expect to happen when there was extreme stress didn't

00:40:23.380 occur.

00:40:23.880 Now, why do I tell this story?

00:40:25.020 Like, why is this research so important?

00:40:27.220 Because if our beliefs can tune out the suffering through the power of attention, can tune out

00:40:34.460 the suffering of surgery without anesthesia, well, then certainly we can learn from that.

00:40:40.020 Certainly when I have this interaction with my mom, I can also choose, wait a minute, is this

00:40:43.640 suffering necessary?

00:40:44.500 Is this something I actually need to suffer from?

00:40:46.800 Or is there another belief that can allow me to not have to suffer through this?

00:40:52.220 All right.

00:40:52.400 So that's the belief power of attention.

00:40:54.220 What you believe will determine what you pay attention to.

00:40:57.380 And so we want to make sure we choose our beliefs carefully because it will frame how we interact

00:41:02.580 with the world, whether in a useful or not useful way.

00:41:05.720 You talk about the belief power of anticipation.

00:41:09.120 What do you mean by that?

00:41:10.000 So anticipating what we think is going to happen next.

00:41:13.060 So if if the power of belief of attention is about what is happening right now, what we

00:41:17.480 see in reality, anticipation is what we expect to happen.

00:41:21.460 It's about our internal states.

00:41:23.280 So seeing is about what's on the outside.

00:41:26.220 Anticipation, what we feel is on the inside.

00:41:28.320 And it turns out that people think that what they are feeling is the truth.

00:41:32.740 I feel the way I feel.

00:41:33.760 I am what I am.

00:41:35.000 Right.

00:41:35.560 No, no more damaging words have ever been uttered that I am what I am.

00:41:39.320 Right.

00:41:39.460 And we hear it all the time.

00:41:40.220 That's just the kind of person I am.

00:41:41.240 That's my personality.

00:41:41.940 That's my identity.

00:41:42.580 That's who I am.

00:41:43.380 And of course, that has all kinds of terrible consequences as well, because, again, that

00:41:46.700 can be a very limiting belief.

00:41:48.480 I'm a I'm not a morning person.

00:41:51.200 I'm a Sagittarius.

00:41:52.300 I have a short attention span.

00:41:53.660 The list goes on and on and on.

00:41:54.700 I'm an introvert.

00:41:55.520 I hear that one.

00:41:56.540 I'm an introvert.

00:41:57.120 Exactly.

00:41:57.600 Exactly.

00:41:57.900 And now we see actually all kinds of labels.

00:41:59.620 This is actually bleeding into the third power belief around agency.

00:42:02.700 You know, all these labels that can become our limits, that when we think we are a certain

00:42:07.740 type of person or now, unfortunately, a certain type of diagnosis.

00:42:11.980 Oh, boy, that can have all kinds of.

00:42:14.260 But let's get back to that in a minute.

00:42:15.740 Let's talk about the power of anticipation.

00:42:17.140 So this blew my mind when it comes to the physical properties that our beliefs have,

00:42:23.320 how our beliefs can actually become our biology through the power of anticipation.

00:42:27.000 And one of my favorite pieces of research around this has to do with the placebo effects.

00:42:32.640 Placebo effects are frickin mind blowing.

00:42:34.900 But particularly what I think is what was a particularly interesting study was how placebo

00:42:39.120 steroids can actually help you put on muscle.

00:42:42.740 Isn't that crazy?

00:42:43.500 Like we think about placebo as, you know, helping you with a headache or maybe with insomnia or

00:42:47.980 anxiety.

00:42:49.320 Placebo steroids.

00:42:50.640 So people who were told here's a steroid, but in reality, it was a placebo can actually

00:42:55.640 help you put on muscle.

00:42:58.580 How does that happen?

00:42:59.520 How could that possibly be?

00:43:00.100 It's not that the placebo has some kind of magical powers.

00:43:02.200 It's that it directly affects motivation.

00:43:05.700 How?

00:43:06.580 Well, in this study where they gave young men a pill, they told them this is a steroid

00:43:11.200 pill.

00:43:12.020 We want you to follow this workout regimen.

00:43:14.880 And then they had a control group that did not receive the placebo steroid and they had

00:43:18.120 to follow a similar workout regimen.

00:43:20.300 They wanted to then see who would put on more pounds.

00:43:23.080 Now, the difference was that the people who took the placebo steroid worked a little bit

00:43:28.440 harder.

