Stop Limiting Yourself: How Your Beliefs Become Your Biology | Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal spent six years researching why brilliant, talented people consistently fall short of their potential, and what he found will surprise you: it's not a lack of knowledge, resources, or intelligence holding most people back. It's the invisible belief system running silently in the background, shaping every decision you make without your awareness. Most of us are walking around with beliefs forged in survival mode, and we're using them long after they've stopped serving us. The good news is that beliefs, unlike facts, are tools you can examine, update, and swap out. In this conversation, Nir walks you through the motivation triangle that explains why willpower and information alone never work, and the exact four-step turnaround process that rewrites the beliefs costing you peace, progress, and connection. Whether you're struggling with a goal that keeps stalling, a relationship that stays stuck, or a quiet voice telling you that you're not enough, this episode gives you a practical way out. The Greatness Playbook: The Belief Breakthrough Edition Nir’s books: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products Indistractable, Updated Edition: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results In this episode you will: Learn the exact four-question turnaround process Nir uses daily to dissolve limiting beliefs about people, including the one about his own mother that changed everything Discover why being "too smart" can actually work against you and how liberating beliefs outperform facts when it comes to achieving what you want Understand the motivation triangle and why you'll never stay consistent on behavior and benefit alone without the third element most people skip entirely Find out why positive visualization and manifesting can actually decrease your chances of success and what athletes do instead that works Understand why the words you say out loud about yourself become your biology, and how to use secular prayer as a tool for pain tolerance and inner peace For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1896 For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960 More SOG episodes we think you’ll love: Lewis Howes [SOLO] Dr. Joe Dispenza James Clear Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nir Eyal?

  It turns out that people who can persist the longest are the ones who are more likely to succeed. When I did interviews for this research, I talked to billionaires and I talked to people who were broke. And you would expect that people who don't succeed in life, that they would have more failures. That's actually the opposite. People who are more successful are the ones who failed more because they were more persistent. And when they persevered, even though they failed more times, eventually if they hit it, sometimes they hit it big.

• 0:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow. He is an author, a behavioral design expert and teacher who focuses on the intersection of psychology, technology, and human behavior. The inspiring Nier Ayal.

• 0:33Nir Eyal?

  So what happens if day after day, week after week, year after year, we constantly recite a script about our limitations, about our labels, about what we can't do? It becomes physiologically as well as psychologically true.

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 0:45Nir Eyal?

  If you have positive views about aging at 30, studies have found, there was a study at Yale that found that people who had those positive beliefs at 30, lived on the average, seven and a half years longer. That is more of an effect size than quitting smoking, than diet. It's more of an effect than exercise.

• 1:01Lewis Howes?

  How important or terrifying is the words we think or say about ourselves and our limits to our life?

• 1:10Nir Eyal?

  Incredibly important. The best things you can do is-

• 1:13Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Nier Ayal in the house. And he is an author, a behavioral design expert and teacher who focuses on the intersection of psychology, technology, and human behavior. He's sold millions of books worldwide, helping people overcome distractions, build habits that stick, and take back control in a world that is designed to pull us off track. Thank you so much, Nier, for being here. Excited about this, man.

• 1:40Nir Eyal?

  Thanks. Great to be back.

• 1:41Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna be fun, man. This is a topic that I love because most of my life, I grew up feeling very insecure originally because school, I was in the bottom of my class all through grade school, all through middle school, high school, and college. Bottom of my class, bottom four, because he used to rank us on our grade cards and tell us essentially either how smart or how stupid we are based on the rest of the class. And I was always in the bottom four. So I always had this belief that I wasn't smart enough. It was like this feeling that I wasn't smart enough. But for whatever reason, there was something else inside of me. That said, no, you can make something of yourself. There was like some calling, some

• 2:26Lewis Howes?

  voice, some feeling, some essence that was like, it doesn't matter if you're stupid on your grade card, or if you're lack the intelligence in school. If you have the courage to risk, to put yourself out there, to try and fail, to make mistakes, you can get better and you can do extraordinary things. And that belief, thank goodness, has carried me over the last 20 years to, you know, excelling in athletics and sports, to building a business where I had no skills or like anything about business, to launching a podcast, to writing bestselling books. When I didn't have any of the evidence that those things would be possible.

• 3:07Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 3:08Lewis Howes?

  But I had this like essence or belief that was like, I think I can figure this out. If I just, if I take the next step, if I meet the right person, if I ask the right questions and then try, try, try, something's gonna work out.

• 3:20Nir Eyal?

  Hmm.

• 3:21Lewis Howes?

  And that belief has given me the ability to, I think, outperform so many people who are way more intelligent than I am, who are way smarter, who have more degrees, who have higher education than me, all that stuff. But I just had the courage to believe.

• 3:39Nir Eyal?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:40Lewis Howes?

  And why is it, in your opinion, that so many people who are extremely smart, extremely talented, have all the degrees, accolades in the world, still lack the courage or the belief that they can go and launch the thing that they really wanna launch?

• 3:56Nir Eyal?

  This, we see this all the time. And the, the myth is that in order to succeed, you have to be the smartest. That's the defining trait. And in fact, in some ways, I think that being too smart can be a liability.

• 4:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 4:11Nir Eyal?

  Because you start looking for facts. Right? And it turns, so facts are very different from beliefs. A fact is an objective truth. And in school, we're graded by how many facts we can regurgitate onto a piece of paper. Right, a fact is something that is true whether you believe it or not. That's one end of the spectrum, and the other end of the spectrum is faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. Those are two different sides. In the middle, however, is a belief. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. So unlike a fact which won't change, unlike a faith that doesn't require any kind of evidence to be a conviction, beliefs can change. And those people who hold themselves

• 4:52Nir Eyal?

  to their beliefs, rather than sticking to things that they will only do if they know they are objectively true, they succeed more. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken with in researching around the power of beliefs, who tell me the same story. Is that something inside me, I just believe that it was going to succeed, and it did. And that's, that's why I've done this research over the past six years, is because there's an untapped power that people do not realize that they can access, that releases their potential by harnessing the power of beliefs. My favorite story around this, my favorite piece of research is the Kurt Richter rat study, where in the 1950s Kurt Richter took these rats and he put them in a cylinder. And he wanted to see, you can't do this kind of study anymore, it's kind of ethically devious,

• 5:37Nir Eyal?

  but he wanted to see how long these wild rats could survive swimming in water. In a cylinder with water? Halfway filled with water, he put a wild rat inside. To see how long Howard survived. How long they could swim. And he sat there with a timer, and it turns out the average wild rat can swim for about 15 minutes. Before drowns. Before it drowns, it gives up and drowns, right, 15 minutes. Then here's where the experiment really started, the interesting part. He brought in a new group of wild rats, he put them in the water, and he wanted to see now what would happen if, as soon as he knew that they would give up, as soon as they were about to drown, after 15 minutes, he plucked them out, dried off the rat, let it catch its breath, and then put it back in the water. And he did this a few times. Wow. Okay. Have you heard this study before? No. Okay. It sounds like torture, but it's. Okay, so,

• 6:21Nir Eyal?

  how long, here's the question, you know there's a trick here, right? You know there's something surprising. If originally the rats could swim for 15 minutes, how long could the rats swim after they were conditioned? After they had been pulled out, dried off, caught their breath, put back in the water, how much longer could they swim?

• 6:37Lewis Howes?

  I would say double.

• 6:38Nir Eyal?

  Double. That would be amazing, right? If they went from 15 minutes to 30 minutes of extra perseverance, wow, that would be incredible. It wasn't double, Louis. It wasn't triple. It wasn't quadruple. It wasn't for an hour. These rats, after they had been conditioned, could swim for 60 hours.

• 6:57Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 6:57Nir Eyal?

  Not 60 minutes, 60 hours, 240 times more persistent.

• 7:02Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 7:03Nir Eyal?

  What changed? The experiment was exactly the same. These rats' bodies hadn't changed. Nothing physically made them more perseverant. What had changed, we think, we can't ask rats what they believe, but what we think happened was that something in their minds had changed. They had now seen the possibility that salvation was possible. They had learned hope.

• 7:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Nir Eyal?

  And that made them more persistent. So what does that mean for us? What's the takeaway here? That when we attach ourselves to these limiting beliefs versus liberating beliefs, when we find what those limiting beliefs are, do away with them, and then find the liberating belief that can harness that motivation, we unlock something. And it's not magic, right? It was always there within us. These rats could always swim for 60 hours, but they gave up after 15 minutes because they thought it was hopeless. And we all do this.

• 7:54Lewis Howes?

  So they had the ability, they had the skill set, I guess, they had the physical capacity to swim for 60 hours, but they didn't have the belief.

• 8:04Nir Eyal?

  That's right.

• 8:04Lewis Howes?

  And so most of them would die around 15 minutes on average.

• 8:07Nir Eyal?

  They would give up.

• 8:08Lewis Howes?

  And once they learned the belief system, you know, even as a rat, I guess, you learn hope or this idea that, oh, maybe I can survive, or maybe I could go a little longer, right? They were able to. Go 240% more.

• 8:22Nir Eyal?

  240 times.

• 8:23Lewis Howes?

  240 times more than originally around survival mode.

• 8:27Nir Eyal?

  That's exactly right.

• 8:28Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 8:29Nir Eyal?

  Right. And so this is what's being unlocked. It's not magic. It's not anything supernatural. It's that all of us, inside of us, we have these powers that we don't even realize are there. And what's holding us back are these limiting beliefs.

• 8:42Lewis Howes?

  I mean, it kind of sounds like the David Goggins of rats. It's like, you know, okay. He talks about, once you feel like you're about to die, you haven't even begun. Like, your body can endure so much more. It might feel like you're dying. But maybe you do just need a little bit of a rest to the, and then you get this thing called a second wind. Right? There's this thing called a second wind where you feel like you have all this energy because you can go forever.

• 9:06Nir Eyal?

  Right.

• 9:06Lewis Howes?

  And that is interesting. Now, I'm curious, that they went 60 hours? Did they eventually stop and die after 60 hours?

• 9:14Nir Eyal?

  Eventually, they've reached their natural limit. And we all have our natural limits. But what we think are our natural limits are way longer than we would expect. There's all these things that are unlocked within us that our beliefs hold back.

• 9:28Lewis Howes?

  Now, is it a, is it a fear of, is it a lack of skill of enduring pain that most people have? Is it a lack of skill of enduring humiliation and embarrassment? Is it a lack or skill of overcoming the idea of fear of failure, fear of success? What is the skill that people are lacking that is holding them back the most?

• 9:50Nir Eyal?

  So when we look at what differentiates successful people, it's not necessarily intelligence. It's somewhat correlated, but that's not at the top. What's really at the top is two things. Number one is perseverance, and number two is adaptability.

• 10:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Nir Eyal?

  Why? Because it turns out that people who can persist the longest are the ones who are more likely to succeed. When I did interviews for this research, I talked to billionaires and I talked to people who were broke. And you would expect that people who are, who don't succeed in life, for, let's say, that they would have more failures, right? People think to themselves, you know, I don't succeed because I failed so much. And it's actually the opposite, that people who are more successful are the ones who failed more. Because they were more persistent. They kept trying and trying. It was just like those rats who kept swimming. And when they persevered, even though they failed more times, eventually if they hit it, sometimes they hit it big.

• 10:43Lewis Howes?

  Do unsuccessful people?

• 10:46Lewis Howes?

  Just don't try enough. Is that kind of what you researched?

• 10:49Nir Eyal?

  That what's lacking is motivation. Fundamentally, what these beliefs unlock is your motivation. But the way we think about motivation is completely wrong. The way we've been taught about motivation is if you do this behavior, you'll get this benefit. So that's why we need motivation, right? That's kind of the classical economic explanation. I pay you a salary, that's the benefit, so that you do this behavior.

• 11:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I work out for this long and I get a result. I lose weight, but when you don't see the result, within two weeks, people give up.

• 11:20Nir Eyal?

