Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

The number one determinant of whether you accomplish your goals is persistence. Persistence doesn’t guarantee success. Quitting guarantees failure.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:10]:

What if the biggest thing holding you back has nothing to do with your skills, your audience, or your business idea? What if the real limit is in your beliefs? Changing your beliefs is how you unlock your true potential.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:20]:

Today, we’re interviewing Nir Eyal, the New York Times bestselling author of Hooked, Indistractable, and his newest book, Beyond Belief. Nir’s books have sold over 1 million copies in more than 30 languages, and his work has helped millions of people build better habits, control distraction, and change the thoughts that shape their lives.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:41]:

Nir is also an entrepreneur. He runs a newsletter with more than 160,000 subscribers, is an angel investor in companies like Canva and Kahoot, and is a former lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:56]:

In this episode, Nir is going to show us why most limits are not physical, but psychological. Where are you stuck? Why are you stuck? And could the opposite be true? Beliefs are tools, not truths.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:03]:

Welcome to The Creator’s Adventure, where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey, everyone. I’m Bryan McAnulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let’s get into it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:19]:

Nir, welcome to the show.

Nir Eyal [00:01:22]:

Thank you so much. It’s great to be with you, Bryan.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:26]:

My first question for you today is: What is the biggest thing that either you did or you are doing that has helped you achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Nir Eyal [00:01:33]:

I would say that what has given me more freedom than I thought possible is following my curiosity. That has been the secret to my writing career. I don’t write about what I know. I write about what I want to know, which is why I think I have the best job on Earth.

Nir Eyal [00:01:48]:

Whatever I’m curious about, struggling with, and really want to know the answer to becomes a mystery. It becomes something I want to solve for myself.

Nir Eyal [00:01:59]:

After I read a bunch of books on the topic and heaps of academic literature, if I’m lucky, after five or six years, I find an answer to the problem I’m struggling with. I constantly remind myself that I’m on the hunt for answers. I’m constantly following my curiosity.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:18]:

Cool. I think we hear people talk about building in public and sharing the story of what they’re going through. Sometimes we don’t believe that’s really the way to go because we think people only want to hear our expertise.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:32]:

But people can get attached when they see somebody else has a passion or interest, and they can follow along with what’s happening.

Nir Eyal [00:02:44]:

Yeah. I’m not great about being too public with stuff, to be honest. In my books, I definitely share what I’m struggling with, and I think that’s why people resonate with them. I’m sharing my personal struggles.

Nir Eyal [00:03:00]:

But there are so many different flavors of that. I used to think the only way to do it was to record what I was going to have for breakfast and post that I was stuck in traffic on Twitter. I don’t like reading that stuff. I don’t really care, so I don’t like posting it.

Nir Eyal [00:03:13]:

What I appreciate is when a fellow author has a question they’re dealing with, and they’re willing to be vulnerable and take me on that journey with them. Or even if it’s just a really interesting question, like, “Why does this weird thing happen in the world, and what is the secret truth people aren’t talking about?”

Nir Eyal [00:03:31]:

That’s what gets me. That’s what I want to know about, and that’s what I like to write about.

Bryan McAnulty [00:03:36]:

I like that. I think there’s a lesson there. I don’t want to create that kind of everyday content on social media either, and I don’t really enjoy consuming it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:03:49]:

But if you can find the artifact or medium that allows you to express yourself, whether that’s a book, podcast, or something else, that can be your way of doing it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:05]:

In your book, Beyond Belief, you talk about how most limits aren’t physical; they’re psychological. What was the study, story, or personal experience that made that idea impossible for you to ignore?

Nir Eyal [00:04:25]:

The book starts with this question: Why are some people able to transform their lives? Why can some people change, accomplish their goals, go on to do great things, and live out their dreams while so many people can’t?

Nir Eyal [00:04:42]:

Even within one individual, how is it that you can be so good in one area of your life and not in another? I’ve met people who are incredibly successful professionally, yet their home life is a mess. They’re talented in one area, yet their physical health is a mess.

Nir Eyal [00:05:02]:

I’ve always been curious about how to unlock human potential. Selfishly, I was following my own curiosity. Why did I keep getting stuck on certain things? I wanted to know the answer.

Nir Eyal [00:05:17]:

Originally, you might think some people simply know better than others. Maybe they have a secret formula or discovered some kind of magic the rest of us don’t have. But that’s not it.

Nir Eyal [00:05:28]:

Especially these days, we’re drowning in information. Most of us know what it would take to accomplish our goals. We just don’t want to do it.

