Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:11
You know, I think obviously there’s lots of business applications for this. There’s also personal and sports applications. When you talk about the beliefs, what sticks out in my head, which I found fascinating, was the Serena Williams story.
Nir Eyal: 14:24
Yeah, yeah. Happy to share that one. Yeah. It’s amazing. And that’s a great example of how leaders like.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:31
I’m thinking like, how do I apply that? You know, my daughter’s in cross country. It’s like, you know, like real world application, like how do I apply what? And I’ll let you tell the story, what you’re going to tell to her in her other endeavors, you know.
Nir Eyal: 14:45
Sure. Sports. Yeah. So here’s what happened. A few years ago, Serena Williams was in Wimbledon, and she was not doing well that year. And the reason she wasn’t doing well is that she was not rushing the net. She was afraid of rushing the net. And so she was hesitating. And, you know, at that level of the game, if you hesitate for even a millisecond, you’re going to lose the match. And that’s what was starting to happen. Her coach, Patrick, calls her aside and says, Serena, come here. I want to tell you something. He tells her, hey, look, I’ve been looking at the statistics and I found out that you make a point 80% of the time that you rush the net 80% of the time that you rush the net, you score a point. She says, what? I thought I was terrible at the net. And he says, hey, you know, look. Statistics don’t lie.
So this is the best news of the day. And it’s true. Statistics don’t lie. But he did. He was not performing anywhere near 80% of the points at the net. Not even close. But the amazing thing is that the lie became reality. He didn’t just make it up out of thin air. Her coach knew what she was capable of doing. Just like we know what our people are capable of doing. You know what your daughter is capable, capable of doing. If you followed her closely. You know what she can and cannot do. And so what a great manager, a great leader will do is to liberate people from their limiting beliefs. And if what it takes sometimes is a belief, remember, a belief is a tool, not necessarily a truth.
So when Coach Patrick told Serena this lie, by telling her this untruth, however, knowing what she was capable of doing, she ends up winning the match and she takes Wimbledon that year. And so having that belief again, grounded in evidence, remember, the definition of belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on evidence. So it’s not, you know, it’s not you’re not making it up, but it’s based on evidence that that you’re allowing people to be liberated by those limiting beliefs. And that’s really what the book is about. And it turns out most people have no idea what they’re actually capable of that so many of us, all day long, we are limiting ourselves based on these beliefs. I’m not ready for this. This is too hard. This won’t work. People like me don’t do that, right? We constantly tell ourselves these limiting beliefs which are holding us back.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:07
How did you find that story? I mean, this is probably, you know, in the first place because it’s I’m sure it’s not like widely told. And, you know, I’m wondering, how do you even find that in the first place?
Nir Eyal: 17:22
Well, I mean, that’s my job. That’s why it took me six years to write this book. And so, you know, my job is to read, read, read, write, write, write the six great rules of a book. That’s what you do as an author., and so it’s a lot, you know, what, what drives me is that I don’t write books about what I know. And, you know, I write for a pretty sophisticated audience. And so, you know, I’m the kind of person who, you know, if I hear the marshmallow study one more time, I’m going to scream, right? I don’t, I want to hear, you know, not only is that study, you know, methodologically flawed and turns out it’s not as easy, as simple as it seems. But we keep repeating these, these, these same old studies again and again to the point where they’re just not helpful to people anymore. So what I try and do is with all my books, you know, all my books are written for me. I’m trying to solve a problem in my own life. And so you’ll hear a lot about my own personal struggles and revelations throughout the book. I’m very vulnerable in this book, and I try and write something.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:17
I’m going to ask about that, actually. Yeah.