00:43:28.760 They told them what exercises to do, but they didn't tell them how much to do or how much

00:43:31.800 weight to put on.

00:43:32.400 They just told them work out for this protocol.

00:43:34.720 And so what turned out to happen was that people who were taking the placebo steroids did

00:43:38.880 another rep.

00:43:39.900 They pushed a bit harder.

00:43:41.000 They added a bit more weight.

00:43:42.160 And at the end of the study, they had packed on more pounds of muscle because they believed

00:43:47.180 that they were on this miraculous steroid, which they anticipated would give them more

00:43:51.720 muscle mass.

00:43:52.260 So it's not that placebos are some kind of magic.

00:43:55.320 It's that they can increase the motivation, again, back to persistence, back to what really

00:44:00.160 separates winners and losers and people who achieve their goals and those who don't.

00:44:03.440 It's all about this power of persistence, which was driven from the power of their beliefs.

00:44:09.520 This reminds me of Dumbo's magic feather, right?

00:44:12.340 He thought the feather, if he had the feather in his trunk, he was going to fly.

00:44:17.160 And then when he didn't have it, he felt like, oh, no, I can't do it.

00:44:20.100 But the feather wasn't magic.

00:44:21.440 I mean, you thought it was magic, so you thought you could fly, but you were actually

00:44:24.800 flying.

00:44:25.600 And you did.

00:44:25.980 You could do it all along.

00:44:26.920 And you think, OK, this is a Disney movie.

00:44:29.180 OK, very cute.

00:44:30.540 It is a matter of life and death, Brett.

00:44:32.380 It is literally a matter of life and death.

00:44:34.100 Did you know that people who have positive beliefs about aging, so what does that feel

00:44:38.920 like, so someone who believes aging leads to inevitable decline?

00:44:43.860 OK, that's that's one potential belief versus someone who believes something to the effect

00:44:47.780 of I can grow at any age.

00:44:50.760 OK, I can grow and adapt at any age versus aging involves inevitable decline.

00:44:55.360 Now, both of those could be true.

00:44:57.400 Both of those could be true.

00:44:58.900 But which one is a limiting belief and which one is a liberating belief?

00:45:02.460 Which one gives you more motivation to go outside and go for a walk as you age?

00:45:06.700 Which one gives you more motivation to join the bowling league?

00:45:09.260 Which one gives you more motivation to garden, to do Tai Chi, to do the kind of stuff that it

00:45:14.080 can extend your lifespan?

00:45:15.340 And so people who have those beliefs, this came out of a study from Becca Levy at Yale,

00:45:20.420 people who have those positive beliefs about aging live seven and a half years longer,

00:45:27.400 seven and a half years longer.

00:45:28.720 To put that in perspective, that is more of an effect than quitting smoking, than eating

00:45:34.060 a healthy diet or exercise.

00:45:36.620 OK, like doesn't that blow your mind that your beliefs now, again, it's not magic, but

00:45:41.700 your beliefs do change your biology, because when you believe certain things about aging,

00:45:46.120 you behave differently.

00:45:47.880 You're more likely to sustain that motivation and keep going and do the things that make

00:45:51.480 you healthy.

00:45:51.880 So for all the talk we have about quit smoking and eat right and exercise, we should be thinking

00:45:56.580 a lot more about these beliefs because they have such an outsized impact on our lifespan.

00:46:01.760 Well, you talk about in this section about anticipation, this idea of the experience loop.

00:46:06.640 What is that and how can we use it to supercharge those liberating beliefs?

00:46:10.440 And mitigate those limiting beliefs.

00:46:14.860 Yeah.

00:46:15.420 So the experience loop goes like this.

00:46:16.740 So first we believe something, then we anticipate what we think is going to happen.

00:46:21.160 Then we actually feel it.

00:46:22.860 We have that internal sensation and then we confirm it.

00:46:26.340 And this can affect so many different things in our life.

00:46:29.280 There was a beautiful study done around wine where they put people in an fMRI machine.

00:46:35.500 They connected them to a little tube in their mouth.

00:46:37.620 And as they were scanning their brain, they gave them a wine and said, okay, now this wine

00:46:42.920 is a $5 bottle of wine.

00:46:45.480 Okay.

00:46:45.920 They squirted a little bit of the wine.

00:46:47.480 They said, what do you think of this wine?