  Why? So why do we lose motivation? What's missing? I mean, we have tons of self-help books telling us what to do. We've got Google, that we can Google something if we don't know how to do it. We can ask AI to tell us what to do. We all know what to do. What's lacking is not a lack of knowledge. It's not a lack of resources. There's something else missing. And that thing that's missing is the fact that motivation is a triangle. It's not a straight line. On one side, you have the behavior, what you need to do. On the other side, we have the benefit, why we need to do it. But holding the triangle together is belief. If I don't believe I'm gonna get the benefit. Let's say you work for a boss who you don't believe has your best interests at heart. They're not gonna give you that promotion.

• 12:05Nir Eyal?

  They're not gonna give you that raise. Are you gonna be motivated to work for them, even if you want the benefit? No.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 12:10Nir Eyal?

  What's very likely on the other side of the triangle is the behavior. That if I don't believe in my own ability to do the behavior, if I have a limiting belief about that behavior, I'm also gonna quit. So if it was just as easy as I want this, so I do that, we'd all have six-pack abs and be multimillionaires. Doesn't work that way because of the power of belief. You have to have all three, the behavior, the benefit, and most importantly, the belief.

• 12:34Lewis Howes?

  If someone focuses only on, I'm gonna go do this thing. I'm really excited and motivated to launch this thing because I want this result. I want this benefit. But they lack the behavior.

• 12:47Lewis Howes?

  Or excuse me, they lack the belief that they're actually capable of accomplishing it, or deserving and worthy of receiving that accomplishment. What will happen if they lack that belief?

• 12:58Nir Eyal?

  They lose motivation. They don't keep trying. They're just like those rats that give up and sink. And that's exactly what happened. And when we keep trying, invariably, we don't succeed. Now, this isn't magical thinking. This isn't positive thinking. I'm not a big advocate. If you look at the research literature, just wishing for something actually makes you less likely to go out and get it. Gabrielle Ottinger did this wonderful study where she hooked up people to blood pressure monitors. And she tracked what happened to them when they did a visualization exercise. When they thought about, you know, when they manifested, when they thought about the future they wanted, when they aligned themselves with vibrations or whatever they thought. Here's what happened, Louis. Their blood pressure dropped. And they became more relaxed.

• 13:42Nir Eyal?

  And then afterwards, they became less likely to do the things that it would take to get the results they wanted. So what the research shows us, that just dreaming, just visualizing about that potential outcome, just manifesting is not enough. In fact, it hurts you. It makes you less likely to get those results. Because your body interprets that relaxation as the benefit.

• 14:07Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 14:08Nir Eyal?

  It feels like I've already accomplished financial success because I dreamed it in my head.

• 14:12Lewis Howes?

  So how does someone learn to manifest the right way? Specifically from, you know, sports psychology, talking about visualizing the outcome, visualizing the process on the court or the field, how you're going to react and respond.

• 14:25Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 14:26Lewis Howes?

  Strategizing and planning and business in the future, when certain things happen, how will you react? Like kind of putting yourself in the future. What else needs to happen alongside visualization in order to manifest what you want?

• 14:39Nir Eyal?

  So what the research literature shows us is that just the dreaming doesn't work. And this is a great example of how the self-help industry has taken something true and manipulated into something that's false. We hear that visualization works. And we hear that athletes use visualization exercises, which is true. But what do athletes visualize? Do athletes visualize the trophy? No. Do they visualize the gold medal? No. What do athletes visualize? They visualize the obstacles in their way. They visualize if I'm on offense, defense is coming at me. If I'm going down the mountain skiing, what could be in my way? They're visualizing the obstacles so that they are emotionally ready to deal with it when those obstacles come. So I don't know if you remember this in our last interview,

• 15:24Nir Eyal?

  but I might have mentioned, I used to be clinically obese. Like clinically obese, not just overweight obese. Yeah.

• 15:29Lewis Howes?

  Now you're a machine. Lean machine.

• 15:32Nir Eyal?

  I appreciate it. But how did I, how did I do that? What was kind of the secret to it? Was that I stopped dreaming about the outcomes. And instead, I started planning for the obstacles. So what really made a difference for me was planning ahead, visualizing in my imagination, when I go to that dinner party and someone offers me a drink or a piece of birthday cake.

• 15:54Lewis Howes?

  What am I gonna do?

• 15:54Nir Eyal?

  What am I gonna do?

• 15:55Lewis Howes?

  What am I gonna say?

• 15:56Nir Eyal?

  How do I deal with that discomfort of having to say no?

• 16:00Lewis Howes?

  What is a, I mean, if someone is overweight right now and they've always tried to get healthier, lose weight, but they've yo-yoed or up and down, or they've never been able to keep the weight off. What would be the plan in this motivation triangle from belief, behavior, and benefit to say, I'm actually gonna get out of obesity or lose this weight for good? What would they need to do?

• 16:22Nir Eyal?

  Well, so this is my story. First of all, I feel for anyone who's in that situation. And I still have to do this. Every day I have to think about this. It doesn't just go away. It's still a struggle. Now, I'll tell you what happened to me. That from a very young age, when, when I was very overweight from a young age for a long time. And what I did, starting back in the 1990s, was I would read whatever diet book was the latest fad. So it started with low fat and Snackwell cookies. That's what I ate all day long. Cause that's how we thought we would lose weight. And then after that, I went to a vegetarian diet. It was all tofu and potatoes. And then after that came keto. And that's what I, you know, I threw out the potato and tofu and now it was all keto all day long. And then after that, I think it was intermittent fasting. And the interesting thing is every diet worked. Every diet worked.

• 17:06Nir Eyal?

  I would lose weight until it didn't. Because what would happen invariably every single time? The reason the yo-yo kept going back up and down was that when there was a little bit of doubt. When that doubt crept in, somebody would tell me, oh, vegetarians don't get complete nutrients, or keto is bad for your kidneys, or whatever.

• 17:23Lewis Howes?

  You question it, you're like, huh?

• 17:24Nir Eyal?

  Exactly.

• 17:25Lewis Howes?

  Is there a better way?

• 17:26Nir Eyal?

  That's right.

• 17:26Lewis Howes?

  What should I be doing?

• 17:27Nir Eyal?

  And then, those limiting beliefs crept in. So, that next time I said, okay, I'm gonna have that piece of pizza, and you know, it's, whatever, I'll have a little snack and have some pizza, how bad can it be? What would happen? The, it's called, this is actually a real term in psychology, it's called the what the hell effect.

• 17:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I've had one piece, let me have the whole pie.

• 17:44Nir Eyal?

  Exactly, right. Or for me, it'd be, you know, let me chase it with a, with a beer and some fries, right? Because, what, what's the point? Ah, diets don't work anyway, now I have this, this information that maybe the diet I was on don't, doesn't work. Oh, no diets work. And so that became a limiting belief, as opposed to the liberating belief of, okay, maybe I went off track and I had a piece of pizza when I shouldn't, okay, but I control the next thing that enters my mouth. As opposed to the what the hell effect, which was a limiting belief.

• 18:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:10Nir Eyal?

  And so, for, for not just weight management, for time management, for money management, all these things, what is the core of human motivation? Right, it's not carrots and sticks. A lot of people kind of beat themselves into submission with punishments, or rewards if they do the right thing. And this blew my mind, that the research now shows that it's actually not about carrots and sticks. That that's not how the brain motivates us. That in fact, the carrot is the stick.

• 18:38Lewis Howes?

  Explain that.

• 18:39Nir Eyal?

  Right, so it's like, kind of like a Matrix moment, right? There is no spoon. The carrot is the stick. What does that mean? That all human motivation, all human motivation is from one thing and one thing only. And that is the desire to escape discomfort. Even wanting to feel good. Craving, lusting, hunger, desire, itself is psychologically destabilizing. So what that means, if all human behavior is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort, that means time management is pain management, money management is pain management, weight management, it's all pain management. So if you can learn to manage that discomfort, you can unlock this hidden misery.

• 19:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so, one more time, if you can learn to manage pain or discomfort, then you can unlock essentially anything you want.

• 19:29Nir Eyal?

  That's right.

• 19:30Lewis Howes?

  In any area of life.

• 19:31Nir Eyal?

  Anything that the laws of physics don't prevent you from, from doing.

• 19:34Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 19:34Nir Eyal?

  Because everything worth having in life, right, you know this, is on the other side of that discomfort.

• 19:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 19:39Nir Eyal?

  You wanna build a great family? It's gonna take hard work. You wanna build a business? You know it takes hard work. You wanna get in shape? It's gonna take work. Yeah. But what blew my mind is that I always separated. I'm sorry, I always, I never separated pain from suffering. What's the difference? That was always synonymous.

• 19:59Nir Eyal?

  What's the difference between pain and suffering? So, pain is just a signal. Where does pain happen? Where does pain occur? Is pain here? Is pain here? It's the mind, right? Always in the mind. It's always in the, where else could it be? Right? If, if, if you break your arm, the pain isn't here. The pain is registering in your brain. Where else could it be? Doesn't mean it's not real. All pain is real. But the suffering occurs up here. For example, let's say, Louis, that, uh, right now, uh, all of a sudden, your, your heart started beating very quickly. You were short of breath, dry mouth. Something would be terribly wrong. Right? You would have to go to the ER immediately. But if you had the same physiological sensations while you're on a run or in the gym, that's great.

• 20:41Nir Eyal?

  Now you have a positive perception of that same exact physiological response. And so, pain is just a signal. Suffering is the interpretation of that signal. What does that mean? It means that, that we can shape how we experience that pain. It doesn't necessarily have to be suffering. Based on our beliefs. Hmm. Based on the filter of perception, we can interpret differently. So, I'll, I'll give you a, a great example. So, some of the research that stopped me cold in my tracks was around hypnosis. Have you ever heard of hypnosis? Like hypnosis? Yeah, but for surgery. Okay. It's mind blowing, okay? I've, and I, Louis, I would not believe it if I have not seen the tapes. And in the research, I, I did, I saw many of these surgeries.

• 21:25Nir Eyal?

  There's a guy I, I wrote about. Hypnosis. Hypnosis. So essentially hypnotizing yourself to not feel pain. So you don't have to go under anesthesia. Right. And you know me, I'm, I'm a pretty science-backed guy, right? It took me six years to write this book. You're skeptical. I'm very skeptical, right? Okay. Almost to the point of being cynical, right? Yeah, of course. And so, I needed the evidence. And so, I had to watch the actual video of the surgery. And it turns out that in Europe, mostly Switzerland and France. This is a technique that tens of thousands of people have gone through. And so the guy that I interviewed, his name is Daniel Gisler. He was a former commodities trader, very numbers guy, analytical, not woo woo in the least. And this guy, uh, he was young 50s.

• 22:06Nir Eyal?

  He has this freak accident and he, he breaks a bone in his ankle and he has to get, uh, these, these screws put into his leg. And then it's time to get these screws taken out.

• 22:15Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 22:16Nir Eyal?

  And in the, well, this is years later. He's healed up. He has to do this.

• 22:18Lewis Howes?

  Still.

• 22:19Nir Eyal?

  And he learns, he comes across this technique called hypnosis. He gets kind of curious. He watches some YouTube videos. He decides to take a class. And he prepares his mind to the point where he goes under the surgery for 55 minutes with scalpel cutting into flesh, with metal screws being extracted from bone.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 22:39Nir Eyal?

  Without general anesthesia, without local anesthesia, nothing.

• 22:43Lewis Howes?

  Nothing. He just said, let me put myself in a mental state to turn off the pain signal.

• 22:49Nir Eyal?

  How does he do that?

• 22:50Lewis Howes?

  And then allow you to cut open my leg without me screaming.

• 22:53Nir Eyal?

  That's exactly right. And not only, not only.

• 22:55Lewis Howes?

  You watch this.

• 22:56Nir Eyal?

  And if he's, yes. And, and not only is he, you, you, you would think, okay, well, maybe he's feeling the pain, but not letting it out. No, we can see in his blood pressure, in his heart rate, all the things that should be going, that's spiking. You know, when, when the, when the body's in, in stress mode, nothing happens.

• 23:11Lewis Howes?