Nir Eyal [00:05:38]:

We know that to get in shape, you have to go to the gym and eat right. We know that to start a business, you have to work hard for a long time and do things other people don’t want to do. To have a good relationship, you have to be fully present with the people you love.

Nir Eyal [00:05:52]:

We know this stuff, and yet so many times it doesn’t happen for us. I wanted to figure out why.

Nir Eyal [00:06:00]:

It turns out that the number one determinant of whether you accomplish your goals isn’t intelligence, resources, skill, wisdom, knowledge, or information. It’s persistence.

Nir Eyal [00:06:11]:

Persistence doesn’t guarantee success. Quitting guarantees failure. It’s pretty logical that the number one determinant of whether you will succeed is whether or not you quit.

Nir Eyal [00:06:25]:

So what makes us quit? It turns out that what makes us quit isn’t that we don’t know what to do. Many of us know what to do. It isn’t that we don’t want it badly enough. It’s not just about discipline, self-control, or willpower.

Nir Eyal [00:06:39]:

It’s that we don’t have the right underlying beliefs. Beliefs are upstream of the kind of life we lead, and we don’t even realize that we have so many limiting beliefs.

Bryan McAnulty [00:06:54]:

How can somebody tell when the real limitation is actually a belief they haven’t questioned?

Nir Eyal [00:07:00]:

This is exactly what the book is about. How do we know? What makes it so tricky is that limiting beliefs are always hidden.

Nir Eyal [00:07:08]:

It’s like your face. If I said, “Bryan, look at your face,” how do you look at your face? You can’t look directly at your face the way you can look at your hands or feet.

Nir Eyal [00:07:20]:

You can see other people’s faces, just like you can see other people’s limiting beliefs. You can see your kids’ limiting beliefs, your spouse’s limiting beliefs, your boss’s limiting beliefs, and your colleagues’ limiting beliefs.

Nir Eyal [00:07:34]:

You can see everybody else’s limitations. You can’t see your own because, to you, they’re hidden.

Nir Eyal [00:07:40]:

How do we see our limiting beliefs? The same way we see our face. We have to reflect. We have to use something outside of ourselves, like a mirror, to help us see them.

Nir Eyal [00:07:52]:

Why are our beliefs so critical? I’ll tell you about a study that really blew my mind.

Nir Eyal [00:08:04]:

In the 1950s, there was a biologist named Curt Richter who had a simple question: How long could a rat swim in water? I know it’s a question on everybody’s mind, but at the time, it was a novel question.

Nir Eyal [00:08:17]:

He took a rat, put it in a cylinder of water, stood there with a stopwatch, and timed how long it could swim. It turned out a wild rat could swim nonstop for about 15 minutes.

Nir Eyal [00:08:31]:

Then he had another question. Could he extend the amount of time the rat could swim? Could he make the rat more persistent?

Nir Eyal [00:08:42]:

He took a new group of rats and put them in the same cylinder. At the 15-minute mark, when they started to get tired and were about to drown, Richter reached his hand in, pulled out the rat, dried it off, let it catch its breath, and then put it back into the cylinder.

Nir Eyal [00:09:02]:

He did this a few times and conditioned the rats to expect that if they persisted, salvation might be possible. Something might save them.

Nir Eyal [00:09:14]:

Have you heard this study before, Bryan?

Bryan McAnulty [00:09:18]:

I’ve heard you talk about it.

Nir Eyal [00:09:22]:

It’s shocking. When I ask people how long the rats swam after being conditioned, some people say 30 minutes. Twice as long. They became 100% more persistent.

Nir Eyal [00:09:35]:

Some people say 45 minutes or an hour of nonstop swimming, which would be incredible. Imagine becoming four times more persistent. If you could practice an instrument four times longer or make sales calls four times longer, that would be amazing.

Nir Eyal [00:09:50]:

But the rats didn’t swim for 60 minutes. They swam for 60 hours. Not 60 minutes—60 hours of nonstop swimming.

Nir Eyal [00:10:03]:

The question, of course, is why. Nothing in the rats’ bodies had changed. They didn’t become Michael Phelps rats. Nothing in their environment had changed. They were in the same cylinders of water.

Nir Eyal [00:10:15]:

Something changed in their brains. Something flipped, and what was always within them was unlocked. They were liberated from the belief that it was hopeless to keep swimming.

Nir Eyal [00:10:31]:

You see the metaphor. We’re all giving up too soon. It’s not that quitting is always wrong. Sometimes quitting is the right thing to do. But quitting too soon is a waste of human capital and potential.

