Transcript of 683: Nir Eyal - How to Break Limiting Beliefs, Create Your Own Luck, Transform Your Relationships, and Start Seeing Opportunities Everyone Else Is Missing New

Welcome to the Learning Leader Show.

I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Nir Eyal is a Stanford lecturer, behavioral designer, and one of the most rigorous thinkers in the world on why people do what they do and more importantly, how to change it. He's the author of 3 books. His latest is called Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results. During our conversation, we discuss why Nir says most people don't have relationship problems, they have perception problems. And he shares the 4 questions that can transform any relationship. Then the critical difference between facts, faith, and beliefs, and why understanding that distinction is the key to changing anything about yourself. And then Nir shares how we can manufacture more luck in our lives.

So good.

Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Nir Eyal. This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you want to learn more about the CEO, Bert Bean, and Chief Revenue Officer Sam Kaufman, check out episode 424. We had a fantastic conversation talking about my partnership with the great people at Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com/learningleader today to learn more. That's insightglobal.com/learningleader.

I flipped to the back of your book because I love reading about the people that you love, the acknowledgement section. And I'm very curious about your partner, both in business and in life, Julie. She's the first name you mentioned in the acknowledgement section. How has Julie impacted you when it comes to belief?

Wow. Uh, interesting. So yeah, that— hey, I, I always love interviews that start different, and this is the first time anybody's ever asked me about Julie. And so I, I love— this is a great question. So Julie and I met the first week of college. I was helping her dad. I'd already moved into college, and I helped her dad move a big old box. And it turns out that that box was being delivered to Julie's dorm room. And, uh, that's how we met, and that was in 1997. And, uh, we've been married since 2001, so we're going to celebrate 25 years this year. She has done so much for my beliefs. I mean, um, you know, when you meet somebody, you kind of come in with certain beliefs and a certain personality, and then you kind of adapt. And if it's not going well, you become more apart, right? Like, you, you become more as individuals, whereas if it goes well, I think you become more of a whole. And if it goes really well, then you become a better version of yourself. And that, I think, is definitely what, what Julie's done for me.

And in fact, a big part of the genesis of the book came from her introducing me to this technique called the Turnaround, which comes out of the work from Byron Katie that she used with her mother to repair the relationship that she had with her mom. And then I started— and then she kind of invited me to learn this technique as well. And I was just so impressed with it. And it started with interpersonal beliefs, you know, our relationship beliefs, but then it kind of turned into, wow, you can use the same technique in all kinds of different beliefs. And so it's something I use daily, from anything from daily annoyances to workplace interactions to, um, dreaming up the future to, you know, getting myself in a good mental place. This turnaround method is kind of at the core of how we can change our minds to serve us rather than hurt us.

What's the turnaround method?

So the turnaround method is where you push yourself to collect a portfolio of perspectives. So the, the problem is, is that our minds hate changing beliefs. We use these beliefs to justify passivity, and we call these limiting beliefs. A limiting belief, according to my definition— I don't know if anybody else has defined them— my definition of a limiting belief is a belief that saps motivation and increases suffering. And it does that by creating short-term relief from discomfort. So I hate public speaking, I'm no good at public speaking, and so I'm gonna avoid public speaking, right? I reduce my motivation to go on stage, so I'm providing myself temporary relief but long-term suffering. Because long-term, I know I could have done a great job at that presentation. I could have put myself out there. So even though it was short-term, comforting, it was long-term harmful. That difficult relationship with my mom, you know, I don't want to have that conversation because, you know, she's always that way, she'll never change. You know, this just goes to reinforce what I've always seen in her. So the limiting belief is she is one way and I can't change that.

The liberating belief might be completely different. In both those scenarios, it's maybe I can change myself, right? So what a turnaround does is it helps you identify many different kinds of beliefs, and then you can choose the ones that serve you versus the ones that hurt you. The one that you've been holding onto just because that's what you've always known and it provides some semblance of, of safety and passivity and reduces immediate discomfort versus saying, hey, what could be just as true? And just collecting that portfolio perspective allows you to pick and choose.

So to me, I feel like we all, especially from a leadership perspective, but just in general life, we'd all be better served if we spent more time leaping outside of ourselves and trying to put ourselves in the perspective of other people, trying to think about even if you have a really bad boss. Liz Weissman told me this 10 years ago, I feel like, on this podcast, because I was complaining about, you know, they're terrible. And she said, well, have you ever thought about what life is like from their perspective? And it sounds basic. Well, no, I hadn't, Liz. I just complain about them, right? We all complain about people. It feels like the turnaround has elements of that, of perspective, of, hey, let's pause for a moment because we all see the world through our eyes and we're all pretty good at doing that. But why not for a second, let's pause and see it from someone else's perspective. Maybe that will help us understand why they made that choice, why they did that thing that we think is stupid, because we're only viewing it from our eyes, our beliefs, our perspective, and not theirs.

Is that an element of it?

Well, I think we all know the answer. We all know the punchline. Yeah. See it from somebody else's perspective. Yeah. Think positive. Yeah. You know, your beliefs are your destiny. We kind of know that stuff, right? Like the old Henry Ford quote, or attributed to Henry Ford, nobody knows if he actually says it, is whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right. So everybody kind of agrees with the end answer. It's about how do we get there? All right. Think about it from someone else's perspective. How? You can't even understand your own perspective. You want me to try and understand somebody else's? That's a good point. Yeah. The world is confusing enough. And so what do we do? We retreat into our limiting beliefs. I'm wrong, they're right. I'm sorry, the opposite. I'm right, they're wrong.

Yeah.