Nir Eyal: 18:20
And so I always try and write books that meet three criteria. Number one, they have to be useful. Okay. I’m not going to tell people a study that only works in some lab and hasn’t been replicated elsewhere. Okay. There’s a lot of academic research out there that fits that criteria. So it has to be useful. Number two, it has to be true. Okay. I don’t I’m not going to tell you that something worked for me. Unless it also has been backed by peer reviewed research. Right. So I need some kind of burden of evidence that it’s actually true. That’s actually something that, that, that,, has evidence behind it. It’s not just some pie in the sky idea. And then third, and what’s most difficult to do is that it has to be novel. So useful, true and novel because for a sophisticated reader, they need to be surprised, right? They need something new in their life. It has to first, if I if I can’t entertain you reading the book, well, then you’re not going to learn from it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:11
You know what I liked about the book, is it? You know, and I wanted to hit on these kinds of pillars, right? Because I feel like you touched on business, right? You gave an example, you touched on sports, you gave an example. The two other ones that I’m going to ask about is health, that you touched on some really specific health things and then also personal things. Before we get into that, you talked about just now Repeat this. I don’t know, maybe this is a future book or something, but repeated flawed studies, right? I heard the passion in your voice with that. And we don’t have to go into all of them, but like, what are some of those ones that get repeated over and over and people should be wary of them, right? And, and we’re not because we don’t dig into the research like you do. Right? You mentioned the marshmallow. What are some of the other repeated flawed studies? Because I’m sure I’m.
Nir Eyal: 20:04
Where do we begin?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:05
I’m thinking of this near. I’m like, oh my God, which one should I that I’m like, oh, repeating in my head from all the books I’ve listened to that are not true as I thought.
Nir Eyal: 20:16
Well, it’s I think there’s different levels., and, you know, if you’ve been following the, what’s happening in the social sciences, I mean, we’re going through what’s called the replication crisis right now, because a lot of the studies that we thought were foundational, turns out you can’t replicate, you know, people don’t get. I think it’s a real tragedy, actually. You can’t get a PhD replicating a study. You have to do something original or else you won’t get published.
I think that’s a disaster because what it incentivizes is studies that,, have, you know, it’s called the bottom drawer problem. If you run a study enough times, you run, you know, study 100 times, you’re going to get one freak result and that’s the one you publish. The rest you stick in the bottom drawer. There’s a lot of studies like that that we just can’t see.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:53
The title of your book. Right? The next book.
Nir Eyal: 20:56
You know how many enemies I would make the academic community?No, but it’s there’s people like data. It’s a group that’s doing this nonstop and it’s a group of a few academics. God bless them who are doing nothing but trying to find fraud, not just replication problems, but actual full out fraud. And they’ve caught quite a few people who, you know, just making up numbers. And these are respected people, some of them at Ivy League institutions you wouldn’t believe are just faking the numbers. And a lot of academic studies are these days, unfortunately, have been caught up in this dragnet. You know, but, but that’s actually not the most damaging, most widely known,, of, of these, these untruths, you know, one is, I think very, widely disseminated is this whole idea of these personality tests. You know, the Myers-Briggs. Complete hogwash. And there is nothing scientific about the Myers-Briggs. There’s barely anything scientific about the big five. And that’s got thousands of studies. And even that’s controversial these days.
The big five, you know, the openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion and neuroticism. It’s the most it’s the most science based personality profile we have. But even that, there’s lots of doubts about that. It turns out that now scientists are starting to discover that that personality is downstream of your beliefs, that, for example, if you believe the world is a dangerous place, guess what? You’re going to be more neurotic. So it’s not the neuroticism that changes your beliefs. It’s your beliefs that change your neuroticism. Right. Versus if you believe that most people are friendly, aren’t you going to be more extroverted? Of course you are. It’s based on your past beliefs. So I think there’s a lot of, of those types of myths,, that, that the more you dig into, you realize that are not based on great science.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:41
It is interesting because again, I love Malcolm Gladwell’s books in general, and I’ve heard different pieces that people have taken out of his books like, well, is the 10,000 hour thing really true or not? I don’t know. But you know, it’s just interesting to see like some of these books that I love. There’s probably, again, we’re only hearing part of the story.
Nir Eyal: 23:07
Yeah, yeah. And it is tricky. I mean, there it is very difficult. And I really respect Gladwell’s work, but it’s very difficult to make academic writing entertaining because, you know, a lot of the studies don’t show anything special. And a lot of the studies that you end up reading, you end up reading a 50 page study and it’s somewhere it’s summarized in a couple sentences because academic writing, you know, the academics are taught to write in an illegible way. Have you ever read an academic paper? It’s torture. And for me, you know, I’ve written these academic papers as well., and I have to intentionally make them hard to read. You’re not allowed to write like a normal human being.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:53
And I know I’ve talked to, you know, PhDs in economics. When we look at like Freakonomics, for instance, and they’ll it’s not, you know, they’ll I mean, the people who wrote it are obviously I think they’re PhDs, I don’t know, but,, they, they get criticized because they’re probably only publishing like a piece of this whole study. It’s not like truly completely academic, but you have, like you said, you, if you want to make it entertaining for the masses, like they don’t want to hear about like the whole, you know, in the weeds on these studies.