  He turned the pain signal off.

• 23:12Nir Eyal?

  Well, he turned the suffering off.

• 23:15Lewis Howes?

  Not the pain signal.

• 23:16Nir Eyal?

  Not necessarily. So what, so here's, this is, this is the heart of, of, of the research I've done. Is that beliefs have these three powers. The power of attention, the power of anticipation, and the power of agency. So what Daniel Gisler was able to do, and tens of thousands of other people do all the time, is that through the power of beliefs, they can choose where to pay attention to the signals coming into their brain. Because what's happening right now, your brain is taking in 11 million bits of information. Right now, 11 million bits of information. The sound of my voice entering your ears, the light entering your eyes, the ambient temperature of the room. You're taking all this in, okay? Just to put that in perspective, that's the equivalent of reading War and Peace every second twice.

• 24:01Nir Eyal?

  That's what your brain is processing right now. However, your conscious awareness is only 50 bits per second. 50 bits versus 11 million bits. That means that your conscious brain, the perception of suffering, is only taking in .000045% of the information that's available. So what does the brain have to do? It's called predictive processing. It doesn't see reality as it is, it sees it as you predict it to be. Bingo. How did you know that? Because you've seen it a million times. These are called our priors. And so our prior beliefs dictate what we see in the present reality.

• 24:41Lewis Howes?

  So how do we shift a prior belief into creating future evidence? That we can create something we've never created before?

• 24:48Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Lewis Howes?

  If we only have proof and evidence that we've been a failure, that we've tried and humiliated ourselves over and over again, that we're not enough, that we're someone that's worth being abandoned, whatever it is.

• 25:02Nir Eyal?

  Right.

• 25:03Lewis Howes?

  How do we create a belief that we've never experienced?

• 25:06Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 25:07Lewis Howes?

  To create a new result in our life?

• 25:08Nir Eyal?

  Yeah, so this is where the magic happens. And the magic is that number, first step is to see those limiting beliefs, because we all have it.

• 25:17Lewis Howes?

  What was yours?

• 25:18Nir Eyal?

  Oh my God, where did the?

• 25:20Lewis Howes?

  What was your biggest two or three, like our biggest?

• 25:22Nir Eyal?

  Oh, where do we start? Okay, I'll tell you. For me, it was relationships. I had a lot of limiting beliefs with my relationships.

• 25:29Lewis Howes?

  Like intimacy or?

• 25:30Nir Eyal?

  I'll tell you exactly what happened. So for me, it was my relationship with my mom.

• 25:34Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 25:34Nir Eyal?

  That, and this, this, this. Particularly illustrates the point. So a few years ago, my mom had her 74th birthday. And I wanted to do something very nice for her. And so I wanted to send her some flowers. Now, I was in Singapore. She was in Central Florida where I grew up. And getting flowers from Singapore to Central Florida is no small task. So I called up a bunch of florists. I stayed up till 1:00 in the morning, making sure that the the delivery would happen on time, that she would get them, that the flowers wouldn't wilt in the car in the Florida heat. Stayed up till 1:00 in the morning. I went to bed and I patted myself on the back. I said, I'm a good son. I'm a good son. Right? I did the right thing. I call her up the next morning. I say, hey, Mom, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers I sent?

• 26:16Nir Eyal?

  And she said, yes, I got the flowers. Thank you very much. But just so you know, that they arrived half-dead and I wouldn't order from that place again. Oh, my God. So it's finding the fault as opposed to... So you can feel me on this one, right? So I... You failed. Yes. So I said something to the effect of, well, that's the last time I ever buy you flowers again. And that went over just about as well as you'd expect. Right? Not so good. And then after the call, my wife Julie, she turned to me and she said, do you want to do a turnaround on this? To which I said, F no. No, no. I'm pissed off. I don't want your mumbo jumbo, touchy feely. Yeah, I was up till 1:00 a.m. I did my best.

• 26:59Nir Eyal?

  Did you hear what she said? I need to vent, right? Because that's what we've been told, this lie. That if somebody hurts you, you need to tell them how you feel. You need to get it off your chest. You have to vent. Wrong. The research literature shows that that is not helpful. That when you do that, when you vent about people, you're doing nothing but reinforcing your belief about that person. So you don't see people as they are. You see an effigy of what your beliefs say they are. And so I knew this research at the time. I was writing the book. And so I knew about this. So I stopped venting. I said, okay, fine, I won't vent, which I really wanted to do. Of course. And instead, I did what she advised. I did a turnaround. Now, this technique comes from Byron Katie. She's been around for a very long time. She's wonderful. And she actually channeled a technique that goes back all the way to Aristotle. About the work?

• 27:42Nir Eyal?

  Exactly. Exactly. It's the work. So I did this. And I really respect it. And you know, it's a very, very long tradition. But Byron Katie really put it into a format that I think people... Is it true? Is it really true? So here's what I did. First step, I wrote down the belief. The belief was, my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. So the first question, is it true? Duh, didn't, didn't you just hear, right? Okay, next question, let's move on. Obviously, she's too judgmental and hard to please. Next question, what's the next question? The next question is, is it absolutely true? Yeah. Okay, is it absolutely true? Well, could there be, absolutely means in all circumstances. Yeah, yeah. Never, ever, ever, ever, is it not true? No.

• 28:26Nir Eyal?

  Okay, maybe, I don't know how, but maybe there's a circumstance where it's not true. Fine, okay, third question. Who am I when I hold on to this belief? Uh huh. When I hold on to the belief that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, who do I become? What kind of person am I? I'm not very patient, I'm not kind, frankly, I'm not myself. I'm not someone who I'm proud of. And then the fourth question, who would I be without that belief? Hmm. And when I thought about that, I said, okay, if there's some kind of magic wand and I could wave it and dissolve that belief from my brain, I would be kinder. I would be more patient. I would be who I think I really am. Mm hmm. And so I really, you know, I, I understood that my, that belief wasn't really serving me.

• 29:09Nir Eyal?

  Now, here's, here's the important part, is that beliefs are tools, not truths. Unlike a fact or faith, a belief is something else. A belief is a tool, not a truth. So it doesn't actually matter if it's true or not, okay? But I was holding on to belief that, to me, felt very true. And so the process, you ask, how do you go about changing these beliefs? You look for the diametric opposite of that belief in this turnaround. Okay, so what's the opposite of that belief? My mother is too judgmental and hard to please. What's the opposite? My mother is not too judgmental and hard to please. Okay, at first, I didn't, no, there's no way. I don't believe that, yeah. I don't believe that, right? But again, I'm not looking to change my beliefs. The point of a turnaround is not to change your beliefs.

• 29:54Nir Eyal?

  It's to give you a portfolio of perspectives that you can now choose from to see which one serves you better. So I tried it on for size. How could that possibly be true, that my mother is not too judgmental and hard to please? Could that possibly be true? Well.

• 30:09Lewis Howes?

  Let me find some instances. Let me pull the memory bank.

• 30:12Nir Eyal?

  Or even with this specific instance, maybe. Maybe she was trying to help me. Maybe she was trying to make sure that I just didn't get scammed from this florist. And she was trying to be helpful, not hurtful. Okay. Perhaps.

• 30:24Lewis Howes?

  Didn't come off that way, but maybe.

• 30:25Nir Eyal?

  Exactly. Now let's do another turnaround. Instead of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. I am too judgmental and hard to please.

• 30:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Nir Eyal?

  Could that be true?

• 30:36Lewis Howes?

  You need her to have this perfect response for you to feel like it was, was a good job.

• 30:40Nir Eyal?

  Bingo. I, I, I wish you were there because it took me a while to realize it, but that's exactly what, that's what I realized is that when I called her. And she didn't respond exactly the way I had scripted in my head.

• 30:50Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for thinking of me.

• 30:52Nir Eyal?

  The effusive praise didn't come.

• 30:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Nir Eyal?

  I lost it. And I said something that I regret. So who was being judgmental?

• 30:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:58Nir Eyal?

  I was.

• 30:59Lewis Howes?

  What is, uh, I think Tony Robbins says, when you trade expectation for appreciation, your life will start to change.

• 31:04Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 31:04Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to have appreciation when you have a strong expectation.

• 31:08Nir Eyal?

  That's right.

• 31:08Lewis Howes?

  Even if you haven't voiced the expectation, you have an internal. I was up till 1 a.m. I did this. I researched for hours to just to get my mom flowers.

• 31:16Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 31:16Lewis Howes?

  And I had all these. Yeah, and I deserve at least a thank you.

• 31:19Nir Eyal?

  Which is what? Which is a belief.

• 31:21Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 31:21Nir Eyal?

  It's just a belief.

• 31:23Lewis Howes?

  True.

• 31:23Nir Eyal?

  But there's one, there's a fourth one, which was the most true, which was the one I most did not want to believe. Instead of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. I am too judgmental and hard to please. Towards myself.

• 31:34Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. It's never enough.

• 31:36Nir Eyal?

  How could that be true? Well, now, when I thought about it, I realized. When I did something and put effort towards something that didn't work out. That I took that as a personal failing. That I had somehow messed up, that I was incompetent. I couldn't even get my mom proper flowers. And so who was judging who? I was judging myself. Now again. Are any of these true? Does it matter? What matters is which one of those beliefs gave me peace.

• 32:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, which one serves you the most?

• 32:08Nir Eyal?

  Exactly. So now I had a portfolio to choose from. The first belief, that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. There's only one way out of that. She had to change for me to be happy.

• 32:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:18Nir Eyal?

  It's the only way out. With the other three, I could do something about that. And so that's the real power of belief is that when you, for me, you said, what changed most? It was when I could look at my relationships and now I do this probably six, 10 times a day. When someone annoys me, I take a step back and I say, okay, what's the limiting belief here? What's the opposite of that limiting belief? And how could it also be true? And my life, again, it's not about finding facts. It's not about proving the truth.

• 32:45Lewis Howes?

  It's not about truth.

• 32:46Nir Eyal?

  It's about finding peace.

• 32:48Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:48Nir Eyal?

  Now I'm happier, I'm more myself, I'm more calm and relaxed. And those benefits and what changed? All that changed was my belief.

• 32:57Lewis Howes?

  It's a, you can call it belief or a perspective, I guess, around what's happening in life.

• 33:02Nir Eyal?

  That's right.

• 33:02Lewis Howes?

  And what you choose to see and witness, right?

• 33:05Nir Eyal?

  That's right. But these limiting beliefs, we all have them and they're all hidden. It's almost like our face, right? Right now, if I said, look at your face, you can't see your face. You can see your hands, you can't see your face, right? The only way you can see your face is if you hold your face up to a mirror. And then you can uncover your limiting beliefs and we all have them. Doesn't matter how successful you are, we all have them in one area of our life.

• 33:26Lewis Howes?

  What are the three biggest limiting beliefs of most people in the world?

• 33:31Nir Eyal?

  The one I hear most often, there's no time.

• 33:35Lewis Howes?

  I don't have time.

• 33:36Nir Eyal?

  I don't have time. I hear that all the time. It's too late.

• 33:41Nir Eyal?

  People like me don't do that. Or, you know, he, she, it hurt me. Or the world sucks or exercise is hard. I mean, where does the list start? It goes on and on and on.

• 33:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It's funny because something that's coming up for me is. I've told this story a few different times, but it always struck with me. I was in eighth grade. And the high school that my middle school was kind of connected to. I really looked up to these senior basketball players. I was playing basketball. And I was playing a lot with kind of the upperclassmen because I was tall and I had developed some athletic abilities. So I was playing with like these kind of juniors and seniors in eighth grade, practicing with them. And I remember looking up to one specific senior who was the most gifted athlete probably I've still seen today. In my life, right? Like one of the most gifted basketball players.

• 34:37Lewis Howes?

  But just athletically could do anything on the basketball court, probably had a forty five inch vertical, could dunk so easily. Looked so smooth. He was a freak of nature, but for whatever reason, when he was playing in a game. He was average at best. Like he, he wasn't reaching his abilities when he was just.

• 34:55Nir Eyal?

  Practice.

• 34:56Lewis Howes?