What we wanna do with this process is exactly the opposite. What we wanna try and do is a step-by-step approach to help us break past what limiting beliefs always do, which is that they hide themselves. A limiting belief by definition is hidden because we think that what we see is accurate. We all think that what we experience is a fact, right? Like, I saw it for myself. I'm stating my truth. This is the way things are. But that's not true at all. The way the brain processes information is woefully inadequate to put that burden of truth on it. So why does this happen? So your conscious attention can only process about 50 bits of information. That's your conscious mind can only process 50 bits. It's about a sentence per second. However, your mind is processing 11 million bits of information, right? So the sound of my voice in your ears, the light hitting your retinas, the ambient temperature of the room. Your brain is aware of all this stuff. Your conscious mind is not. So your brain has to filter out and leaves you with 0.000045%. Of the information that's coming in. So that's the difference between reading a simple sentence or War and Peace twice every second.

It's just way too much information. And so in order to make sense of all this data coming in, the brain has to see reality through a tiny pinhole of attention. Just a tiny fraction of reality do you actually consciously are aware of. And so how does the brain make sense of all this? It has to make predictions, and those predictions are based on our beliefs. We call this predictability. Processing. And so everything you experience, everything you see, everything you feel, and everything you're inspired to do is determined by the three powers of belief. And it is only when you force yourself through an active process, not just, well, try and see it from their perspective, not just try and think positive. That stuff doesn't work. It's kind of platitudes. You need to have a structured process to teach you how to do that. And once you do that, you unlock your real potential. That's the game changer, is that you can do things you never thought possible. You can repair relationships that you always thought were broken. You can, you can go into situations that you thought you were terrified of and come out the other end much better for it.

Okay, how do we do that?

Okay, how do we do that?

That sounds great.

I'm in. Let's go. Yeah.

Yeah. So maybe the best way to illustrate this is with a personal story about, about how my life changed with this. So it started with my relationship with my mom, but you can substitute a workplace relationship, a marriage relationship, any interpersonal relationship, any, any belief that you hold. So here's, here's, let me set it up for you. Here's what happened. Uh, a few years ago, my mom had her 74th birthday and I wanted to do something nice for her, Ryan. So I decided I was gonna send her some flowers. Problem was I was in Singapore and she was in Central Florida where I grew up. And so to get flowers to Central Florida, I had to call a bunch of florists and I had to stay up late and look at reviews and like try and figure it out to make sure that the flowers arrived on time. I went to bed at 1:00 AM, patted myself on the shoulder, and I thought, okay, you did a nice job, Nir. You did something good for your mom. Uh, she's gonna love it. I woke up the next morning, I called her up and said, hey mom, happy birthday.

Did you get the flowers I sent? To which she says, yes I did. Thank you very much. But just so you know, the flowers were half dead. Don't order from that florist again. I instantly became my 13-year-old self and I blurted out something I should not have, which was, well, that's the last time I order you flowers again. And I didn't immediately regret it. Now I do, but you can imagine it went over about as well as you'd expect. And after the call, I turned to Julie and I wanted her to sympathize with me. I wanted her to tell me why my mother was clearly being too judgmental, right? Like here, I'd done something nice for her and now she's being all judgy about these flowers. Or like, how rude is that? I wanted to vent and she said, how about we do a turnaround? And I said, no thanks, I do not want to do your stupid mumbo-jumbo touchy-feely nonsense. Like, we're supposed to vent here, right? Like, that— isn't that what we're supposed to do? Like, you can't let people not know how you feel. You have to get it off your chest.

You have to vent. You have to tell people what you really think. You can't hold it inside. Like, I need to tell you why, you know, how terrible what she just did to me was. And she said, okay, well, let me just give you some space for that, uh, in her very patient way. And so I reluctantly decided to not vent because at that point I had read what the psychology literature says about venting. Venting is actually terrible. It does nothing but reinforce your beliefs about people because not only do we not see reality clearly, we certainly don't see other people clearly. We see our beliefs about people. We don't see reality as it is. We see reality as we are. And so I knew that venting was not going to help me, so I did the work here. I did what I'm about to share with you, which is I first wrote down the belief. And again, credit to Byron Katie. She came up with these 4 questions, uh, and she basically channeled Aristotle. This technique is over 2,500 years old. So basically what you do is you write down the belief. My belief was my mother is too judgmental and hard to please.

Okay, that was the belief. And then she prompts us with 4 questions. The first question is, is it true? Okay, is that belief true? Ryan, come on, back me up here. Clearly my mother is being too judgmental and hard to please when I bought her these flowers. She should have just said thank you. Okay, obviously. Next Next question. Second question is, is it 100% absolutely true? Okay. Is it absolutely true? It sounds like the first question. It's actually not. Is it absolutely? Because when you add the word absolutely, that means in all circumstances, no exceptions. Was my mother in this case 100%? There was no other explanation. She was being too judgmental and hard to please. Well, maybe. I mean, depends how you look at it, I guess. Maybe there's a 1% chance, unlikely, but yeah, maybe there's a 1% chance that someone could see it differently. Okay, fine. Third question: Who am I when I hold on to this belief? How do I feel? Who do I become? How do I react? Well, I mean, well, I believe my mother is too judgmental, hard to please. I'm not very nice, you know. I'm short-tempered.

I'm not my best self. Okay, here's the fourth question: Who would you be without that belief? If you had a magic wand— it sounds crazy, but let's say you have a magic wand— tap your brain and boom, you don't have that belief anymore. What would your life be like? Who would you be? If I had this magical power, it'd be pretty awesome. I'd be more patient. I'd be kinder. I'd be more myself as opposed to a 13-year-old version of myself. So it kind of would be nice if I didn't have to have that belief. So what did I just do? In about 30 seconds, I determined number one, that belief may not be true. Seemed very true a minute ago. Maybe it's not true. There's a shred of evidence. Perhaps it's not true. 2, it doesn't really serve me. Like, I don't, I don't feel good with that belief. And 3, there might be a better way to be, right? Like, I could be actually be happier without that belief. Okay, so now something opens up. For the first time, you can see a situation, you force yourself just through these 4 questions. And let me tell you, this is a very simple, minor example I think a lot of people can relate to if you have a mama like mine.