Nir Eyal: 24:27
It’s a very delicate balance because on one hand, you want people to get excited about the results. And, you know, the reader is always asking, you know, WiFi, what’s in it for me? What’s in it for you is how I think about it when I’m writing. But this is why academics generally make for terrible authors when it comes to mainstream publications. Because you know what a PhD is? A PhD is learning more and more about less and less. And so they have this curse of knowledge. And so they can’t stop telling you all the caveats before they tell you the results. Whereas the average says, okay, what do I do? What do I change in my life? And that’s why when people say, you know, sometimes I get people say,, oh, it took you six years to write your book. What else did you do? Like, no, it takes a lot. That’s all. That’s it. That’s it. Because it takes so much work to write a good book. Anybody can write a book, even, you know, today you put it into ChatGPT. ChatGPT will spit you out a book, writing a good book that is useful, true, and novel. Not so easy, at least not for me.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:22
So business sports, the next one is personal. And you talked about being vulnerable in the book. And so I was actually kind of surprised in some of the stuff you shared about your mom in the book?
Nir Eyal: 25:33
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:35
And how you use this with your relationships?
Nir Eyal: 25:39
Yeah. So this is probably the area of my life that I think has most changed for me. And I’ve most benefited from it because one of my oldest beliefs is that my mom is a very judgmental person that, you know, I believe that for decades because she keeps doing stuff that shows me she’s very judgmental. Like, for example, a few years ago, it was her birthday and I wanted to do something nice for her. So I decided I was going to send her some flowers.
The problem was I was living in Singapore at the time, and she was in Central Florida where I grew up, but I stayed up late into the night. I found the best florist I could. I called them up. I stayed up till 1 a.m. I found the very best bouquet I could afford, and I had the flowers sent to her right on time on her birthday. And I went to sleep that night, and I was sure that my mom was going to tell me the next day.
What an amazing son I am for doing such a nice thing. But, Jeremy, that’s not what happened. What happened was I called her up the next day and I said, hey, mom, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers I sent? To which she says, yes, thank you. But just so you know, the flowers weren’t so nice, you know. In fact, they were half dead. So don’t order from that florist again. To which I said something like, well, that’s the last time I buy you flowers. And I’m not proud of the fact that I said that, but that’s what came out. My wife, who was sitting right next to me, heard this whole exchange, and she’s my editor. We work together so she knows all about my research. And she turns to me and she says, dear, would you like to do a turnaround on that? To which I said, no, I do not want to do your touchy feely hocus pocus mumbo jumbo.
I need to vent. Right. Because isn’t that what you do when someone offends you? You have to speak your truth. You have to tell them how you feel. You have to get it off your chest. Right? Well, I knew enough about what the psychology literature says, and it turns out that venting about people, complaining about them, gossiping about them, does nothing but reinforce your beliefs about them, that we don’t see people as they are. We see them as we believe them to be. Or perhaps most accurately, we don’t see people as they are. We see them as we are based on our beliefs. So I took a deep breath. I took my wife’s advice, and I sat down and did a turnaround. And I’d love to share this with you. I think this is a technique that I can. It’s one of those very practical techniques from the book that anyone can use immediately. There’s many others, but this is one that I probably use three times a day. And here’s how it works. What you first want to do is to ask yourself, where in your life are you suffering? Okay. Is there any area of your life where you feel bad?
Okay, maybe it’s a relationship like mine and my mom’s. Maybe it’s that New Year’s resolution that keeps coming back year after year. Maybe it’s that unfinished project. Maybe it’s getting into shape. Maybe it’s, you know, you don’t like the fact that you’re annoyed when you’re in traffic and you know, you get frustrated when you’re late at the airport. Or maybe you don’t like the fact that, you know, the news has got you all spun up and, you know, any area of your life where you feel tension, you feel stress, you feel anxiety, where are you suffering? Okay. Everybody’s got something in their life where they’re suffering. If not, tell me. I’d love to figure out how you found Nirvana, but I’ve never met anybody who doesn’t have some form of suffering somewhere in their life, some kind of annoyance. And it doesn’t matter how big or how small.