  In practice, he could do whatever, but then in the game, something would happen where he was just kind of like. Huh, why isn't he doing what he's capable of? And I don't know if this is true or not, but what it reminds me of is it doesn't matter if you are. If everyone thinks that you can accomplish incredible things. If you don't believe, it doesn't matter if the world believes in you. You still have to learn to believe in yourself. But on the flip side, something I learned, because I didn't have that athletic ability. And people didn't fully, I didn't believe that people believed in me at different stages. That was no longer true later, but that was my original belief. But I was like, you know what? I'm gonna believe in me. Even if no one, if the world's against me, I'm still gonna believe in me and I'm gonna have the courage to risk.

• 35:42Lewis Howes?

  To put myself out there, to try, to train, to be consistent, to do hard things over long periods of time. And you could have the world believing you, but if you don't believe in yourself, it's gonna be hard to accomplish anything to your potential. And you could have the world against you, but if you have unwavering belief, you can do incredible things.

• 36:02Nir Eyal?

  That's exactly right. That's exactly, and, and what's, what's maddening about this? Is that just like you can't see your own face, but you can see other people's faces. You were able to see his limiting beliefs, but he couldn't. And that's what's so terrifying about this is that we all carry these hidden limiting beliefs and we can't see them.

• 36:19Lewis Howes?

  Why can't we see them?

• 36:21Nir Eyal?

  Because our default is passivity.

• 36:24Nir Eyal?

  We we used to think, we used to believe this theory throughout psychology, throughout the literature. Everybody knew this concept called learned helplessness. You've probably heard learned helplessness. Martin Seligman and Meyer.

• 36:36Nir Eyal?

  Turns out, a few years ago, they proclaimed that they had got it completely backwards. There is no such thing as learned helplessness. What we have is not that we learn helplessness. We, our default state is helplessness. Think about how we're born.

• 36:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:52Nir Eyal?

  Right, you just had beautiful twin girls. When your girls were born.

• 36:56Lewis Howes?

  They're helpless.

• 36:57Nir Eyal?

  Completely helpless.

• 36:58Lewis Howes?

  They they rely on someone else to keep them alive.

• 37:01Nir Eyal?

  Right.

• 37:02Lewis Howes?

  So we've, we've started in survival mode. But some of us stay in survival mode for our entire lives.

• 37:08Nir Eyal?

  Right, because that, actually, that is what provides safety, right? So that evolution.

• 37:13Lewis Howes?

  Keeps us alive.

• 37:14Nir Eyal?

  Exactly, exactly. So what we have to learn is, we don't learn helplessness. In fact, we learn hope. And so the way out of a limiting belief is tiny bits of agency. The third power belief is proving to yourself, showing your brain, how an alternative belief can also be true. So for example, what happened with my mom? Or what happens in athletic ability? Or an entrepreneurial venture? It's proving to yourself with small steps that that thing that you had held on to as a truth wasn't a truth. It was just a belief.

• 37:46Lewis Howes?

  So how do you recognize when a belief that helped you survive is now limiting your greatness?

• 37:51Nir Eyal?

  You find the areas where you're stuck. You look at the nearest resolution that you've had year after year.

• 37:58Lewis Howes?

  Year, yeah. Or that dream you keep talking about that you'd never take action on.

• 38:01Nir Eyal?

  That's right. That problem that persists, that you can't find a way around. That relationship that annoys the hell out of you, and it's still annoying year after year. You can't find a possible solution. You're a smart person. Why can't you find a way to be happy? That's where you look. So that's the first step, is figure out the areas where you have this muck in your life. And what underlies it is typically not a lack of resources, not a lack of understanding. Right? Before you buy another self-help book, you have to understand that the OS, the operating software of your brain. It is those beliefs and unless you fix those, knowing what to do won't help.

• 38:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and we now with AI, you can say, give me a detailed step by step plan on how to lose weight in ninety days or how to launch a business. It'll tell you everything you need to do.

• 38:44Nir Eyal?

  That's exactly right. Yes.

• 38:46Lewis Howes?

  It'll hold you accountable with a daily plan, step by step, give you the research, give the information, backing with the data. You have the whole plan.

• 38:54Nir Eyal?

  And you still won't do it.

• 38:55Lewis Howes?

  Why is that? Why will people not do it when they know the exact plan now on how to get the results they want?

• 39:02Nir Eyal?

  It's nothing new. It's not AI, right? Who doesn't know, basically, for ninety nine percent of the population to lose weight, you eat, exercise.

• 39:10Lewis Howes?

  And move more. Yeah.

• 39:11Nir Eyal?

  You don't need a diet book to tell you that. That's been around for a very long time. To start a business, you need to do things that other people don't want to do. To have a great relationship, you have to be fully present with people. We know this, but we don't do it because we keep getting in our own way because of these limiting beliefs. We refuse to look at these limiting beliefs. Do you know why? Because they feel like facts. They feel like the truth and there's nothing more uncomfortable to our psychological immune system than changing our beliefs. We hate it.

• 39:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:39Nir Eyal?

  But of course, those beliefs that feel crazy, that feel like that can't be true, those are exactly the beliefs we should lean into.

• 39:46Lewis Howes?

  Man, so as a parent, you know, what advice would you give to me as a new parent on how to model and communicate beliefs for my twin girls? So that they don't feel like they are stuck when things happen that they haven't learned how to do on their own yet. They haven't figured it out yet in the future. Like, how do we model and communicate the ability to have agency when you are in survival mode in some ways until a certain stage in your life?

• 40:17Nir Eyal?

  Yeah. What I love about what you just said.

• 40:22Nir Eyal?

  That a lot of people don't say. A lot of people say, how do I get my kids to? No. That's a huge mistake. No, you have to model. Exactly, exactly. That's the way we change. Everyone says they're not going to listen to what you say. They're going to listen to what you. Do. Exactly. That's exactly right. And it's crazy. My, my second book, Indistractable, was all about technology distraction. And people will come to me and say, how do I get my kid off TikTok? How do I get my kid to stop playing Fortnite?

• 40:50Nir Eyal?

  This is what they do. So, so just like if you want an indistractable kid, you have to be an indistractable parent. In order to model the power of beliefs, you have to be a high agency parent. You have to show your kids that, hey, here's this challenge I had, and here's how I overcame it. Here's what I used to think, and be vulnerable. A lot of parents, they think that they need to have all the answers. And I found, at least from my relationship with my 17 year old daughter, that when I'm the most vulnerable, when I ask for help, not only does she actually help, I mean, she helped me with this book. It's amazing. And she, she helped me every step of the way through this book. Because I would talk to her about, I'm struggling with this, and how do I express that? Not only do I learn from it, she learns from it, right? She gets the most out of it because now she gets to be in a position of authority. She gets to help you out.

• 41:35Nir Eyal?

  So I think that's one of the best things you can do is just honestly, don't make it up. But show your daughters, when they get a little older, here's what daddy's struggling with. Yeah. What do you think I could do? I'm trying to figure it out. What would you guys do? Yeah, what would you do? Exactly. And showing them, most importantly, that you're willing to change those beliefs. One of the, the worst sentences in the English language is, that's just how I am. That's just who I am. That's how I am. The worst, the worst. I'm not a morning person. I, that's my ADHD, which I, by the way, have. I used to tell myself all the time, whenever I was distracted by something, that's my ADHD. It's the excuse we, we hold on to that we don't want to change. Well, what are we doing when we're thinking about that, right? Or, or now people my age now, my friends say that I'm having a senior moment.

• 42:20Nir Eyal?

  Wow, that's not good. Why do we do that? Even if it's true, let's say it's true. Again, beliefs are tools, not truth. So we didn't even know if that's true, right? When I would say to myself, and again, I've been diagnosed with ADHD, and when I would forget something, or have, or be distracted and catch myself, I say, oh, there's my ADHD.

• 42:37Lewis Howes?

  You're labeling yourself more. You're emphasizing the belief of why you can't break through that thing to create what you want.

• 42:44Nir Eyal?

  Bingo. And so what?

• 42:45Lewis Howes?

  Even if it's hard still, you're holding on to more of a limit when you continue to communicate and verbalize the belief of that something is hard.

• 42:54Nir Eyal?

  Your labels become your limits.

• 42:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 42:57Nir Eyal?

  And what this does, it creates what I call a sociological placebo effect. That there's a wonderful example in the in the psychology literature of Mr. A. And Mr. A is this guy, you know, he's anonymized in this study. And Mr. A took, he broke up with his girlfriend, he had a bad breakup with his girlfriend. And he takes an entire jaw, an entire pillbox, a prescription pillbox of antidepressants. He wants to commit suicide. And after he swallows all these pills, he changes his mind. He decides he doesn't want to die. And he goes to his neighbor and he asks his neighbor to take him to the hospital. He rushes into the ER, he collapses on the floor, and he

• 43:42Nir Eyal?

  shows the nurse the pillbox. He says, I took all my pills. I took all my pills. They take him into the ER. His heart rate is elevated, his blood pressure is dangerously low. And he has all the symptoms, all the signs of a critical overdose. Okay? But the pills don't say what medicine he consumed. All it has on the pills is the number, is a phone number. Turns out that Mr. A was in a clinical trial of these antidepressants. And so he didn't know what he was taking.

• 44:16Lewis Howes?

  It wasn't real.

• 44:16Nir Eyal?

  Well, hold on. So they call up this number. They say, what did this guy take? He overdosed. Tell us what this medicine is so that we can, you know, pump his stomach or do whatever, give him the antidote to whatever he took. They say, give me one minute. They look him up. They say, oh, this person took the placebo.

• 44:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:33Nir Eyal?

  Right? This is a guy who passed out, had low blood pressure, he had a dangerously low heart rate. All these physiological symptoms had manifested because of a belief.

• 44:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:42Nir Eyal?

  It's called the nocebo effect, the opposite of the placebo effect. And so, let me ask you, Lewis, if the nocebo effect, if believing something can have physiological symptoms that are clearly manifested in the fact that, you know, as soon as this guy discovered that he had taken the placebo, that there was totally an inert substance here.

• 45:00Lewis Howes?

  Oh, okay.

• 45:01Nir Eyal?

  Fifteen minutes, that's all it took, fifteen minutes, he was revived, he was back to normal. So, let's think, okay, that's when you actually take a whole bottle of pills, right?

• 45:09Lewis Howes?

  Which is, whatever, it was candy or something.

• 45:11Nir Eyal?

  Yeah, it was, it was nothing, it was an inert substance. So what happens if day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, we constantly recite a script about our limitations, about our labels, about what we can't do? It becomes physiologically as well as psychologically true.

• 45:26Lewis Howes?

  So how important or terrifying is the words we think or say about ourselves and our limits to our life?

• 45:35Nir Eyal?

  Incredibly important, and this is, this is one of the best things you can do. Is to, because this is, this is, it's not easy, I'll be honest with you. I wish I had some, you know, overnight solution, it doesn't work like that. Changing your beliefs is not easy. The, one of the first steps you can take is to listen to the words you are actually verbalizing. When you say out loud, "Oh, that's so like me," or "Just my luck," or "This is why I can't," or whatever the reason, those words that you verbalize, that's the first place to start, because you're actually saying it out loud.

• 46:02Lewis Howes?

  Unless they're empowering words.

• 46:04Nir Eyal?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 46:05Lewis Howes?

  Like, "Just my luck, this happens all the time."

• 46:06Nir Eyal?

  Okay, you're an optimistic person, so that's how you interpret it.

• 46:09Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, I always get the first, like, you know, parking spot, oh, man, things, money always comes my way.

• 46:15Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 46:16Lewis Howes?

  Easily, like, yeah, of course it does.

• 46:18Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 46:18Lewis Howes?

  Why not?

• 46:18Nir Eyal?

  But most people don't do that. They don't do that, and here's what happens. There was a beautiful study where they had people who were self-identified optimists versus self-identified, no, sorry, self-identified lucky or self-identified unlucky. Okay? People who said to themselves, "I am unlucky or I am lucky," right? They had this label.

• 46:36Lewis Howes?