00:46:48.600 And people report, you know, it's all right.

00:46:50.320 It's a little flat.

00:46:51.460 Not that much of a finish.

00:46:52.780 Whatever.

00:46:53.140 It's okay.

00:46:53.840 And then they looked at the blood flow in their brain as they experienced this wine.

00:46:58.360 Then they said, okay, now we're going to give you a very expensive bottle of wine.

00:47:02.280 Okay.

00:47:02.420 You ready?

00:47:02.720 Here comes the little squirt of a very expensive bottle of wine.

00:47:05.220 What do you think of it?

00:47:06.140 Oh, this one has, you know, hints of berry and I can, I can taste the oak.

00:47:10.580 And, you know, this is much smoother finish.

00:47:12.680 They had all these, you know, these, these, these very wine snobby pronouncements about the

00:47:17.540 wine.

00:47:18.060 Of course, you know, there's a trick here.

00:47:19.320 It's a psychology study.

00:47:20.180 The trick was it was the same exact wine.

00:47:22.260 But because of their underlying beliefs, what was the underlying belief?

00:47:26.120 When you know that something is more expensive, you anticipate because of that belief, you

00:47:32.420 anticipate that it will be better.

00:47:34.560 And because you anticipate it's going to be better, you feel it as better.

00:47:38.400 These people, what's so amazing about this study, it wasn't just, you know, a blind taste

00:47:41.640 test and tell us how you feel, right?

00:47:43.660 And we would expect people to say to the, to say to the scientists, yeah, expensive wine

00:47:48.800 tastes better.

00:47:49.180 No, we could actually see it in their brain.

00:47:52.360 We could see blood flow increase in their reward centers differently when they tasted

00:47:57.980 the wine that they thought was more expensive.

00:47:59.540 So they weren't lying.

00:48:01.000 They actually experienced the wine differently.

00:48:03.620 They felt it differently in their brains.

00:48:05.840 And then finally is the confirmation step.

00:48:08.140 So when you think about wine, wine is a social experience.

00:48:11.060 And many of the things that we do are social experiences where now we confirm, oh, this is

00:48:15.120 a really good wine.

00:48:15.800 And you tell your friends about it and you look at Wine Spectator and you look at, you

00:48:19.460 know, so it's not that nobody's lying here.

00:48:22.040 That's not, it's not a fraud.

00:48:23.120 It's that our beliefs shape the actual experience itself.

00:48:26.760 I think many people misunderstand what marketing is for.

00:48:29.640 You know, people think that advertising is about awareness and okay, advertising does increase

00:48:34.140 awareness.

00:48:34.420 But how does that explain why some brands advertise to death, right?

00:48:38.820 How many Coca-Cola ads can we see?

00:48:40.720 How many billions of dollars have they spent on those ads?

00:48:43.000 Well, because it's not about awareness.

00:48:44.820 We all know about Coca-Cola.

00:48:46.380 We've tried it already.

00:48:47.320 Well, why do they do that?

00:48:48.580 Because the advertising shapes the belief, which makes you anticipate a feeling, which

00:48:54.560 then you will confirm by seeing this ad of, oh, look how refreshing, look how wonderful,

00:48:58.740 look how great.

00:48:59.320 It actually changed the experience itself.

00:49:01.320 So the point of display advertising is to actually create that sensation in the first

00:49:06.820 place.

00:49:07.240 And that's what you're paying for, not just the sugar water.

00:49:09.780 All right, so with the belief power of anticipation, how you expect something is going to be influences

00:49:15.180 how you feel about it, which influences how you behave, which influences the outcome of

00:49:20.960 something.

00:49:21.480 So if you think aging is going to be awesome and you're going to stay vital, then you're

00:49:26.040 going to keep doing youthful things and then you're going to stay vital.

00:49:29.540 And I can see other applications of this.

00:49:32.520 If I think going into a hard conversation that will strengthen the relationship, then I'm

00:49:39.060 probably going to approach it like that and it will nudge me to act in a more positive

00:49:42.060 way and then it will strengthen the relationship.

00:49:45.040 And this also reminded me of that study they did with housekeepers where when they told

00:49:50.820 housekeepers that cleaning constituted valid exercise, they lost more weight because they 1.00

00:49:57.820 leaned into the activity more.

00:49:59.180 So let's talk about the belief power of agency.

00:50:02.480 How do our beliefs shape our sense of agency or ability to get things done in the world?