But I've seen this done with people who have the most extreme views politically and how, you know, their, their political opponents are causing them suffering. I've I've seen it with people who have trauma and baggage and, and, you know, a lot of suffering in their life. And I mean, you can, you can see how through these 4 questions they open up new possibilities that they don't have to continue suffering. And so now comes the turnaround. The turnaround involves doing something absolutely ridiculous that you're going to hate, which is it's asking you to look at that belief as the diametric opposite. What would the exact opposite of that belief look like? Now, why are you gonna hate it? Because the brain hates changing its mind, right? We hate changing our minds. We have what's called a psychological immune system. Just like if you get a splinter in your finger, you have a biological immune system. Your body will mount an immune defense. Well, the same happens in our minds that we do not like changing our minds. We hate it. And the more you feel that, oh, that's crazy. I don't wanna think that way. That can't be true.

The more you need to explore it, because it's something that you are afraid to address because it might reveal a deeper truth. And that's exactly what happened to me. So here's what happened to me. First, I wrote down that first belief: my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Now, what's the opposite of that belief? The exact opposite is my mother is not too judgmental and hard to please. Now, the job that I have to do here is figure out just any way— is there any possibility that that could be true? I don't have to believe it, but is there any possibility that that could also be true in any alternative universe, that my mother is not too judgmental and hard to please? Well, the more I thought about it, maybe she was just conveying information. The flowers arrived half dead. That's information. That's not judgment. That's just stating a fact. Maybe she was trying to help me not order from this florist anymore so I wouldn't get scammed. So she was trying to be helpful, not hurtful. Okay. Is it true? I don't know, but it sounds like it could be plausible. All right, so now I have two beliefs.

Let's see if we can go for a third one. Another turnaround could be, not my mother's too judgmental and hard to please. What's the opposite? I am too judgmental and hard to please. Ooh. Yeah. Okay. How could that be true? Well, when I sat with that for a minute, I realized that I had rehearsed in my mind a script of what I wanted my mom to say. I had already pre-planned the effusive praise I wanted for being a good son and getting my mom flowers. And when that praise didn't come, I lost it. So who was being judgmental and hard to please? I was. Okay, now there's a fourth belief, and this one really hit hard. I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. Okay, how could that be true? Well, when I had spent a bunch of time planning for this thing that didn't work out the way I wanted it to work out, I felt like I was incompetent. Like, here's a simple thing that didn't work out the way I wanted, that I paid a bunch of money for, and I'd messed up, and now the money was wasted, and my mom doesn't like it.

And so that's a judgment on me. And so I felt incompetent. I felt like I was inept, and that didn't feel good. 'cause I was judging myself. And this is what's called a misattribution of emotion, that when we feel bad inside, if you've ever been bullied or been a bully yourself, this is always what happens. When you feel crappy on the inside, the first person you can find, you're gonna punch 'em in the face either physically or verbally because you feel crappy. And that's kind of what I did to my mom 'cause I felt bad, so now she should feel bad.

Mm. Hurt people hurt people.

That's right. And we do this all the time. And it started out something, you know, she was being too, and I had a case to be made. Like anybody listening to this story is like, yeah, your mom probably shouldn't have said that. And so I believe this firmly that that's why I blurted out and said, I'm not ordering you flowers. 'Cause clearly that was true. She was too judgmental. But now I have 4 beliefs. Okay. I have the original one plus 3 more. Ryan, which one is true? All of them? None of them? Who cares? Here's the thing that's so important to realize about beliefs. Beliefs are tools, not truths. Beliefs are tools, not truths. This is the most important thing I can convey. A fact is an objective truth. It is a fact about reality. It is so whether you believe it or not. The world is more like a sphere than it is round, uh, than it is flat. Sorry, flat earthers. It doesn't care what you think. That is an objective fact. Faith is something else. Faith, on the other end of the spectrum, is a conviction that does not require evidence.

God rewards the righteous. No evidence is required. In between faith and fact is a belief. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. A conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. What makes beliefs so special, the reason they are so underutilized, is that they can change. They can change. And so most of our problems in the world— interpersonal problems, personal problems, geopolitical problems come from this unfortunate situation where too many people think that their faith is a fact, and the thing that they think are facts are nothing more than beliefs, which are changeable. And so now, when I had these 4 beliefs, I could look at them and say, huh, I've held on to this one which says my mom is too judgmental and hard to please, and that only has one way out. The only way that I could be happy is if my mom changed with that belief. Only one way she has to change so I could be happy. Good luck. Like, that doesn't often happen. The other 3 beliefs, well, now I could do something about that. They were in my control.

And so that enabled me, it freed me, it was liberating. It's a liberating belief. I could do something I couldn't previously do. I could have a relationship with her because I could take care of my own garbage as opposed to insisting that she admit that she was wrong, which was not gonna happen. And so this is just one quick example. You can do this with your interpersonal relationships, with yourself about how you think about the world, with business challenges. I mean, the, the, the aspects of this go on and on and on. I think it's an incredibly powerful technique.

Okay. Can I push on it a little bit?

Please. Okay.

So your mom is wonderful.

By the way, changing my mind is the best thing ever, right? Because I'm all about changing beliefs. So I love it. This is my love language.

I don't know if I'm gonna change your mind. I just wanna say what I'm honestly thinking. Okay. Yeah. So, And I don't even know how to phrase it yet. We'll figure it out. Your mom is one of the 4 people that you dedicate the book to. So I don't know if she's like the best example to use for this tool, because in life you love your mom unconditionally. She loves you unconditionally, I'm guessing. So there are other people in life at times I mentioned a boss or whatever, the Liz Weissman story or others. But there are sometimes we have to deal with people who are legitimately narcissists. Not that I can factually say that, but you know these people and we have to work with them or deal with them from time to time. And yes, we could try the turnaround and we could try to put it more on us and be more reflective and thoughtful like you are. I want to be around people like you, by the way, that are that reflective and thoughtful and curious. My tribe. That's what I'm talking about. But you are the minority of the world by being that thoughtful of a person.

We can all have those thought bubbles of the people that come up that are not like your mom, that are not going to love you unconditionally, that are actually trying to do harm to other people, that are very self-centered. You know what I'm saying?