  And?

• 46:37Nir Eyal?

  They took them into a room, and they said, "Okay, here, here's a newspaper. We want you to do this task. If you count as quickly as you can all the photos in this newspaper..." Tell us how many photos and you'll collect your prize $250. Okay, so do it as quickly as you can.

• 46:53Lewis Howes?

  Both groups did this.

• 46:53Nir Eyal?

  Both groups did this. The pessimists took two and a half minutes. The unlucky people took two and a half minutes. The lucky people took 11 seconds.

• 47:02Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 47:03Nir Eyal?

  Why? What was the difference? Because on page two, one of those pictures said, there are 40, sorry, there are 43 photos in this newspaper. Collect your prize.

• 47:15Lewis Howes?

  So they just, oh.

• 47:16Nir Eyal?

  And they saw. Right. The lucky people literally saw reality differently. Whereas the unlucky people said, okay, one, two, three, four, five, six. And they sat there and counted for two and a half minutes. Whereas the lucky people, the people who say, good things always happen to me. Found the opportunity for the good thing to happen to them. It wasn't that they were actually more lucky. They just were more observant. Their beliefs shape what they could see. They could see reality differently. That's, by the way, why entrepreneurs tend to be more optimistic. Entrepreneurs tend to think they're more lucky. They think that good things happen. So one of the things I've adopted since this line of research is that now, instead of saying, I used to, I hate to admit it, I totally was one of these people that says, oh, God, this is happening today. Traffic or, oh, the lies is happening, or I got sick, or whatever case might be.

• 47:59Nir Eyal?

  I would constantly remind myself of the bad things. Now, every time something good happens, we say it out loud as a family. We say, everything good happens to us. Is that a fact, Lewis? No, bad things happen too. But we emphasize that everything good happens to us. Why? Because now we're more conscious of it. Vanessa Van Edwards, our mutual friend.

• 48:19Lewis Howes?

  She's great.

• 48:20Nir Eyal?

  She has a wonderful phrase of not asking people, how you doing? Right? What do people say? How you doing? Busy.

• 48:26Lewis Howes?

  Busy, fine, whatever.

• 48:28Nir Eyal?

  Whatever. Instead, she says, what's good?

• 48:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Nir Eyal?

  I love that.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Nir Eyal?

  Because what it's doing is training us, what's good? I'll tell you what's good. Actually, you know what? I'm alive today. You know, like I get to breathe. Like that, let's start there.

• 48:41Lewis Howes?

  It's just focusing on something so small that is a positive thing rather than what's not working. I like to ask, what are you most grateful for today? Or what are you grateful for in your life?

• 48:48Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 48:48Lewis Howes?

  What are you most excited about in your life? Beautiful. Just to get people shifting from a negative. Into some type of a more empowering emotion or thought.

• 48:55Nir Eyal?

  Absolutely.

• 48:56Lewis Howes?

  The more empowering emotions and thoughts we have consistently throughout the day, the more good things will happen, or at least will feel better.

• 49:02Nir Eyal?

  That's right.

• 49:03Lewis Howes?

  Even if good things don't happen, we'll at least feel better.

• 49:06Nir Eyal?

  But you could, not only do you feel better, you start seeing more of that. So this is one of the three defining traits of what we call entrepreneurial alertness. Is that people who have entrepreneurial alertness are more grateful. They, Tina Seligman at, I see Tina Selig, sorry, at Stanford has this practice where she just sends thank you notes like you wouldn't believe. Anybody who makes her feel good or does anything nice, she sends them a handwritten thank you note or an email or quick SMS. And that turns to be one of these, these qualities of successful entrepreneurs, successful people, is that they constantly look for opportunities to say thanks.

• 49:39Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, that's so interesting you're saying that because I've literally been for the last like three weeks thinking that I need to order thank you notes, like custom thank you notes, because all I want to start doing is sending more. So you're another confirmation and a sign that this needs to happen ASAP. And I do that through text and video messages and things like that and calls. But there's something about receiving a letter.

• 50:03Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 50:03Lewis Howes?

  That my dad used to do a lot as well. And I think it's one of the reasons why he became such a successful entrepreneur is because he was just constantly thinking about others.

• 50:13Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 50:13Lewis Howes?

  And he was thinking about, hey, how can I send a nice note? Or I saw something in newspaper, back in the day, the newspapers, cut out a clipping and send it to someone with a little thank you note. It goes a long way. People remember.

• 50:24Nir Eyal?

  People remember. And well, the crazy thing is this is called provoked luck, how we can manufacture our own luck. What happens when that thank you note lands on someone's desk? And right next to the thank you note is a potential opportunity to do business with somebody.

• 50:37Lewis Howes?

  Oh, the thinking of that person.

• 50:38Nir Eyal?

  Exactly.

• 50:39Lewis Howes?

  You're creating your own luck.

• 50:40Nir Eyal?

  You're creating your own luck.

• 50:42Lewis Howes?

  It's so interesting because.

• 50:44Nir Eyal?

  What kind of business did your dad start?

• 50:45Lewis Howes?

  He was a life insurance salesman, which was hard.

• 50:47Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 50:48Lewis Howes?

  You know, it's hard to reach out to someone, do you want life insurance?

• 50:50Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 50:50Lewis Howes?

  But he would do that constantly and send people notes and just show up also and just like acknowledge people. So that's something I've just always taken on. And I, I think it's one of the keys to. Being able to be where I'm at in life is constantly thinking about, hey, I saw you doing this thing. Just want to say congrats.

• 51:09Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Lewis Howes?

  You're doing awesome. Keep it up. Not asking for anything, just hey, keep it up. You're doing great. Congratulations.

• 51:14Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Lewis Howes?

  And I think when we get out of our own, I'm not enoughness or jealousy of what someone else's accomplished or what we're not accomplishing that we see other people doing, we just acknowledge them and congratulate them. Good things are to come back.

• 51:29Nir Eyal?

  That's right. And it's not magical. It's not, it's not vibrations in the universe. It's not quantum anything. It's because it changes what we see, what we feel and what we do. The three powers of belief, anticipation, attention and agency. It's by believing differently that we ultimately do things differently.

• 51:45Lewis Howes?

  You talked about there's facts, there's faith, and then in the middle there's belief. How much does faith play into unlocking success in people's lives?

• 51:57Nir Eyal?

  So it's interesting that

• 52:03Nir Eyal?

  I, I grew up pretty secular. I didn't pray. I prayed when I was very young. My, my family immigrated to America and by the time I was six years old, they had been scammed out of every penny. They, some American saw that these immigrants barely spoke the language and he, he scammed them. Basically took their life savings, which they used to come to America and start a living. So I used to pray then, when I was very young, because we were going through such hard times. And I didn't, I didn't pray again until I started doing this research.

• 52:32Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 52:33Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 52:33Lewis Howes?

  So forty something years later?

• 52:35Nir Eyal?

  Well, here's what I found was that

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

  You didn't pray at all for the last four decades?

• 52:39Nir Eyal?

  I didn't, you know, because here, here's what happened. I used to pray. Do you pray?

• 52:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:42Nir Eyal?

  You do. Are, are, you, you have a

• 52:44Lewis Howes?

  I, I, I prayed growing up and then I kind of paused for like a decade, not a pause, but I wasn't as active a participant in prayer for maybe a decade. And in the last four years, I've gotten much deeper.

• 52:58Nir Eyal?

  Last four years?

• 52:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:59Nir Eyal?

  Huh.

• 52:59Lewis Howes?

  Since meeting Martha.

• 53:00Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 53:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, since, I guess five years almost.

• 53:02Nir Eyal?

  And how's it been for you?

• 53:04Lewis Howes?

  Game changer.

• 53:04Nir Eyal?

  Game changer.

• 53:05Lewis Howes?

  I mean, there's so many things that we do and I do that support my inner peace.

• 53:10Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 53:11Lewis Howes?

  And I think going through a, a healing journey, a, a reflection journey, you know, where I looked within all of my hurts and pains and past and all these things and allowed myself to heal over many years. Brought me harmony and peace.

• 53:25Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 53:26Lewis Howes?

  But having a sense of faith and a true belief.

• 53:31Lewis Howes?

  And praying about it every morning and every night gives me more confidence that I'm exactly where I need to be.

• 53:39Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 53:40Lewis Howes?

  And that good things are coming.

• 53:43Lewis Howes?

  And it's not about me, it's it's about being of service. And as long as I continue to show consistently. And essentially following the triangle of motivation and doing these things consistently, good things are gonna happen.

• 53:58Nir Eyal?

  So I would hear people say that.

• 54:00Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh. But tell me the the science.

• 54:03Nir Eyal?

  And yeah, yeah, that I'm I'm I'm just. I just it didn't resonate. The supernatural part didn't resonate for me. And so I I would hear people say that and I would be very jealous. That you would get all these benefits.

• 54:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:15Nir Eyal?

  And I couldn't feel that.

• 54:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:16Nir Eyal?

  And it turns out now.

• 54:18Lewis Howes?

  You're like, that's just my ADHD. I can't pray.

• 54:21Nir Eyal?

  It turns out now, uh, people like me are the largest religious group in America.

• 54:27Lewis Howes?

  Tell me.

• 54:27Nir Eyal?

  They're called the nuns, not not the Catholic nuns.

• 54:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:30Nir Eyal?

  N O N E's. That the largest.

• 54:32Lewis Howes?

  No religion.

• 54:33Nir Eyal?

  No religion. The largest religious faith group in America today are nuns. That just happened, actually, fairly recently. Uh, a lot of them, they say they're.

• 54:41Lewis Howes?

  They're not atheists.

• 54:42Nir Eyal?

  No, just no affiliation. Some atheists, so many of them are what they identify as spiritual but not religious.

• 54:49Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 54:50Nir Eyal?

  What's crazy about that is that people who identify as spiritual, non-religious. Have higher rates of depression and anxiety disorder.

• 54:59Lewis Howes?

  People who.

• 55:00Nir Eyal?

  More than people who are not spiritual, not religious.

• 55:02Lewis Howes?

  Wait, people who say they are spiritual but not religious have higher rates of depression?

• 55:08Nir Eyal?

  And anxiety disorder.

• 55:09Lewis Howes?

  Than people who say they are religious?

• 55:11Nir Eyal?

  Much, much higher.

• 55:13Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 55:13Nir Eyal?

  Yes.

• 55:14Lewis Howes?

  So when someone says, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.

• 55:16Nir Eyal?

  Right. What are they saying? Like, they they have some kind of conviction in some kind of higher power. But they don't connect with any kind of faith tradition.

• 55:24Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh. Okay, so they have higher rates of depression than those with religious faith.

• 55:28Nir Eyal?

  That's right.

• 55:28Lewis Howes?

  Tradition.

• 55:29Nir Eyal?

  And we've known that for quite some time.

• 55:30Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 55:31Nir Eyal?

  That people who have, uh, people who pray. Have all kinds of benefits. They live longer, they're healthier, they make more money, they contribute more to the community. There's all kinds of benefits to prayer. And I knew that.

• 55:42Lewis Howes?

  That's backed by science.

• 55:43Nir Eyal?

  Oh, yes.

• 55:44Lewis Howes?

  Research.

• 55:44Nir Eyal?

  Oh, that's, this is well established.

• 55:45Lewis Howes?

  Neuroscience, everything else.

• 55:46Nir Eyal?

  Very well established. Now, I read this research as I was, I was writing this book and I came across it and I was kind of jealous, but I thought it's not for me because I don't have that particular faith in the supernatural. And then I came across this study that blew my mind. And the study, here's what they did. They took three groups of people and they, they, one was a control group, so nothing, no intervention. One were people who prayed from a particular faith tradition, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim. They had some kind of particular faith tradition. And one group were people who had never prayed, that they taught how to pray. And they said, if you don't have any kind of faith tradition, you don't have to say God, say whatever is meaningful to you.

• 56:31Nir Eyal?

  Substitute the sum of all forces or Mother Nature or a higher power.

• 56:37Lewis Howes?

  The universe.

• 56:37Nir Eyal?