You know, I’ve done this with people who complain about how they get annoyed if they drop a cup of coffee on the floor. I’ve met and they’ve and they’ve used this technique. I actually saw a woman use this technique. I’m going to share with you who had terminal brain cancer. She’s no longer with us. And she actually transcended her suffering through this process as well. I mean, it’s a very powerful technique I’m going to teach you. So here’s how it works. This technique I have to give credit was developed by a woman by the name of Byron Katie. She called it The Work and it was later called today, it’s called Inquiry Based Stress Reduction. And it’s a technique that actually principles have been taught for over 2500 years, all the way back to Aristotle.
And what it asks us to do is to consider our beliefs from a different perspective, not to change our mind. The brain hates changing its mind, but to do what I call collect a portfolio of perspectives. Okay, you’re not going to change your mind. You’re just collecting a portfolio of different viewpoints, just like, you know, you have a stock portfolio because you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. So you’re going to collect other potential perspectives. Here’s how it works. First, you ask yourself, where am I suffering? Okay, write that down. Where am I suffering? Jeremy, do you feel you don’t have to share? I don’t. I don’t want to put you on the spot, but do you have anything that you might be suffering, suffering with that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:12
Can you share? There’s dozens of things like what you’re saying. I mean, you know, and I think I, I heard something of this before and so I’ve tried and reframed it, but like, I do get annoyed sometimes if someone’s like in traffic, like you mentioned the traffic thing. If I’m trying to get somewhere as quickly as possible and someone likes driving really slow. Yeah.
You know? Great.
Nir Eyal: 30:39
Okay, perfect. Let’s do that. So you’re you’re you’re suffering because of traffic. Okay. I’m suffering because of my mom. The next question is why? What’s causing the suffering? Okay, I’m suffering in traffic because people are going hella slow and they don’t know how to drive. Okay, I’m suffering because of my mom. Because she’s very judgmental and hard to please. Okay, so write down why? Whatever it is, your why of why getting stuck in traffic is causing you suffering. Now that’s a, that’s a pretty minor one. Again, it can be anything. So if you’re listening right now on the show, think to yourself, where are you suffering? My boss is annoying. The AI is taking all our jobs. War, famine, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Illness, whatever. What’s causing you suffering and why? Now I’m going to ask you four questions about the why. The first question is, is it true? Okay, so my example, my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Is it true? Is that causing my suffering? Jeremy, let me ask you a question. If someone sends you flowers from halfway across the world, the appropriate response is to say.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:48
I appreciate it. Thank you. This is beautiful.
Nir Eyal: 31:51
Human being, Jeremy. This is why. This is why we’re friends. Of course, that’s what you say. Of course that’s what you say, right? My mom didn’t say that so clearly. Yeah. My mom is very judgmental and hard to please, so. Yeah, it’s true. Right? Is it true? Yes. It’s true. Question number one answered. Question number two. Is it absolutely true? Sounds like the first question, but it’s a little bit different. Is it absolutely true that that’s causing my suffering? I can’t be 100% true, can I? Right. I can’t be 100% sure, I should say there might be another reason she said what she said. I don’t know what that other reason might be, but there could be another reason. So can I be 100% sure? She was saying that because she was being judgmental and hard to please. I had to admit, no. Okay.
Could be another reason. Third question: how do I feel when I hold on to that belief? Right? So let’s do this for you, okay? Jeremy, close your eyes for me for a second. And I want you to picture in your mind’s eye that belief being stuck in traffic is bad. Okay? Hold on to that belief. Being stuck in traffic is bad. And if you’re listening in right now on the show, do that with your own why? Whatever it is, you’re why. My mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Being stuck in traffic is terrible. Whatever it is. Now bring awareness to your body. How does your body feel when you hold on to that belief? My mother is judgmental and hard to please. When I hold on to that belief, I feel annoyed, I feel stressed, I feel like this 13 year old version of myself that I don’t even like.