00:50:08.000 Okay, so the power of agency is the power to have an effect in the world.

00:50:11.820 And we call this an internal locus of control versus an external locus of control.

00:50:15.780 So external locus of control is that the world is happening to me, that things are going on

00:50:19.540 that are beyond my control.

00:50:20.700 An internal locus of control, this high sense of agency, says that I can control factors in

00:50:25.920 the world, that what I do makes a difference.

00:50:27.580 And here's the kicker.

00:50:29.120 So it turns out that people who have this tendency towards an internal locus of control do better

00:50:35.260 in life in pretty much all metrics.

00:50:37.300 They live longer, they have more friends, they contribute to their community more.

00:50:40.200 All the good things happen when you have an internal locus of control.

00:50:42.800 Here's what's really amazing.

00:50:44.400 Even when you have every reason to believe the opposite.

00:50:47.780 So even when you are on a low socioeconomic status, even if you're discriminated against,

00:50:52.720 even if you've really drawn a bad deck of cards in life, and you have every reason to

00:50:56.960 say the world has beaten me down, and I have challenges that other people don't have, even

00:51:02.300 if that's the case, even if that's the case, you turn out to do better psychologically, believing

00:51:07.480 you have a high sense of agency.

00:51:09.240 Again, beliefs are tools, not truth.

00:51:12.000 Isn't that mind-blowing?

00:51:13.260 That your attitude, that you're so much more likely to succeed in life based on these beliefs,

00:51:18.400 that if you believe you can do something to get out of that situation to make your world

00:51:21.760 better, guess what?

00:51:22.840 Not a big surprise.

00:51:23.760 You are much more likely to do something about it.

00:51:26.060 And so that's where we go into some of the research that I talked about a little bit

00:51:29.000 earlier, which I think is absolutely incredible and quite jarring, frankly, about the nocebo 0.93

00:51:35.020 effect.

00:51:35.340 So we talked about the placebo effect.

00:51:37.260 Placebos from the Greek mean, I will heal.

00:51:39.900 Nocebos are the opposite. 1.00

00:51:41.380 Nocebos are, I will hurt. 1.00

00:51:43.500 And one of the studies that was just incredible that really kind of shaped my thinking on this,

00:51:49.140 there's a guy in the research literature by the name of Mr. A.

00:51:51.980 He was anonymized.

00:51:52.740 Mr. A. Now, Mr. A has this bad breakup with his girlfriend, and he decides to commit suicide

00:51:58.980 by taking an entire bottle of pills.

00:52:02.280 At the last minute, he takes these pills, and all of a sudden, he decides to change his

00:52:07.040 mind.

00:52:07.280 He decides he wants to live.

00:52:08.640 He runs over to his neighbor's house.

00:52:10.420 His neighbor rushes him to the ER room.

00:52:12.680 He takes his bottle of pills, and as he gets into the ER room, he collapses on the floor,

00:52:17.080 and all the nurses can hear him say is, I took all my pills, I took all my pills, and

00:52:20.740 he passes out.

00:52:21.720 They put him on a gurney.

00:52:22.820 They rush him into the ER.

00:52:24.760 They take his blood pressure.

00:52:26.240 He's at a critically low level.

00:52:28.160 His heartbeat is plummeting.

00:52:29.720 All these vitals are pointing to the fact that he has a severe overdose.

00:52:34.600 The problem is that on the bottle of pills, it doesn't say what medicine he took, what

00:52:40.740 drug he took.

00:52:41.720 All it has is a phone number, because Mr. A. was part of a clinical trial, and so the doctors

00:52:47.340 have to call this number and ascertain what was it that Mr. A overdosed on.

00:52:51.760 They call up this number, and it turns out that Mr. A. was in a clinical trial for an antidepressant,

00:52:56.060 and he turned out to have been in the placebo group.

00:53:00.980 So nothing that he took had any biological effect.

00:53:05.020 It was a completely inert substance that he took as part of the placebo category of the

00:53:08.820 study, and yet he felt all these physiological symptoms.

00:53:12.440 They tell this to Mr. A, and in 15 minutes, his heart rate is back to normal, his blood pressure

00:53:19.100 is back to normal, and he's feeling fine.

00:53:21.380 He's fully conscious.

00:53:23.520 Is that not mind-blowing?

00:53:25.060 Yeah.

00:53:25.240 Does that not make you think all of your life choices here?