  It doesn't have to be anything supernatural. Whatever it is that you want, substitute that word, but here's how to pray. Okay, and they taught them how to pray.

• 56:44Lewis Howes?

  Like a, what, like a 60 second prayer?

• 56:46Nir Eyal?

  Some kind of, they had a standardized intervention. Then they took those three groups and they gave them, this is, there's a standard protocol to test pain tolerance. The test is essentially they take your hand and they tell you to put it in a, in a ice cold bath, very, very cold, painfully cold water. And then they have a researcher who looks at your face and they see every grimace and every, you know, your contortion. And then ultimately when you can't do it anymore, when you have to take your hand out of the water. Now, both the group that prayed out of faith tradition and who didn't have a faith tradition, but prayed way outlasted the control group. They were way more pain tolerant.

• 57:20Lewis Howes?

  They were like the rats that could go 60 hours.

• 57:22Nir Eyal?

  Exactly. Now, what's fascinating about that, that even the people who didn't have a faith tradition, but learned how to pray, also had those benefits. They also had greater pain tolerance.

• 57:33Lewis Howes?

  Than the people that didn't pray at all.

• 57:35Nir Eyal?

  They didn't pray at all. And so this is something I've changed. When you ask, what's the power of faith? It turns out that prayer works even without faith.

• 57:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 57:44Nir Eyal?

  And so this is kind of my call to action. I think a lot of the problems we have today in America come from the fact that many people, like I used to say, I can't step into church because I can't prove that everything that was said here is absolutely the truth. I was looking at everything through the fact lens.

• 57:59Lewis Howes?

  I can't either. Like, everything for me isn't like, how is that really truthful from 2,000 years ago? And the translations and this and this.

• 58:07Nir Eyal?

  But you still, you still go.

• 58:08Lewis Howes?

  I still go because I asked this to Arthur Brooks recently. I don't know if you know who Arthur Brooks is. He's like a devout Catholic. He goes to mass every morning at like 6:00 AM or something. And I go, Arthur, you're a smart guy. Like, you're intelligent. You're like professor, this, like bestselling author. How can you really say that everything is true? He goes, I can't. But the belief of these things and the essence of it, and the stories and the lessons, give me more peace.

• 58:33Nir Eyal?

  Yes.

• 58:34Lewis Howes?

  And help me live a more peaceful life.

• 58:35Nir Eyal?

  And that's the goal. So I don't call myself an atheist or agnostic. I call myself a free thinker. And this is a term I learned when I lived in Singapore, that you can be a free-thinking Christian. You can be a free-thinking Muslim. You can be a free-thinking atheist. It doesn't matter. It means that you're not, you're not asking that question anymore. I stopped looking for proof.

• 58:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:54Nir Eyal?

  And what I'm looking for is peace, as I said.

• 58:56Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, let's go. That is what people need. They need peace.

• 59:00Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Lewis Howes?

  They don't have it. A lot of people don't have it.

• 59:02Nir Eyal?

  Because beliefs are tools, not truths. I'm not, we're never gonna know. Okay? Well, they're not gonna know.

• 59:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:08Nir Eyal?

  But what I find when I walk into a church or a synagogue and I, I, I start with a prayer, which I never used to do since I was six years old. Now I do. It benefits me, right? I feel better. I am better. When I adopt this belief that I can pray even if I don't have all the answers.

• 59:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're more, you're more present, probably. You're less reactive. You're more tolerant. You're more.

• 59:30Nir Eyal?

  I can solve these problems now.

• 59:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:32Nir Eyal?

  Yeah. And so what I did, I went to, it sounds like a setup for a joke. I went to five religious leaders. I went to a rabbi, a priest, an imam, a monk, and a swami. And I asked them all the same question. All walked into a bar. And the same question was, how do I pray when I have uncertainties about God?

• 59:50Lewis Howes?

  Oh wow, what did they say?

• 59:51Nir Eyal?

  And so I learned these five key tenets of prayer. That, uh, so everybody gave me a different piece of the puzzle. Now, a lot of it was overlapping. Nobody has a monopoly on these practices. But what I was doing was that I threw out everything. I said, "Well, if I can't, if I don't have perfect certainty, then I can't do any of it." And then I learned from these religions that there's, we can pray even if we do have doubts. So, from the Rabbi, I learned that, uh, you can do first and understand later. So on Mount Sinai, uh, the Jews say when they receive the Ten Commandments, they say, "Nashev nishma." First we do, then we will hear. First we do. So that, to my, in my life, first I do the ritual. Then I will see.

• 1:00:36Lewis Howes?

  Don't ask why, why I'm supposed to do this, or what the result will be. Just have the faith, I guess, that you're supposed to do this first.

• 1:00:43Nir Eyal?

  The, I would call it the belief, not the blind faith. Okay. Not, not, you know, not, yeah, the belief that I'm doing this because it serves me. Right? I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, uh, accept everything whole cloth. I'm not gonna do everything that someone tells me. I'm not, I'm not gonna be gullible. I'm going to, uh, what's the definition of belief? It's a conviction that is open to revision based on evidence. So if, you know, as opposed to before, first I need it to be a fact, then I can do it. First I'm gonna do it, and then I'm gonna see what, what comes of it. The rituals, right? From the Imam, I learned about the simplicity of prayer. In Islam, you pray five times a day. Same prayer, five times a day. Doesn't have to be super complicated. You don't have to have a prayer that's, you know, is super liturgical and has all kinds of practices. You can create a very simple ritual of just sitting and being with your thoughts for a minute and showing gratitude and,

• 1:01:29Nir Eyal?

  uh, just a moment of peace, right, to solve these problems on your own. You can, you can create that in your life, whether you have a faith tradition or not. From the Catholic priest, I learned, it was, it was beautiful. Uh, he told me about how people come to church looking for their prayers to be answered. And they ask for things, right? They say, uh, you know, "I, I want to find love. I want to find, uh, business success. Uh, please heal me, etc." And what they oftentimes don't realize is that the coming to church, the community aspect is many times how prayers are answered. That it's the person down the pew who can help you with your business, who can help you find love, who can solve many of these problems. It's that community aspect. And that's something that a lot of us who are, who don't have that faith tradition, don't get unless we go.

• 1:02:14Lewis Howes?

  It's true.

• 1:02:15Nir Eyal?

  And then from the Swami, from the Hindu leader, I learned about how it has to be about something bigger than yourself. How about the power of, of, of, you know, finding a cause, finding a, a purpose that's more than just you. And then from the Buddhist, the separation of pain from suffering, about the practices in Buddhism, you know, my, my wife is Chinese and, and something that she heard growing up in her Buddhist household was bitter now, sweet later. About how you can separate the pain from the suffering in order to sustain motivation, in order to keep going.

• 1:02:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:02:45Nir Eyal?

  And so you can take, every religion has aspects of, of all these things. But even if you don't have a particular faith tradition, you can do what I call constructive interpretation. You can walk into a place of worship and say, you know what? I don't need every single thing to be true in order for me to get these benefits.

• 1:03:05Lewis Howes?

  And I think that's what holds a lot of people back. They need the facts to really like say, well, did that really happen? If not, then I'm going to discount this whole thing.

• 1:03:11Nir Eyal?

  Right. And to be fair, it's not just the believers. It's not just the participants. There's a lot of faith institutions that want a purity test.

• 1:03:19Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:20Nir Eyal?

  Right? You have to believe every-

• 1:03:22Lewis Howes?

  It's not good either.

• 1:03:22Nir Eyal?

  That's not constructive either.

• 1:03:23Lewis Howes?

  It's not good either.

• 1:03:24Nir Eyal?

  That pushes people away.

• 1:03:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It's so interesting because every time we go to church, Martha just feels, she's so grateful. She just feels better just going. She's like, ah, I feel so much peace. So if prayer gives you that peace, now if it makes you feel bad, I guess it's not good, don't do it. But if it brings you a peace, why not do that more frequently?

• 1:03:43Nir Eyal?

  Right.

• 1:03:44Lewis Howes?

  Even if you don't have all the answers. I can't remember, I don't know if Wayne Dyer said this quote or where this quote came from, but it's like- You know, a lot of people think seeing is believing, but believing is seeing. It's like, how do we switch it? Like, I'll, I'll believe it when I see it. No, it's like, start believing it and it will reveal itself.

• 1:04:03Nir Eyal?

  That's right.

• 1:04:03Lewis Howes?

  Right? Isn't that?

• 1:04:04Nir Eyal?

  Did Wayne Dwyer, I thought I came up with that. That's a chapter title.

• 1:04:07Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:08Nir Eyal?

  That's exactly right. Cause that's, that's what we tend to think. We think, oh, you know, when I see it, I'll believe it. But we do not see reality as it really is. We have this simulation running in our brains because of the, you know, the 11 million bits versus the 50 bits. We, we all have this simulation. None of us are seeing reality clearly. Right? So when I advocate, so one of the, one of the things that sometimes people will say is, you know, are you telling people to lie to themselves? Aren't you telling people to gaslight themselves to just be delusional? And the answer is, you're already delusional. You're already gaslighting yourself.

• 1:04:40Lewis Howes?

  In a negative way.

• 1:04:41Nir Eyal?

  Exactly. You're gaslighting yourself with these existing limiting beliefs and refusing to see another potential reality, which if you considered, could actually be just as true, if not more true than your current limiting belief.

• 1:04:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, but I mean, come on. You know, you study, you know, psychology and human behavior. How can we put all this into prayer? Like, that's not what you've lived your entire life. I feel like you're the, um, gosh, who am I thinking of? You're the, uh, who is, uh, the, the newscaster, Dan, um?

• 1:05:16Nir Eyal?

  Sullivan?

• 1:05:17Lewis Howes?

  No, no, no. Gosh, why am I forgetting his name right now? This is, he did the meditation stuff. Yes. Not Dan Sullivan, but Dan Harris.

• 1:05:25Nir Eyal?

  Dan Harris.

• 1:05:25Lewis Howes?

  Dan Harris.

• 1:05:26Nir Eyal?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:05:26Lewis Howes?

  You're like the Dan Harris of prayer now. You know, it's like skeptical, like analytical.

• 1:05:32Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Lewis Howes?

  Never gonna believe in this stuff, but now you're saying prayer.

• 1:05:35Nir Eyal?

  I believe in the practice. I'm not, I'm not, uh, I've just stopped asking about the questions that I, I don't think I'm gonna answer.

• 1:05:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I don't think anyone will.

• 1:05:44Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Lewis Howes?

  Cause you just, just to have blind faith and trust from people from thousands of years ago.

• 1:05:49Nir Eyal?

  That's right.

• 1:05:49Lewis Howes?

  For me, that's hard to do too. But I think the essence of the stories, the essence of the historical things that happened when they did or didn't do certain things.

• 1:05:58Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Lewis Howes?

  I can see, how can that relate to my life today?

• 1:06:02Nir Eyal?

  I, I think that what's unusual about you is that a lot of times when I talk to people of faith, they, they feel a little uncomfortable admitting that.

• 1:06:10Lewis Howes?

  Well, cause I think I've questioned in my whole life.

• 1:06:12Nir Eyal?

  You have questioned.

• 1:06:13Lewis Howes?

  I think I have, yeah. Cause I'm like, this doesn't make sense.

• 1:06:15Nir Eyal?

  But you, but how come you kept going? Despite thinking.

• 1:06:19Lewis Howes?

  I stopped for like.

• 1:06:21Nir Eyal?

  That's why he stopped.

• 1:06:21Lewis Howes?

  Man, I stopped just because I was just kind of like on my own journey and I was a critical thinker. And I was a free thinker. So I was like, oh, let me try this. Let me try this. Let me try this. And I think I still question a lot of stuff. I'm like, why do they do these traditions? Why do they do that? Like all this stuff I question. But I'm like, you know what? Let me, if I know it benefits, it doesn't mean I have to agree with every specific thing or I can still question it, but how can I apply the things that I know are helpful for me? For my wife, for our marriage and our relationship that just help us feel better.

• 1:06:55Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Lewis Howes?

  Like I don't have to have all the answers.