Sure.

What about for those types of people that we've all encountered Do we just say, ah, I'm just gonna go the other way? I mean, what do you do? What do you do in that situation?

Let's go back to what is a limiting belief. A limiting belief is a belief that decreases motivation and increases suffering. Mm-hmm. So where does suffering come from? What is suffering? Suffering is what happens in the gap between what is and what you want to be. So my suffering with my relationship with my mom was coming from the fact that I wanted her to be different. Mm-hmm. That's where my suffering was coming from. Who said I have the power to change that? Why should I expect her to be different? So this limiting belief, that person's a narcissist, what's implicit in that belief is, and that's bad. Does it have to be bad? Give me one way that that person in your life who's a narcissist is not bad. The easiest is that person's a narcissist. Awesome, awesome. You know why? Because I don't want to be around narcissists. I don't have to suffer anymore, right? I'm not expecting them to change, right? We have to understand everyone, even the narcissists, they are operating from the best tools they have. And so how do we measure love? When we say, oh, I love you so much, what does that even mean?

I love you a lot. I love it. What does that mean? To me, love is measured by the benefit of the doubt. How much benefit of the doubt we give to somebody.

If you think about, you know, so for me, like your kids, you give them the whole world. Yeah, yeah.

Like somebody you love more than— so my daughter, okay, when my daughter was born, I remember the day when she was born, they let me wash her for the first time. I take her downstairs after my wife gave birth, and I was the first person to give her a bath and wipe off all the gunk. And I remember when I held her, I love— I just felt this overwhelming feeling of adoration. Like, I'm I'm just crazy about this girl. 5 minutes ago she didn't exist, and now, like, I love her more than anything. And I gave her complete total benefit of the doubt. Now, why do I love her so much? Is it because she does things for me? She never sent me flowers, right? So yeah, she didn't do anything. She didn't make me feel good. I love her so much because I give her complete benefit of the doubt. Even though babies, you know, they poop, they need food all the time, they cry. But I never said, oh, she's crying to annoy me. She's doing that to hurt me. That's stupid. That's, that's really delusional. No, we give babies ultimate benefit of the doubt because it's the only tool they have is to cry.

They're not doing it to annoy us. And yet why is it that when those babies grow up and become adults, we don't give them benefit of the doubt? The narcissist in your life, the person who offends you, the person that hurts you, they just— that's the best tools they have. That's the best tools they have given. You know, it doesn't mean you have to be with them. It doesn't mean you have to include them in your life. That's not the requirement. The requirement is how do you figure out to stop suffering, to be at peace? That's what I want in my life. I want to be at peace as opposed to constantly expecting things to be different than they actually are. And so that's what this technique does. It helps you find a belief in your life that reduces suffering. That's the whole idea. It doesn't mean you have to be with them. It doesn't mean you have to forgive them per se, although forgiving means you had to judge them in the first place. And so part of it is releasing that idea of needing to forgive in the first place, because you can't forgive unless you have previously judged.

And so this big revelation for me is that I was constantly judging everything, everything, right? Somebody cuts me off in traffic, that jerk. There's a line at the, at the burrito place, oh my gosh. Uh, the, the business thing didn't work out, the stock market goes down, then I'm judging, judging, judging all day long. It's all we do is judge. Good, bad, good, bad, good, bad. Expecting things to be different than they are. Why? These are all limiting beliefs and all they do is make us suffer. They make us miserable.

Thank you for going along with that with me because I think what it is, is at least personally, it's an expectation problem.

Exactly.

I try to have high expectations for myself. For the people that I love in my life, both how I treat them and how I respect them and love them and care for them and, and them for me. But maybe there are others who I, I have the same expectations for them, but that's not who they are. And that's—

and it's causing you to suffer.

Correct.

We don't, we don't have relationship problems. We have belief problems. It's your belief that something should be different than it is, that people— it's like asking my my daughter to speak Russian. She can't speak Russian. Like, what am I expecting? She can't, she doesn't have that ability. So why should I have expectations that people should meet my expectations? Now, it doesn't mean that if an employee's not performing that I have to keep them around. I can fire them. That's okay. Like, yeah, but I'm not gonna suffer from that. Here was the requirement. Here's what they did or didn't meet. We may part ways. That's totally fine, but it's not gonna cause me suffering. It's not gonna cause me this emotional angst. I'm not gonna be ruminating about it. I'm gonna let it go. Because it's a limiting belief to believe that things should be different than they are.

Okay. Can we take a slight off-ramp for a second?

Sure.

It applies to Chapter 3.

Okay.

It's about better relationships. So I want to get to the secret to better relationships in a second. But we were introduced by a mutual friend of ours, a guy named Shane Snow. I love Shane Snow. I've been lucky to have dinner with him a few times in New York City. He's been super helpful to me over the past 11 years. You know, the first person I had on my list that I wanted to interview when I launched this podcast 11 years ago. He said, you got to talk to Nir. He's the best. He's the man. We've done a lot together. We wrote together. And right before we started recording, you talked about these sessions you would have with him and a few other people, these writing sessions. Can you take me inside that room for a second? I know this is not part of what we're going to offer, but I can't help it. I can't help it. Can you take me, like, inside that room of you and Tim Urban and Shane, these other people I've had on my podcast what it was like, why you did it, and how it helped you.

Yeah, we, so, um, uh, this has to do with my second book, Indistractable, uh, How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. And one of the techniques in the book that I discovered is this amazing power of focus through a mutual goal, even if that mutual goal is just to stay focused. It's incredible. When I would work on my own, I would get distracted. I would check email. I would do this. I would do that. But when I had other authors around me and what we would do, we would sit down, I'd prepare some coffee, you know, I have a, a big old jug of coffee and we'd sit down, we would write for 45 minutes, then take a 15-minute break, then write for 45 minutes, take a 15-minute break. And we do that for 3 hours every morning.

Just sit there on your computers, type it away. Yep.