Okay, now we’re going to do the opposite. Okay, we’re going to do the opposite. Now close your eyes and imagine with your mind’s eye that belief. Okay. My mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Being stuck in traffic is bad. Whatever it is, I don’t have time to work out. I’m not ready for this. This won’t work. Whatever it is, that’s why that’s causing you suffering. Now, I want you to imagine that belief dissolves. It just evaporates. It never was. How does that feel? Jeremy, did you do that? How did what reaction did you get when you just let that belief disappear? How do you feel?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:09
Relief.
Nir Eyal: 34:11
Relief. Yeah. Super common. Anything else?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:18
Blood pressure lowers a little bit. I don’t know.
Nir Eyal: 34:20
Like a bit.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:21
Relaxed.
Nir Eyal: 34:22
Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people will say that they feel re-energized. They feel more motivated. They feel free, you know? For me, when I saw that belief disappear, that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, all of a sudden, I felt lighter. Like I felt physically lighter. Somehow things kind of relaxed and I felt more like the person I wanted to become. So in just four questions, what we learned was that the thing we thought was a fact wasn’t a fact. It was just a belief that holding on to it makes us suffer and that letting it go feels better, right? Our suffering evaporates.
Now it’s time to do the turnaround. Okay. The turnaround asks us to do something the brain hates. And by the way, you can do this about anything or anyone. The brain hates changing its mind, so we’re not going to ask our brain to change its mind. We’re just going to ask ourselves to collect that portfolio of perspectives by asking ourselves, could the opposite be true? Could the opposite be true? Okay, it doesn’t mean it has to be true. Could it be true? Jeremy, getting stuck in traffic is bad. What’s the opposite? Getting stuck in traffic is not bad. Could that be true? Can you think of any way that could be true?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:39
Yeah.
Nir Eyal: 35:41
How?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:45
Well, it gives more time. If I need to talk to people on the phone or listen to an audiobook.. Amazing. You know, being in the car longer. Yeah, sure. Sometimes I think of it. Well, if I was going faster, maybe,, an accident would have happened. Like if I was going faster somewhere, you know, that I didn’t get into because I was stuck back, like, you know, the sliding doors. Amazing situation. Yes. You know.
Nir Eyal: 36:13
Yes. That’s right. Now, does it mean that’s probable? No. But is there more than a zero chance that if you were somewhere else, something, something terrible, something worse would happen. So just right there, we can take a limiting belief. Being stuck in traffic is always bad to a liberating belief of I’m right where I need to be. Maybe it’s a good thing I’m stuck in traffic because now I get to practice patience. Because you know what? I don’t want to be that jerk who’s constantly manipulated by stupid things they can’t control, like traffic. So it’s an opportunity to practice patience. That’s what I tell myself. Like I used to get annoyed at traffic. Now, hey, it’s an opportunity to practice patience. Okay, so it’s replacing that limiting belief with a liberating belief. So let’s do my scenario. I’ll be the guinea pig here. I’ll lay it all out with my mom. My mom is too judgmental and hard to please.
The opposite is I’m. My mom is not too judgmental and hard to please. How could that possibly be true? You heard what she said. How could that be true? Well, she did thank me for the flowers. She was just saying a statement of fact. The flowers weren’t so nice. So could it be true that she was trying to be judgmental? Maybe, just maybe, she was trying to be helpful, not hurtful. Maybe she just didn’t want me to get scammed by that florist. Could be. Could be. Okay, how about a third belief? Here’s a third turnaround. The opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Could also be I am too judgmental and hard to please. Could that be true? Well, wasn’t I the one who had stayed up till one in the morning rehearsing word for word? Exactly. The words that I deserve to hear, telling me what a great son I am. And when that praise didn’t come exactly as I thought it should, I lost it. So who is being judgmental? I was. Okay, here’s a fourth belief.
The opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Could be I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. Oh, that one turned out to be the most true. Because when I had I’d spent all this time, money and effort doing something nice and it didn’t work out the way I’d wanted, well, that felt bad. And this is a very important concept that we call a misattribution of emotion. A misattribution of emotion is when we feel bad on the inside, and so we attribute it to something on the outside. Can you believe she said that? That guy cut me off. Did you see what’s happening in the world today? There’s a war that’s some 10,000 miles away from me. It’s got nothing to do with me. All this stuff. That’s why I’m suffering, right?