• 1:06:57Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Lewis Howes?

  But I can believe that

• 1:07:02Lewis Howes?

  good things are going to happen for me if I continue to believe them. Right?

• 1:07:07Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Lewis Howes?

  And that is a, that is a type of prayer.

• 1:07:09Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:10Lewis Howes?

  In itself. I don't even have to say, God, give me these things. It's just more of like, it's more of a gratitude prayer. Thank you so much for the blessings. Thank you for the opportunities. Thank you for the hard lessons that have given me appreciation now. It's like a thankful prayer for me that puts me in a state of peace and appreciation. And I think the more grateful I am and appreciative I am of life, I, I believe life brings me more to be grateful and appreciative of. Whether it's a law, science, a belief that I've made up, whatever it is.

• 1:07:47Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:47Lewis Howes?

  It works.

• 1:07:48Nir Eyal?

  Right.

• 1:07:48Lewis Howes?

  And it gives me more peace.

• 1:07:49Nir Eyal?

  Well, you're, you're ahead of the game because I had to like see the studies.

• 1:07:54Nir Eyal?

  Yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. That's, that's excellent. I wish, yeah.

• 1:07:57Lewis Howes?

  Go ahead.

• 1:07:58Nir Eyal?

  I just, I wish, uh, I wish it didn't take me so long. Uh, and then I wish more people would, would find that path. I think would, would, we would, we would be much happier.

• 1:08:08Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think a lot of people have dealt with so much pain and then turned pain into suffering from some type of. I don't know, belief, maybe religious belief, or their parent that was in a religion that then did something wrong to them. And they're like, oh, this person.

• 1:08:21Nir Eyal?

  And they associate it.

• 1:08:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's like an association with someone that said something to you, or judged you, or made you feel less than, who was a part of some belief system, a faith.

• 1:08:30Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Lewis Howes?

  And then you associate it and you're like, that is bad and wrong.

• 1:08:33Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Lewis Howes?

  If this person was supposed to look out for me, take care of me, not lie to me, not cheat on me, not steal from me, and they did this thing and they follow this belief, the whole belief is wrong.

• 1:08:43Nir Eyal?

  And, and if you think about it, it's very protective.

• 1:08:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:47Nir Eyal?

  And so this is why we can't see our hidden limiting beliefs. Because to us, you know, if we are looking for evidence, we will always find it.

• 1:08:54Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:08:55Nir Eyal?

  We'll always find it. And so that becomes our new belief, which we adopt without even questioning it. And so then it's, then it's sealed in. We, we become incapable of actually testing it, seeing it in any way.

• 1:09:05Lewis Howes?

  But here's, here's the other side of it. I could hear a skeptic, you know, listening to this and say, yeah, I get it that you were skeptical. You found a way, but I'm still skeptical. You know, I'm still skeptical near that. You know, I, I follow your four steps of the, the work. And, and at the end of the day, I still need a boundary in place with my mother. Because every time, pretty much every time I do show up for her, it's a negative comment. And what am I just gonna say? Well, one day she was nice to me and she accepted me and she acknowledged me when I did something for her. But it just seems so hard.

• 1:09:37Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Lewis Howes?

  So when do boundaries come into play to just to also add to someone's life? So they don't, either don't get taken advantage of over and over again, because they say, well, that's not really the belief. They're really a good person, deep down inside, I'm gonna give them another chance, because they didn't mean to screw me over.

• 1:09:53Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Lewis Howes?

  And that just continues to happen.

• 1:09:55Nir Eyal?

  Well, first of all, I'm not here to change anybody. I'm relaying my journey.

• 1:09:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:59Nir Eyal?

  And this is what's, what's worked for me, is that,

• 1:10:04Nir Eyal?

  what I was looking for was that peace, that it wasn't helping me in my life. When I was labeling people as, constantly judging them as evil or this or that, it, it wasn't, it wasn't making me better.

• 1:10:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Nir Eyal?

  It wasn't, it wasn't helping my life. And one of the mantras, one of the, the prayers that I repeat to myself,

• 1:10:25Nir Eyal?

  is that love is measured by the benefit of the doubt. Love is measured by the benefit of the doubt. That to me is very meaningful. Because as a human, I want to love my fellow man.

• 1:10:39Nir Eyal?

  At least a some amount, right? We should all offer grace to others. But it's very difficult, right? Because we are, again, our beliefs

• 1:10:49Nir Eyal?

  find it much easier, because we are born into passivity. Our default state is passivity. We find it much easier to stick with what we always have, because that's what's protected us in the past. But it's like a tool that we keep carrying that's busted and not a good tool for the job. It's not like a carpenter says, oh, the hammer. It's the one and only true tool. No, a carpenter says sometimes it's a saw. Sometimes a good tool is a wrench, right? There's different tools for the job. So just because you've always held this hammer, just because you've always held this belief, doesn't mean you can't take it out and examine. Hey, is this the right tool for the job? So what I've found in my own life is that when I held these grudges, when I had these belief filters about people, not that you shouldn't put those barriers on. Sometimes boundaries are the right thing to do. Sometimes it doesn't mean you have to constantly

• 1:11:33Nir Eyal?

  subject yourself to an uncomfortable situation. But without giving that grace. Now, what do I mean by love is measured by the benefit of doubt?

• 1:11:42Nir Eyal?

  When my daughter was born,

• 1:11:45Nir Eyal?

  there was this love unlocked for this new human being, right? You just experienced it a few months ago, that just comes out of nowhere, right? And we give these babies ultimate grace, total benefit of the doubt. Why do we do that? Babies are kind of annoying, let's be honest, right? Screaming, crying. Yeah, all these things that they do that you can interpret as annoying. But you don't interpret it as annoying. A baby is not trying to annoy you. That's the best tool the baby has, is to cry. That's how they get what they need. So we give them this benefit of the doubt. And the more we love someone, how do we measure that love? The more benefit of the doubt you give someone, the more you love them. So what I try to constantly remind myself is that

• 1:12:30Nir Eyal?

  we're all just grown up babies. Yeah, that's true. We're all just doing our best. Why is it that when we grow up, no, you get no more benefit of doubt? You have to do everything perfect. And if you mess up, and if you hurt me, if I interpret you as hurting me, you get no grace. Yeah. Because you hurt me. Whereas what I try and remind myself now, it's not always easy. What I try and remind myself is that That person is doing the best they can with the tools they have. It's like me expecting, you know, my daughter to suddenly speak Russian. She can't speak Russian. How could she possibly have that tool at her disposal? Like, she doesn't have that tool. When she was a baby, she couldn't speak in complete sentences. All she had was the ability to cry. And people who harm us, people who hurt us, people who have done things in the past, it doesn't mean that they didn't hurt us.

• 1:13:14Nir Eyal?

  It doesn't mean that we should just, you know, forgive them unconsciously. It means that we would be better off. We would enjoy life more. We could be more at peace if we have a new belief that serves us better.

• 1:13:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious about this. What happens to a person's biology when they expect to fail before they even start with the thing they really want to do? What happens to their mind, their body, their cells?

• 1:13:46Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Lewis Howes?

  When they expect to fail or they don't believe it's going to be the ultimate outcome before they even begin the thing they want to do?

• 1:13:53Nir Eyal?

  Well, we know that if you expect to fail, you will. Right? So someone who's running a marathon, who's more likely to finish a marathon? Okay? Someone who says, "I can't finish this marathon," or someone who says, "I believe I can finish the marathon." Now, we don't know the facts. Many people don't finish marathons. But who's more likely to finish?

• 1:14:12Lewis Howes?

  The person who believes they can.

• 1:14:13Nir Eyal?

  Exactly. Because if you believe, "I cannot finish this marathon," you quit, you're done. That's it. End of story. Right? So it's not that beliefs guarantee success. It's that you're much more likely to achieve success when you believe.

• 1:14:24Lewis Howes?

  What if someone's just like believing, but they're just so far? You know, they've never run a mile and they say, "I'm gonna go run a marathon today, and I believe I can do this." What happens when the belief really, you know, you don't have that 240% or times in you really for what you're thinking you're gonna do?

• 1:14:41Nir Eyal?

  So belief is not faith. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on evidence. So you still gotta look at the evidence. It still has to be open to real world assumptions, right? It can't just be miracle cures. You have to look at what actually serves you. But the point you had earlier about biology, you asked what happens if you don't believe?

• 1:14:59Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:14:59Nir Eyal?

  You know what happens when you do believe?

• 1:15:00Lewis Howes?

  What happens?

• 1:15:04Nir Eyal?

  We know that people who have positive views about aging at age thirty. Okay, if you have positive views about aging at age thirty, a person who says uh, something like growth is possible at any age. If you believe that, that growth is possible at any age versus aging leads to inevitable decline. Now, between those two statements, which is true, Lewis? Age, uh, I can learn at any age or uh, uh, aging involves inevitable decline.

• 1:15:31Lewis Howes?

  The one you believe.

• 1:15:33Nir Eyal?

  Right?

• 1:15:33Lewis Howes?

  That would, that's what's true.

• 1:15:34Nir Eyal?

  Which one is the fact? They're both kind of facts, right? But which one becomes, which one is manifested as the truth in real life? The one you actually believe. So here's what happens. If you have positive views about aging at thirty, studies have found, there was a study at Yale that found that people who had those positive beliefs at thirty lived on average seven and a half years longer.

• 1:15:55Lewis Howes?

  This is crazy.

• 1:15:56Nir Eyal?

  Seven, you know what that means, Lewis? That is more of an effect size than quitting smoking, than diet. It's more of an effect than exercise.

• 1:16:03Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:16:04Nir Eyal?

  Right? Now, is it magic? Is it that you're vibrating a certain frequency? And because I think that, that therefore I do, that, that, that therefore like these things change in my biology and my cells? No.

• 1:16:14Lewis Howes?

  And what is it?

• 1:16:14Nir Eyal?

  It's got nothing to do with that. It's the fact that if I have positive views about aging from a young age, what do I do differently? Remember the beliefs, the three powers, what they, how, what we see, what we feel, what we do. So who's more likely as they age to get out there and go for a walk? To start gardening, to see friends, to work out? If you believe, oh, I'm having a senior moment.

• 1:16:36Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:16:37Nir Eyal?

  Versus, hey, growth is possible at any age.

• 1:16:39Lewis Howes?

  Your behavior will continue to, to show up, to empower you.

• 1:16:43Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Lewis Howes?

  As you age versus a disempowering behavior. Like, I'm having a senior moment, I'm just gonna smoke all day now.

• 1:16:49Nir Eyal?

  Or, or, yeah, I can't do that because of X, Y, Z. Let me, let me give you another study, steroids. Okay, uh, there was a true, two groups. Uh, one was told just to exercise per normal, go to the gym, exercise per normal. The other was told, we have this amazing new steroid. We want you to take this steroid so we can test its efficacy. Here's your workout routine, okay? Do these exercises. Now. Turns out, the steroid was a placebo. Okay, you know there's a trick here. The steroid was a placebo. And yet, on that placebo, the men who took the pill they believed was a steroid, gained more muscle mass.

• 1:17:27Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 1:17:27Nir Eyal?

  They physically, their beliefs became their biology. Just like beliefs can add years to your life, their beliefs became their biology. Why? It wasn't magic. It was the fact that when I believed that I'm on a steroid, I would get one more rep. I would put on a tiny bit more weight. I would work on a little harder. Because, hey, I've got this steroid in me. It's gonna, I better make it pay off. So the belief became the biology, even though it was completely a placebo.

• 1:17:52Lewis Howes?

  And it influenced the behavior.

• 1:17:54Nir Eyal?

  That's right.

• 1:17:54Lewis Howes?

  And the behavior helped influence the results.

• 1:17:56Nir Eyal?

  It's all about the behavior. It's all, when it comes to placebos, that's exactly what it's all about.

• 1:18:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:18:01Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:02Lewis Howes?

  And this is fascinating. Your book is called Beyond Belief, The Science-Backed Way to Stop Living Yourself and Achieve Extraordinary Results. I'm curious, in this book, from all the research you've done, it took you six years to write and it rewrites, you know, start praying after 40 years because you had so much research that showed the benefits to it. What was the biggest takeaway for you from researching Beyond Belief?