Just type it away. But we were with each other. And so when you see the person next to you, you know, Mark Manson typing furiously, getting his book done, and Shane was there and Tim Urban was there and we were all writing. Not only is it inspiring, it keeps you on track. And so this is actually a technique I recommend is to find what I call a focus friend. So somebody that you can go to a coffee shop with or go to the, the company canteen and say, hey, you know what? I really need to focus. Let's keep each other accountable. Let's just work next to each other. And just like working side by side and seeing that other person also working on the stuff they should be working on. So we would oftentimes say, okay, what are you working on? What are you working on? All right, go. And that would keep each other accountable. And it, it turned out to be incredible. Uh, Mark finished his second book. I finished my second book that way. Wow.

Who could have thought at that time you guys would all go on to be these big-time famous authors? Were you like that at the time or no? You guys were just all trying to figure it out together.

Well, so, so, uh, I published my first book, Hooked, and Mark had published Subtle Art. Shane had published, I think, one or two books at that point. And Tim was, hadn't published his book yet, but he was a pretty famous blogger at that point as well. So, Yeah, we weren't like super young in our careers. We were like getting going. Yeah.

I just think there's a big power in putting yourself physically in rooms with high standard, get after it type people. And regardless of what you're striving to do, having a practice of that— I know you mentioned you want to get back to that when you get back to New York City— of putting yourself in rooms with others who are getting after it, who you respect and they respect you. That's just like a universal truth of life.

Yeah, no, there is definitely something to that. There's also a dark side, which you can't help but compare.

Yes.

Uh, and, and back to what we were saying earlier about expectations and suffering is that comparison is the thief of joy. Yeah. And so sometimes it can be tricky to be like, wow, I'm in a room with people who are super duper successful. I was like the least successful author there at the time. And so sometimes it can, you have to put it in perspective and to know, you know, I'm following a process. It's not about the outcome. It's about the journey. And it turns out the best thing you can do is do the work. Well, that's what I was going to say.

I mean, now that's even more prevalent than ever. Instagram, social media in general, that you look out and you see the highlight reels of your friends, of people you don't know, of just the world in general. And it is so easy, even for the most self-aware person in the world, to start comparing themselves to other people's highlight reels. How do you manage that?

I try and stick with the process. I think that's the best, uh, line of defense. So I'm a big fan of timeboxing as opposed to to-do lists. And so I think what most people do, we're told that, you know, if a task is under 2 minutes, just do it, which I think is terrible advice because every email takes less than 2 minutes. And so now you're spending your entire freaking day doing email. And then 2, to-do lists are one of the worst things you can do for personal productivity because there's no constraint, right? You can always add more things to a to-do list. And so you come home from work every day and you say, oh my gosh, I still have all these things I haven't done on my to-do list. And you start saying stupid things like, oh, I'm no good at time management. Well, no, it's not that you're not good at time management. It's a stupid technique you're using. To-do lists are dumb. They don't have constraints. Whereas a time box calendar, and this is a very old technique. I didn't make this up. It's actually the most well-researched time management technique, way, way better than to-do lists.

To-do lists have not been shown to be very effective at all. What's much more effective than a to-do list is planning out what you're going to do and when you're going to do it. This is called an implementation intention. Very well studied. The reason this is so much better is because the goal now becomes not to finish anything. Okay, this is super, super important. The goal is not to finish anything. What is this crazy guy talking about? What do you mean? Isn't to-do lists all about finishing stuff? Yeah, that's the problem. Because what do we do with a to-do list? We measure our self-worth by how many cute little boxes we check off. I used to do a task and say, oh, I forgot to put that on my to-do list. I'd write on my to-do list after I did it just so I could check it off. How stupid is that?

We all do it.

What do we do with it? We all do the urgent stuff. We do the fun stuff. We don't do the important stuff that we need to do to move our lives and careers forward. Whereas when you have a time-box calendar, and this answers your question of how do you stop looking to your left and right and comparing and contrasting with everybody you know, you put the time to do the work. So by having it on your calendar, the reason the goal changes, it's doing the work, not finishing the work. So why is it so much better than a to-do list? Because when you start on a to-do list, you work on something for 5 minutes. You say, well, let me, I had this question. Let me just go check this thing on Instagram. Let me answer an email. Let me check my Slack channel. And then what am I working on again? Oh, I totally forgot. Whereas a timebox calendar, the only goal is to work on that task or do that thing for as long as you said you would without distraction. That's it. Okay. Not finishing, working on that task without distraction. Why?

Because now. You have a feedback loop. The biggest problem with stupid to-do lists is that there's no feedback loop. How long did that take you to— you have to do a presentation, you have to do a, write a blog post, you have to— how long did it take? I don't know, cuz you weren't tracking. Whereas when you say, okay, I have a presentation to give, it needs to be 30 slides long, and when I worked on it for 1 hour, I got 3 slides done. Okay, well that means I need this many time boxes to finish the entire presentation. So now I have a feedback loop. I can start assessing how long things take for me to finish. So that's how you do it. You, you make time to do the work, to turn your values into time. That's the secret.

What is the secret to better relationships? You write that you don't have relationship problems, you have perception problems. What do you mean by that?

So this is exactly what I was saying before about this relationship with my mom, that the problem was not in the relationship. It's not that anybody had to do anything different. It's that I had the belief that she had to change so I could be happy. So I was stuck on one and only singular belief. Well, guess what? I could be happy other ways. I could be happy if I realized any of the other 3 beliefs that we discussed earlier, that, that she was not being too judgmental and hard to please, that I was being too judgmental and hard to please, that I was being too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. Those 3 made me much happier than sitting there and waiting she has to apologize and admit she was wrong, right? Those didn't make me happy because it wasn't gonna happen. So that's the belief problem. You don't have relationship problems, you have belief problems.

I'm just thinking of you and Julie both living the turnaround.

Uh-huh.