00:53:28.400 Because what this means is that our perception, our beliefs can have a profound impact, not

00:53:35.480 only to the positive, we talked about some of the positive effects, but also to the extreme

00:53:38.900 negative.

00:53:39.820 And I think what we're doing many times in society, unfortunately, is that we are using

00:53:44.900 these maybe non-pharmaceutical nocebos.

00:53:47.300 When we have these labels, when we have these monikers about what kind of person we are,

00:53:53.760 and increasingly what kind of diagnosis we have, it is limiting our potential.

00:53:58.520 So we need to be very, very careful.

00:54:00.440 I'm not anti-diagnosis.

00:54:01.600 I'm not anti-psychiatry.

00:54:02.920 Far from it.

00:54:04.040 But I am anti-using these labels to define who we are.

00:54:08.840 Because the common perception is you can't change who you are.

00:54:11.300 And when your diagnosis becomes your identity, it becomes a limitation.

00:54:17.460 And your labels really do become your limits.

00:54:19.880 You take on a diagnosis if it's useful.

00:54:21.840 If it's not useful, then maybe don't take that on.

00:54:24.580 It's a map, not the terrain.

00:54:26.380 So if it puts you on a path to getting to a place that is helpful, wonderful.

00:54:31.020 But you are not the map, right?

00:54:33.080 You are not the terrain itself.

00:54:35.180 All right.

00:54:35.440 So we talked about the three powers of belief.

00:54:37.020 There's attention, anticipation, and agency, which shape what you see, feel, and do, for good or bad.

00:54:43.820 And I think the big takeaway from our conversation is that beliefs can be tools.

00:54:49.040 And we got to figure out whether they're serving us or not.

00:54:52.460 And as we were talking, I looked up this William James quote that I really like.

00:54:55.940 He said this,

00:54:57.560 Be not afraid of life.

00:54:59.320 Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

00:55:03.260 And I think that applies to a lot of things in life.

00:55:06.360 Well, Nia, this has been a great conversation.

00:55:07.720 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:55:09.960 Absolutely.

00:55:10.420 Thank you for asking.

00:55:11.100 So on my website, nearandfar.com,

00:55:13.600 Nia is spelled like my first name,

00:55:14.620 we actually have a five-minute belief change plan that we're giving away for free.

00:55:19.100 Anybody can get it.

00:55:19.780 It's one of those things that we couldn't fit in the final edition of the book,

00:55:22.200 so we decided to give it away.

00:55:23.500 It walks you through day by day by day a five-minute practice that can start you on this path of changing your beliefs

00:55:28.240 and adopting more of these liberating beliefs rather than limiting beliefs.

00:55:31.540 And so to get that, you go to nearandfar.com forward slash belief dash change.

00:55:38.640 So that's nearandfar.com, Nia spelled like my first name, N-I-R-andfar.com forward slash belief dash change.

00:55:45.640 Fantastic.

00:55:46.180 Well, Nia, well, thanks for your time.

00:55:47.100 It's been a pleasure.

00:55:48.040 Thank you so much.

00:55:50.140 My guest here is Nia Ayal.

00:55:50.920 He's the author of the book, Beyond Belief.

00:55:52.620 It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:55:55.040 You can find more information about his work at his website, nearandfar.com.

00:55:57.760 That's N-I-R-A-N-D-F-A-R.com. 1.00

00:56:00.560 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash beyondbelief.

00:56:03.360 We find links to resources.

00:56:04.560 We delve deeper into this topic.

00:56:13.620 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.

00:56:16.120 If you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it.

00:56:17.800 If you take one minute to give us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify, it really helps out a lot.

00:56:21.560 And if you've done that already, thank you.

00:56:23.660 Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who would think there's something out of it.

00:56:27.500 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:56:29.440 Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:56:30.840 Remind you to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:56:52.860 Before you go, here's another episode worth adding to the queue.

00:56:55.740 In episode number 821, we explore why routines, especially over rigid ones, can actually make life harder, not easier.

00:57:02.660 We talk discipline without obsession, structure without rigidity, and where real growth comes from.

00:57:07.340 You can find it at aom.is slash routines.

00:57:10.200 That's aom.is slash routines.

00:57:12.220 Go check it out.

00:57:12.840 Episode number 821.

The Art of Manliness - March 10, 2026

The Invisible Limits Holding You Back (And How to Change Them)

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