• 1:18:28Nir Eyal?

  The biggest takeaway for me was that I am, and by extension, all of us, are capable of far more than we know. We're just scratching the surface of our capabilities. And there are many, many studies in the literature that I share in the book as well that just blows your mind, right? The things that people can do when they believe. You know, monks who can raise their body temperature consciously. They can do that. There's a case study that I talk about where someone who had Parkinson's disease, okay, who was bedridden during the day. They're in a sleep lab and in the middle of the night, they wake up,

• 1:19:10Nir Eyal?

  they hop on a table, they raise a piece of furniture over their head and they start screaming, "Alligator, alligator," because they were having a dream. This is a Parkinson's patient who was bedridden in the middle of the night, got up and was fighting alligators in their sleep, right? They were having a delusion, they were having like a sleepwalking event. Because they weren't bound to the reality of their beliefs. They were unconscious at that moment. And so this goes on and on and on, that this demonstration of the rats, as we talked about earlier, that when we unlock our true potential, when we remove those limiting beliefs and adopt these liberating beliefs, we can do so much more than we ever imagined.

• 1:19:47Lewis Howes?

  What do you feel is possible for your life with all this that you've researched over the next five to 10 years?

• 1:19:55Nir Eyal?

  For my life specifically?

• 1:19:56Lewis Howes?

  For your life. Like, is there anything that you felt like, "Ah, I'm only gonna be able to do books a certain way, or I'm gonna be researcher, or I'm gonna be this type of a dad," or something that you always had until after this book, where now you've unlocked a new hidden potential inside of you that you want to take on over the next five to 10 years?

• 1:20:16Nir Eyal?

  I think when I changed my relationship with my mom, I also changed my relationship with my daughter.

• 1:20:21Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:20:21Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Lewis Howes?

  How so?

• 1:20:23Nir Eyal?

  Typical teenage stuff.

• 1:20:26Lewis Howes?

  Drama.

• 1:20:26Nir Eyal?

  Yeah, like when I tell, you know, one of my friends who also has a teenage girl, "Oh my gosh, it's the worst." You know, teenage girls and they have all their issues and drama and all that. And that's just a belief. That's just a belief. You know, in pre-industrialized countries, there's no such thing as a rebellious teenager. That's something that we've invented in industrialized countries.

• 1:20:46Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 1:20:47Nir Eyal?

  What do you mean? Why doesn't it happen there?

• 1:20:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. Why did we invent it or why doesn't it happen?

• 1:20:50Nir Eyal?

  Because it's a belief. You know, the teenage brain, that there's all these hormones and they're all rebellious. When I tell people, "This is not a fact. There is no such thing." It's not a foregone conclusion that a teenager has to be rebellious. Many cultures don't have rebellious teenagers. People are listening to this and saying, "That's crazy. Why? Look at the science. Look at the science. Google it. It doesn't exist." The sugar makes you hyper. Every parent, every parent knows. You can't give your kid too much sugar, it makes them hyper. No, it's false. It's a complete myth. Look it up. But but people hate this stuff because we hate challenging our beliefs. We don't like it. We have this psychological immune system. And so if you feel that reaction, if there's a belief that's challenged,

• 1:21:34Nir Eyal?

  that you really don't want to believe, that sounds crazy, those are the beliefs you most need to explore.

• 1:21:39Lewis Howes?

  It's like first principle thinking, I guess.

• 1:21:41Nir Eyal?

  Yeah. Not only is it probably not true, but it's defending you against something, right? What is it defending? When I think to myself, uh, my kid goes crazy when I give them sugar. My kid goes crazy when I give them too much social media. My kid is whatever, whatever. What is that serving? What is that belief doing for me? It's giving me.

• 1:21:58Lewis Howes?

  Reinforcing it.

• 1:21:59Nir Eyal?

  Exactly. Not only is it reinforcing, it's giving me something that's much more comfortable. It gives me passivity. Remember, our default state is helplessness. We like that passivity. That's our default.

• 1:22:09Lewis Howes?

  Man, that is crazy. Yeah, it's interesting. I saw a clip online of a comedian doing an interview with like a talk show host. And I can't remember what exactly he said. He said, you know, I heard, um, like something around like, oh, he has daughters and they're about to turn teenage years, so like 11 or 12. And he goes, oh, man, get ready. Like the interviewer is like, get ready. It's about to be really hard for you. And the guy cut him off right before and he goes, that's just a belief. Like everyone who says that is just a shitty dad. You know, it's like, it's just a crappy dad who didn't know how to like connect with his daughters. You know, and just puts that label in this, now your daughters are about to be crazy, you know, when they turn teenage years.

• 1:22:52Nir Eyal?

  Because it's much more comfortable.

• 1:22:54Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:54Nir Eyal?

  Right? Now I don't have to actually do something. Like there's something out there that's doing it. This is, by the way, whenever if I go to the doctor and I need a prescription for something, you know how the doctor has to tell you all the side effects? I don't tell me. I don't want to know them. I don't want to hear the side effects.

• 1:23:06Lewis Howes?

  You don't hear, because then you're enforcing them.

• 1:23:08Nir Eyal?

  That's right. You're primed to look for those things.

• 1:23:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:11Nir Eyal?

  Right? This is how I actually, I cured my insomnia. I used to have terrible insomnia. And insomnia, it turns out, as I was doing this research, is highly susceptible to the placebo effect. When they took, uh, they put people in a lab who got great sleep. And they told them, hey, we were monitoring your sleep. You know, you slept really, really poorly. And then they had them take these objective tests of alertness and cognitive abilities. And guess what? These people who had gotten perfect sleep, when they were told you got crappy sleep.

• 1:23:39Lewis Howes?

  They believed.

• 1:23:40Nir Eyal?

  They, no, on the, objectively on the test, they did worse. And then they did the opposite. They took people who they interrupted their sleep. They gave them a bad night's sleep on purpose. Told them, you had a fantastic sleep. Wow, look at these amazing scores. You did really well.

• 1:23:53Lewis Howes?

  Great.

• 1:23:53Nir Eyal?

  They did very well their.

• 1:23:54Lewis Howes?

  Alert, I'm sharp.

• 1:23:55Nir Eyal?

  Right. And so I would wake up day after day thinking, oh, I'm feeling groggy. I'm feeling tired. I had a bad night's sleep. You only remember the parts when you're asleep, when you were conscious.

• 1:24:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:05Nir Eyal?

  But all that time you were unconscious, you don't remember.

• 1:24:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:24:08Nir Eyal?

  So today I have another mantra, one of these secular prayers that I repeat whenever I wake up at two in the morning, which happens sometimes. I repeat to myself this phrase. The phrase is that the body gets what the body needs if you let it.

• 1:24:21Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:24:22Nir Eyal?

  That's all I say. I just take a deep breath in. The body gets what the body needs if you let it. I just say that again and again. And what that helps me do is to divert away from the rumination, which causes, the leading cause of insomnia.

• 1:24:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:35Nir Eyal?

  If I don't get a night's sleep, then I can't perform tomorrow. And I've got this interview with Lewis and it's gonna be terrible. Whereas now I just tell myself, look, if I get a bad night's sleep tonight, I'll get a good night's sleep tomorrow.

• 1:24:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:43Nir Eyal?

  Right?

• 1:24:44Lewis Howes?

  And I have exactly what I need for today.

• 1:24:45Nir Eyal?

  As long as I. Exactly. That the body will reconfigure, unless, you know, there's some, some exceptions, of course.

• 1:24:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, if you go for two weeks no sleep, then you're like.

• 1:24:52Nir Eyal?

  Yeah, or if you have some kind of severe condition.

• 1:24:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:24:54Nir Eyal?

  But for the vast majority of us, this insomnia is produced because of the fear of insomnia.

• 1:24:59Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, that's the worst. That's the worst. Near and far dot com, N A R and far dot com. Beyond Belief, the science-backed way to stop limiting yourself and achieve extraordinary results. This is gonna be the book that you're gonna wanna, you're gonna wanna get because for me, as someone who's a researcher skeptic, if you can learn these things and really see the benefit of them, I feel like anyone who's skeptical and who's analytical and needs like the research to prove certain things, they're gonna get it in this. And I truly believe, you know, it's funny, I truly believe that belief is everything. Like belief is everything.

• 1:25:36Lewis Howes?

  And my whole mission within my book, The Greatness Mindset is to rid people of self doubt. Cause I believe self doubt is the killer of all dreams. And when you doubt yourself, you will not accomplish your dreams. That's a hundred percent. Like you said, if you don't believe you can finish the marathon, you're not going to finish. But if you learn to believe in yourself and you learn how to stay consistent with it and do what you you talk about in the triangle of motivation. Have the behaviors that match those beliefs. And what was the bottom one? The the benefit, the behavior. Benefit, yeah, yeah, benefit, maybe believe.

• 1:26:11Lewis Howes?

  You're good. And if you can stay consistent with that behavior and keep the belief that you can stay consistent with that behavior. Good things are going to happen. So I want people to get beyond belief. Um, powerful book, Change Your Mind, Change Your Life. You can get it now. You can get it anywhere books are sold, Amazon, all the places. You're also on social media. I believe Instagram is your main spot, but you might be on LinkedIn as well. I think I see your content there. So. Um, N E Y A L ninety nine on Instagram. I believe that's still your Instagram, but near and far dot com. Got a lot of great resources and content there. Near, I got a couple of final questions for you. One, I would acknowledge you for taking this on because again. You know, you're like the Dan Harris of meditation, but now in belief.

• 1:26:56Lewis Howes?

  In terms of stepping into new things at this season of life, you're extremely successful as an author, speaker, business person. But to take on your own limiting beliefs at this season is hard to do. Most people don't risk enough to look at themselves and reflect and say, how can I try something new on? How can I let go of a belief that's not serving me in my relationship with my mom or other people in your life? How can I create more harmony at this season? So I acknowledge you for taking this on and actually applying the research that you found. Um, I asked you this before. I think the last time you were on was like five or six years ago. But I'm curious what your three truths are now.

• 1:27:37Lewis Howes?

  And if you were able to live as long as you want, but at the end of the day, you have to take all your work with you. All of your writing, your books, your content is gone from the world. But you get to leave behind three truths, three things you know to be true from all of your lessons. What would those three truths be for you?

• 1:27:56Nir Eyal?

  The three truths that I would leave behind. So that's all I get to leave these three truths?

• 1:28:00Lewis Howes?

  Three lessons, three truths, kind of like from all the things that you've learned up to now and all the things you think you will learn until your death.

• 1:28:07Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:07Lewis Howes?

  You can't leave any of that content behind.

• 1:28:10Nir Eyal?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:11Lewis Howes?

  But you could share three truths.

• 1:28:13Nir Eyal?

  I think one is we do not see reality as it is. We see it as we are. Uh, I think another one would be that you are capable of far more than you know. And that your beliefs become your reality.

• 1:28:30Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:30Nir Eyal?

  Your beliefs don't become reality for everyone, but your beliefs become your reality.

• 1:28:35Lewis Howes?

  Amen to that. Say a prayer. Say that prayer over and over again. Your beliefs become your reality. Repeat that mantra. Um, final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:28:45Nir Eyal?

  Uh, so last time you asked me that, last time I was on, uh, it was about doing what you say you're going to do, right? Living with personal integrity. And I think now I've learned that real greatness is about having control over those beliefs. That it's one of the few things we can control. We can't control what's happening in the world. We can't control this. All these things that are outside what we're able to influence. But you always have the luxury to control those beliefs. Can't control what happened to you in the past. Can't control what's going to happen to you in the future. But I think real greatness comes from controlling those beliefs so that they serve you rather than you serving them.

• 1:29:22Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Yeah. Thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it.

• 1:29:24Nir Eyal?

  Thank you.

• 1:29:25Lewis Howes?

  Powerful, man.

• 1:29:25Nir Eyal?

  Thanks, buddy.

• 1:29:26Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

• 1:30:10Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.