This is a weird question, but how is it when you guys have a disagreement, perhaps a fight, are you like, wait a second, I didn't do the turnaround, I'm doing this wrong? Like, how does that go when you're both so knowledgeable of these tools?

And guess what? You don't fight.

Really?

You don't fight?

You and Julie don't fight?

Why would you fight with your spouse? We're on the same team. You fight with your enemy. Why would you fight with your spouse?

Maybe let's say you have a disagreement about a parenting thing, any decision. I mean, you're living together, you do life together, so you're not the same person. So you have disagreements, I assume. So how do you not fight? How do you make sure that you stay aligned on the same team, headed in the same direction?

Honestly, since we have started this technique, we used to fight, or not fight, we used to have disagreements. Now we don't even have disagreements. We collaborate. We collaborate because now this has become our habit. This has become what we just default to. If there's a very smart person, much smarter than me, who has an opinion, who I respect deeply, and I love and admire. Why would I like fight with that person? Why would I even disagree with that person? I would collaborate with that person. It's like going to a mentor and saying, what do you think we should do with our daughter? Is having this and this challenge. We've had challenges that doesn't go away. Okay. Life never gets easier. You get stronger. That's a very important point. Life never gets easier. You just get stronger. Stuff keeps coming, right? But we don't suffer from it. Now we collaborate through it. And that's a completely different mindset. We're not adversarial. There's no need to be because I know she's operating with the best tools she has. She knows I'm operating with the best tools I have. And because we have this understanding that if we see things differently, that's an asset.

Awesome. Now we celebrate the fact, okay, I think things should be this way. You don't think so? Amazing. A new perspective, right? Because think about it like collecting that portfolio perspectives we talked about earlier. I came in with one. It took work to get to the other three. Now if I have a person who comes in with another perspective, amazing. Now it's like collecting Pokémon cards, right? Like you've gotta get 'em all. Then now with more perspectives, I can pick the best one. So it's, it's a game changer. Wow.

You guys should go on the road, teach that stuff.

Seriously. You know what though? Here's the thing. People don't wanna hear this.

Yeah, they do. Why would you say that?

My limiting belief at this very moment, and this is what I'm doing the best with, is that by sharing this stuff, I'm sharing what's worked for me. I don't wanna change people, right? It's hard enough to have changed myself, right? To be where I am today. And that's what I share in my work. When I try and change people, when I try and kind of take this stuff on the road and say, hey, here's the right way to be. Instantly people come up with excuses. They instantly wanna share all their limiting beliefs. Well, you understand, my husband is this and my wife is that, and she did this and he did that, blah, blah, blah. And they'll come with a million reasons why they are the source of the problem. Never me. Hate being me. Oh, definitely not me. And so it doesn't go anywhere. Yeah. So what I've tried to do, and this is why Julie's very private about this as well, is we try and figure out for ourselves And if we learn some lessons along the way, we would try and share 'em this way. And you, you ask actually excellent question.

Most people don't ask these kind of questions.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Your work though is absolutely transformational, correct?

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

No, but you, you would agree though, that's correct. I don't think that's a belief. I think that's a fact. It's transformational. By definition, transformation means change, hopefully for the better. I hope my work's transformational. So you say you don't want to change people, but you do, right? I mean, that's what your work does. It by definition changes people. If they read it, they listen to you, they listen to this podcast, they actually think about it. They have a conversation with their husband or wife about it. They do some work and then they try to use the tools to improve, to get better, to actually put it into play instead of just being a theory. Because I think that's why your work is so good. Why it's helped me long before we ever even talked, right? Which is the first time, is that it by definition is transformational, which then means it's changed me for the better and lots of other people too. So in a way, you say you don't wanna change people, but you do. You do change people in a great way.

Well, I appreciate that. That's very, very kind of you. I guess that's not my goal. When you say, what's your goal? Changing people. If people, if people wanna change, wonderful. That's fantastic. Yeah. It's benefited my life and it can help others. There's nothing better. Like when I wake up in the morning and I get an email from someone as I did this morning, saying, here's how my life changed. It's amazing. It's a beautiful, beautiful feeling. But that's not what I want. That's not what I'm expecting. If it happens, beautiful. That's a, it's a wonderful thing.

Well, what do you want then?

Uh, I want to explain the world so they can be made better. That's my mission. That's what I do. I do the explaining part. And this, by the way, this happens with a lot of folks, right? Like, You know who the most successful people are? They're not the people selling you online programs about how to make online programs. That's not, that's not where the insights are. The insights are locked up in secret, right? 'Cause they don't, like, there's no incentive to share it. And frankly, like, knock on wood, life has been good. We've started 3 companies together. Julie and I have started 3 businesses. This is our latest business, this writing stuff, which I do for me, frankly. I just, I like to write. I like to process. I write books on stuff I'm stuck on. So when I was getting distracted all the time, I wrote Indistractable to try and figure out how to manage distraction. When I learned about the power of beliefs and how to utilize them in my life, I, I wrote Beyond Belief. And if others benefit from that as well, that's fantastic. But I'm not out there selling courses and that's, that's not my, because I don't have to frankly.

Yeah.

Well, no, it's awesome. Isn't writing though such an amazing tool for both clarity and learning? That's why all leaders. Whether it's public or not, should have some form of a writing practice because it creates such clarity. It helps you understand what you really believe. The process of getting those messy thoughts out of your head onto the page, like you guys were doing in that room together, and like you and Julie do now, that is valuable as a tool, as a practice, as exists if you want to be a clearer, more informed thinker.

It is the most underutilized secret weapon. I could not agree more because you can't write clearly if you can't think clearly. And so writing forces you to sit down and put in text, right? In black and white, what you believe. Now, the next level, okay, so you can write, write, write, write, write. You can have a bunch of gobbledygook, which is the first level because there's even more gobbledygook in your brain. So when you actually get it out on paper and write it down, Then you can actually see what you believe. Then the next level, if you really want clarity, is to try and teach that when you try and give a talk, like turn a, a 350-page book into a 45-minute talk. That's gonna force you to get real in terms of what really matters, not just what's fluff.