No guy’s suffering doesn’t happen out here. Where does suffering happen? All suffering happens in your head. There’s no suffering out here. Suffering is in your head. It’s perception. Your suffering is always a perception of what’s happening. It’s not a fact. It’s a belief. All suffering happens in your head. So which of those four beliefs that I just shared with you about my mom, which one is true? Which one is false? All of them? None of them. Who cares? Who cares? Beliefs are tools, not truths. So does that mean I have to be best friends with my mom? Does that mean we have to have picnics in the park every day? No, it doesn’t mean any of that. It just means I no longer need to suffer.
And lo and behold, what does that do to my motivation level? I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who I know for a fact is very judgmental and hard to please, right? But now that I freed myself from that belief, I’m actually more likely to work on that relationship with her. And that’s exactly what happened. It changed my life, not only with my mom, with my daughter, with other people in my life, by changing that limiting belief into a liberating one. And so this is a very quick technique. It’s one of, of several in the book that can really change your life, change your relationships, change how you feel about the world, how you perceive the world and it’s, it’s an absolute game changer.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:16
Thanks for walking through that. It’s nice to have a roadmap because I at least feel in my life, you know, I have patterns with relationships, right? And those patterns have been for years. Right? So it’s good to have a roadmap of, okay, when I fall into that pattern, whatever it is. I have kind of a roadmap for that. Yeah.
Nir Eyal: 40:40
What are those underlying beliefs? That’s right. And, and, you know, the hardest part is recognizing those limiting beliefs for what they are. You see, limiting beliefs are like your face. We all have a face. But if I told you, hey, look at your face. You can’t look at your own face. You can look at everybody else’s face. Just like limiting beliefs. You can see everybody else’s problems, right? You can see all their kids, your spouse, your, your, your boss. You can see all their limiting beliefs. You can’t see your own. How do you see your face? You have to reflect to have a mirror. You have to have something outside of yourself to see your own face. And it’s the same exact thing when it comes down to our limiting beliefs.
I’ve interviewed people who are billionaires. I’ve interviewed people who are broke. We all have them, right? We know these people, right? People who are doing amazingly well in business, but they’re not taking care of their health. They’re, they’re, they’re, really amazing at sports or in the arts or whatever, but they’re not taking care of their family. They’re not, they don’t have close friendships. We see this all the time. We all have limiting beliefs in one area of our life or another. It’s just that we’re blind to them. We can’t see them. They’re hidden to us. And so we have to have a process to see them for what they are and do something about them.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:52
So I contact your most critical friend and just ask them, what are you, what are your most limited beliefs?
Nir Eyal: 41:59
You know, and they’ll tell you, I don’t, I don’t recommend that because you may not be friends for very long. However, you know, it’s interesting you say that one of the most powerful techniques is called illeism. And this is what I call the Donald Trump technique. So, and this is not judgment. I’m not telling you to be like Donald Trump or use him as an exemplar. Not at all, I don’t care. This isn’t about politics, but Donald Trump does this psychologically protective technique, which to most people, when you see it, looks ridiculous, right? If you constantly will see, well, people say that Donald Trump did this and people say Donald Trump did that. And Donald Trump just he talks about himself in the third person.
And it turns out to be a very psychologically protective technique. Again, this is not about politics. Whether you like him or not, I don’t care. That’s not what we’re talking about right now. We’re just talking about this technique. Part of what makes. I mean, you got to give the man credit. He is confident, right? Like he believes in himself, for better or worse. Right. And the way he does that and the way we should learn people for like the rest of us who don’t have that level of confidence, who are doubting ourselves, who are constantly telling ourselves our limitations. And when we need more confidence in our beliefs, this technique of talking to yourself in the third person does exactly what you’re talking about.