Yeah, I love it.

Okay.

You write a little bit about luck. Luck isn't chance. This is a great chapter title. How do you see opportunities that others miss? We're out here, we're all looking for the opportunities, we're all missing them. Then somebody else does something and you go, ah, they just got lucky. He just got lucky with that thing, right? So you're right, luck isn't chance though. So how do we see opportunities that others miss?

So this is the first power of belief. There's these three powers of belief, the power of attention, which changes what you see, the power of anticipation, which changes how you feel, and the power of agency, which changes what you do. And so in The Power of Attention, the power to change what you see, what the research literature shows us is that having certain beliefs literally changes what you're able to see. So back when we talked about the 11 million bits versus 50 bits of information that you're able to process, that tiny pinhole of attention that you can see reality through, our beliefs shape what that pinhole is focusing on and how it's being filtered in our brain. So let me give you a good example. They did a study where they asked people who were self-described lucky or unlucky to do a very simple task. The task was take a newspaper, which the researchers had given them, same newspaper, both groups, and they said, would you please count the number of photographs in this newspaper? Right? The number of images in this newspaper, the people who were self-identified as unlucky, people who thought that they, they believed that they were unlucky, they took on average 2.5 minutes to finish this task.

Okay? The people who were self-described as lucky, who believed they were lucky, whether they were lucky or not didn't matter. It's people who believed they were lucky. They didn't take 2.5 minutes. They took 11 seconds. Hmm. Why the difference? The difference was that in this experiment, Every paper that they gave had on page 2, one of the images said in big bold text, you couldn't miss it, there are whatever it was, 43 images in this paper. Collect your prize. It literally told them the answer. The people who were self-described unlucky, who believed they were unlucky, they never saw it. They literally, their eyes glanced over it. Their brains took in information, but it never became part of their conscious awareness. It never made it into that pinhole of 50. Bits of information per second. So to them it didn't exist, whereas the lucky people saw it. So they literally saw reality differently because they believed that opportunities come, that things like this happen. And so that's just a great example. And in entrepreneurship, we see this all the time. You know, uh, Walter Isaacson in his, uh, biography of Steve Jobs talked about his reality distortion field, and that's exactly what this is, that entrepreneurs They, one, they tend to be way more optimistic.

They believe that lucky things happen to them. And so they see opportunities. You know, to be an entrepreneur, you, you gotta see things differently. I mean, it's, you see $100 bills on the ground when everybody's walking over them, right? You have to see this opportunity. And so that is driven by beliefs that you believe you can will things to change.

Pronoia, right?

What's that?

Have you talked about Pronoia before? Did I hear this, learn this from you?

Oh, not from me, but I, I know the phenomenon. You know, Pronoia, everything good's gonna happen.

Pronoia is this belief. That the world is out to inspiring, right, to treat you well, that good things are going to happen. I know I cut you off, so I apologize that I'm going to get back to this in a second. But near, like, it actually made me think of a very personal story about a few days before my wedding day with my wife Miranda. She's one of the things I love most about her is her— she shares this trait with my dad, and that is being insanely optimistic. All the time.

Love it.

And so part of our wedding was planned to be outside, some of the reception stuff. So we looked at the weather forecast and it showed it was going to rain, which, you know, puts a damper on a wedding if you're going to do some of it outside. You got to move and do all this stuff. And she— I'll never forget it because we say it all the time now. Miranda looked at me and she said, with our luck, it's going to be a bright, beautiful, sunny day for all of our guests and our family. With our luck. So many people in the world say, with my luck, and then they follow it by something that is bad or negative. And I remember that it was just a few days before we got married that I was like, man, that's the right woman. What a way to go through life. And now we say it all the time. We both say to each other, our children say it with our luck. Now, I love it. That doesn't mean it's going to come true. That doesn't mean we're right, but it means we believe in pronoia. We believe in that.

We've had our share of adversity, like every other family, like every other couple, we all have it, right? It's coming. We know it. But this belief in this mindset of saying, with our luck, fill in the blank of something that's extremely positive. It is so much more enjoyable to go through life with a person who looks at the world like that. It's so nice, man. It's contagious, too. It's contagious to the people around you. So this idea of, with our luck, something great is going to happen. Oh, I'm just telling you, man, it's contagious and it's fun and it's so much more enjoyable to walk through the world with people like that.

It's so true. And here's the ironic thing is that it becomes true. So my family does something similar. We say whenever something good happens, we say, ah, everything good happens to us. Huh? Right? We just, we just celebrate, right? Like there's no line at the TSA. Hey, everything good happens to us. Uh, the food was good. Oh, you see, we found this cool restaurant. Everything good happens to us. Like, well, outta little things, big things, everything good happens to us. Now, do more good things happen to us than bad things? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Who cares? Beliefs are tools, not truths. Beliefs are tools, not truth. So you can choose to believe it. And here's what's crazy. When you believe those things, you notice them more. So to you, your life actually does seem like it's magical. It does seem blessed. It does seem like you're always lucky because that's what you are letting through those 50 bits of information. You're seeing life through that lens. And so what this study demonstrated with people counting the photos was that they did become more lucky because they They thought they were more lucky, so they saw opportunities that others missed.

It's similar with, maybe you have the science behind this, with gratitude. So my thinking is if you're always looking for opportunities to say thank you to somebody, whether you write them notes, you text them, you call them, you say it to 'em to their face, having this mindset. My friends, Brooke Kotz, Garen Stokes, they're, they have Thankful Thursdays. But what I noticed, it's not only on Thursdays when they write like 3 handwritten notes to people they're grateful for every Thursday. It's not only Thursdays that they're more grateful. It's every day. It's all the time of regularly saying, I'm the type of person who lives with gratitude. I say thank you to people all the time. Like, we have a contest with my girls is how many times can you say thank you when we stand in line at Chipotle, right? Because there's like 4 or 5 different people that work on your bowl or your burrito or whatever you're going to get. And you say you want white rice or brown rice? Brown rice. They do it. Thank you.