So as opposed to asking your friends, what are our limitations? Turns out one of the best techniques is to talk to yourself as if you were a friend. And it’s amazing. It sounds simple and silly, but it’s incredible when we talk. You know, when I tell myself you’re this, you’re that, you’re not good at that you’re not, you know, you’re who do you think you are? Then I beat myself up. And if you know, if I talk to my friend. The way I talk to myself in my own head. Nobody would be friends with me. But I do it to myself all the time. We all do. But when I have some psychological distance and I talk to myself the way I would talk to a good friend. Wow. The insights are completely different.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:53
Totally. There was a book I was listening to and I can’t remember. It was literally about more therapy stuff, and it basically talked about the person just reflected back. Well, what a friend say to you if you said that to them, you know, they were kind of.
Nir Eyal: 44:09
What would you say to a friend who was going through the same problem.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:11
Exactly.
Nir Eyal: 44:12
Very powerful technique.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:13
Yeah, I love it.
Nir Eyal: 44:14
Yeah.,
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:15
So we have sports, personal business. The last one is health, right?.
Nir Eyal: 44:24
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:25
And to me, it was kind of like a crazy story of this person who had it all and then was diagnosed with like this or started having these crazy symptoms., I think you said he was a football player, was going to med school., all of those things and the beliefs helped in this situation. Do you want to talk?
Nir Eyal: 44:48
A little bit
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:48
Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Nir Eyal: 44:51
So David was this All-American archetype. You know, he was super athletic. He went to med school, he was dating his college sweetheart, and he got this terrible disease and it’s a very rare disease. And the nurses, when they diagnose him with this, they’ve never seen it before. And one of the nurses says to him, well, you know what? At least it’s not cancer. Turns out afterwards he Googles the disease. And it turns out that the survival rate is a fraction of cancer. At that point, he wished it was cancer because the survival rates would have been better. But he’s a wonderful demonstration of how the power of beliefs changes what you see, what you feel, and what you do.
You see most people in that kind of situation where they had a disease, where the odds were stacked against you, they would kind of give up. They would say, what are you going to do? The doctors have exhausted every treatment. They tell me there’s nothing. There’s nobody coming to save me. There’s no we’ve exhausted every course. So, you know, it’s time to go. Well, that’s not what David did. David decided to take matters into his own hands, and he realized that because no one was coming to save him, he had to save himself. And he starts methodically, researching his own condition.
And it turns out that after years of this research and bouts of this illness, which almost killed him several times, he ends up discovering that the solution to his illness, the cure, is already on the shelf. It’s some off label treatment that he finds, solves, cures his disease, and he ends up starting an organization called Every Cure that does this for all kinds of rare diseases. So it’s because he had this belief that he could do something about his disease that he did. He saw things differently. He felt them differently. And then he did things differently because of his beliefs. And I think he’s this example of what’s possible when we believe.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 46:43
There are so many cool, interesting studies in the book which we can’t obviously go into. So I do encourage people, the one about the I don’t know if it was mice or rats where you place them in the water like people. Yeah. I don’t know if you have to listen to the book too, to get that one right. I mean, it’s insane. And yeah, there’s so many. So I just want to encourage people. You could check out Nir Eyal’s website Nir and Far. It’s NirandFar.com, which all of his books are on Beyond Belief. You could obviously get it on audible. You can get on Amazon, Beyond Belief and any of the other, you know, all the other books that he’s written as well., but, you know, this has been fantastic. I just want to thank you for writing the book. Thanks for sharing it with the world, spending years of your life kind of, you know, this is what I love about a book literally spent six years more than that really, like with all the expertise and stuff that you’ve, you know, accumulated over the decades. And I can literally buy it for $20. Like, come on, it’s insane. Okay.
Nir Eyal: 47:58
It’s pretty high ROI. I won’t, I won’t disagree with you. Yeah. Great book. No I’m not, I’m not touting my book. I mean, this is why I love doing what I do is that I get paid to learn and to get, you know, real depth into a topic,, to solve my own problems, right? I’m sharing my issues here with the world., and it’s following me along that journey that I, you know, I write books not about what I know, but what I want to know, as I mentioned earlier. And so it’s, it’s, there’s curiosity there. Like I want to get to the answer. I want to solve this problem. And, that’s why it takes so long because I’m looking for the solutions that actually work in my own life. And, it translates hopefully to others as well.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 48:32
Yeah. So Indistractable. Okay. is another one Beyond Belief and Hooked. All of them are great. Check them out. Thank you. Nir. Thanks so much.
Nir Eyal: 48:45
My pleasure. Thank you.