Okay.

The next person puts the chicken. Thank you. And so just this idea of saying thank you regularly, it becomes your default setting. It opens your eyes out into the world to like, you just see more good things happening because you're constantly looking for opportunities to say thank you. It's, again, it's another cool way to go through life instead of saying, Oh, that person messed up, or they did that thing bad. You're, you're looking for opportunities for people doing well so that you can thank them.

That's absolutely right. And in fact, we know in a business setting that having gratitude, and I learned this from Tina Seelig at Stanford, this is called provoked luck, that they, they did a study on salespeople and they found that the salespeople who showed gratitude more often, they found that 60% of their opportunities were provoked luck, meaning that 60% of the opportunities that came their way, they provoked the lucky thing that happened. So how does that happen? How do they create luck? How do you provoke luck? So something as simple as sending a note of gratitude, and this is something that I try and do all circumstances, right? If somebody makes me feel just a little bit of happiness, never hold back on a compliment. Never ever hold back on a compliment. They're free. You get so much back from them. That's not why you should do it, but it just turns out that that's a fact of life that you just get so much back. How does that happen? You know, you write a note, Tina Selig does this, she writes thank you notes compulsively. Like just, hey, thank you for this. A little, uh, a little reminder, a, a Post-it note.

Thank you for that. And she gives us a great example of, she wrote a thank you note one time to somebody and the thank you note landed on someone's desk. And think about it, right? You're sitting at your desk and you've got all these things to do, and here's a thank you note. And then to the right of that thank you note is your laptop where you've got an email about a new opportunity that's come up. Well, who is gonna get the call about that opportunity? Well, your thank you note's right there. Oh yeah, Ryan's top of mind. Ryan's such a nice guy. He sent me that note. Wow, what a sweetheart. Yeah. Like, you know what? I'm gonna call Ryan about that opportunity. You're just top of mind more often, and that's how you provoke luck to come back at you.

Nir, there's a million more things we could get to. We touched on just a little bit of your book. I love it. I'm grateful for you that you sent it to me. I want to close with one more question since we started personal. We've touched on personal moments throughout. I want to end with a personal question. So fast forward to 1 year from today. Okay. This is called the champagne question. You and Julie— I don't know if you drink champagne or not. Doesn't matter. You and Julie, though, let's say for the instance of the question, are popping bottles. You guys are celebrating like crazy. What are you celebrating?

Wow. What are we celebrating? A year from now, huh?

One year.

Thing that comes to mind is that my daughter's going to college. And so we'll be celebrating sending her off to school. Yeah, that little baby grew up.

How do you feel about that? I'm going through the exact same thing right now. Yeah.

How old are your kids?

We have four. They'll all be in college next year.

Wow. All four are going to college, actually?

Yeah. Yeah.

Holy smokes. So one of the byproducts of changing my relationship with my mom is that I started changing my relationship with my daughter, right? These two incredibly important women in my life, because, you know, love is measured from the benefit of the doubt. And so when I started re-giving my daughter benefit of the doubt, that a few years ago, you know, we were kind of having difficulty, we were arguing, this was before I started writing Beyond Belief and I learned about it. Of these techniques. And then expecting the grace from my daughter that she would give me benefit of the doubt pushed me to figure it out with my mom because I needed to give her the benefit of the doubt as I would want my daughter to give me benefit of the doubt. That I know that in my shoes, I'm doing my best, right? Like, I'm not perfect, I make mistakes. It's the tools I got. And you know what? My mom as well. And you know what? My daughter too, and everybody, even the narcissist asshole person who's— we're all just trying our best, right, with the tools we have available based on our beliefs, based on our history.

And so that completely changed our relationship. We just, uh, for my birthday— my birthday was, uh, a few weeks ago— we went skiing together. And let me tell you, Ryan, the entire 3-hour car ride up, the entire 3-hour car ride back, we were having a conversation. We were chatting. We wrote an article together in the car. We had an idea for like a blog post we wanted to do together. She's into writing as well. And, and, uh, it was just, it was just amazing because like you always love your kid. As soon as your kid's born, you love them. But if you do your job right and things fall into place and you're very lucky, you like them. And that's a game changer, right? You go from loving them to I like you. Like I was sitting across the table from, we had dinner after we went skiing together. And I'm like, I just, I just like you. Like, you're a good person. Like, you're, you're a friend. And that's just, gosh, is there, is there anything better? And frankly, I don't know if I would've gotten there had I not learned these techniques of seeing my beliefs differently.

Oh man, that's as good as it gets. Thank you for sharing. The book's called Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results. Like your other books, man, I think you're getting better and your past ones were awesome. Um, and so I've been a follower of your work. I'm so glad and grateful for Shane for connecting us. I know this will not be the last time we talk, and I'm pumped, man, to continue our dialog as we both progress. Thank you so much.

Anytime. You call me anytime, and, uh, we'll, we'll, uh, commiserate as we miss our daughters and, uh, and kids together. Anytime.

I love it, man. Thank you so much.

It is the end of the Podcast Club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the Podcast Club. If you are, send me a note, ryan@learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Nir Eyal. A few takeaways from my notes: beliefs are tools, not truths. The most powerful ones aren't the ones you can prove, they're the ones that help you live better. And then, you do not have relationship problems, you have perception problems. Change what you believe about someone and you can change what you're capable of seeing in them. And then, lucky people aren't necessarily lucky. They see opportunities others miss because their beliefs have trained their attention to look for them. With our luck, it's going to be a beautiful, bright, sunny day.

It's so nice to be around people like that.

And then the belief that once served you may now be your biggest obstacle. The goal isn't to find the right belief and hold it forever. It's to stay curious enough and to keep revising. Nir really made me think throughout this entire conversation.

I hope you found it useful.

Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Near Isle. I think it'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, rate it 5 stars, hopefully write a thoughtful review. By doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, and for that I will forever be grateful.

Thank you so, so much.

Talk to you soon.

Soon. Can't wait.