Nir Eyal [00:10:44]:

That’s what I’m on a mission to fight. Changing your beliefs is how you unlock your true potential, just like those rats.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:56]:

That’s incredible. I’ve been in the fortunate position to run this platform for creators. More than 10,000 creators have used our software and built their businesses on it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:08]:

I know the biggest reason creators fail, and I think you have the solution. The reason creators fail is that they give up.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:20]:

I can point to countless examples of people who kept going even when their marketing was horrible, their product wasn’t good yet, or their branding was horrible. They still found some level of success because they kept going.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:35]:

Every time I see somebody give up, I wish they could keep going a little bit longer because they might be so close to something they want.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:46]:

How can creators build that conditioning, like the rat, and develop the belief that they can keep going?

Nir Eyal [00:11:55]:

Can you see that? When you see a creator, do you think, “You’re close because I know what you need to do”? Or are you not sure either, but you know they’ll figure it out if they persist?

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:14]:

There have definitely been times when I could directly see it. I don’t get to speak with everybody, but sometimes I get on a call with a creator or help them through support and get to see the product they created.

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:26]:

There are times when I can tell they really know what they’re talking about. They’re passionate, and they have something there, but maybe they haven’t found the audience yet.

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:37]:

If they eventually cancel their account, I feel sad they weren’t able to keep going because I know they cared about it and really had something there.

Nir Eyal [00:12:48]:

Is it that you can see where their audience is and know they need to keep going? Or are you also curious and don’t know the answer, but think they’ll find it if they don’t quit?

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:55]:

In some cases, I feel certain they could reach it. I get to see people who are successful in many different niches.

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:05]:

A lot of people think they have to find the perfect niche to make money. The grass is always greener. But the reality is that you can build a business around almost anything.

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:18]:

I’ve constantly been surprised by niches I’ve never heard of where people make a full-time living through a community, course, coaching, or something else.

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:34]:

If you have something that can create a positive change in somebody’s life, I know there’s an opportunity. They just haven’t figured out how to make the connection yet.

Nir Eyal [00:13:48]:

The thing that makes us quit before it’s time is what we call a limiting belief.

Nir Eyal [00:13:58]:

A limiting belief lowers your motivation and increases your suffering, whereas a liberating belief increases your motivation and decreases your suffering.

Nir Eyal [00:14:10]:

The big unlock—if you want the secret to life, and I don’t say that flippantly—is being able to separate pain from suffering.

Nir Eyal [00:14:28]:

Pain is information. Pain is a signal. Pain is data. Suffering is the interpretation of that signal.

Nir Eyal [00:14:38]:

Ancient religious traditions say something similar. Buddhism teaches something similar. A big part of Beyond Belief is demonstrating this principle in ways that will absolutely blow your mind.

Nir Eyal [00:14:53]:

People can undergo surgery without anesthesia through the power of their mind. I’m not a woo-woo kind of guy. I don’t like that nonsense. I want to see the facts and the science.

Nir Eyal [00:15:06]:

I’ve seen videos of operations happening where people undergo surgery without anesthesia. It’s amazing. People have overcome chronic pain through the power of their minds and beliefs.

Nir Eyal [00:15:18]:

People have done unbelievable things, started hundred-million-dollar companies, and gone from homelessness to success. There are story after story of people doing incredible things through the power of their beliefs.

Nir Eyal [00:15:34]:

We call them the three powers of belief: the power of beliefs to change what you see, literally which opportunities you see in front of you; what you feel, including your physiological state and how you experience pain and suffering; and finally, your sense of agency—what you’re able to do.

Nir Eyal [00:15:55]:

Through the three powers of belief, you determine who you become. There’s nothing more important than understanding and mastering how beliefs shape your reality.

Nir Eyal [00:16:11]:

One of the biggest lies the brain tells us is that we see reality as it is. We don’t. None of us do because there’s simply too much information in reality.

Nir Eyal [00:16:23]:

Right now, your brain is absorbing approximately 11 million bits of information. That’s like reading War and Peace twice every second. Imagine reading 2,000 pages of text every single second.

Nir Eyal [00:16:37]:

Your brain is taking in the light entering your retinas, the sound of my voice, and the ambient temperature of the room. It’s processing all of that.

Nir Eyal [00:16:49]:

However, conscious awareness—what you call reality—can only process around 50 bits of information. That’s approximately one sentence per second.

Nir Eyal [00:17:02]:

So it’s 2,000 pages of text versus one sentence. You don’t see reality clearly. You see reality through a tiny pinhole of attention that you call the real world, and that pinhole is shaped and filtered through your beliefs.

Nir Eyal [00:17:18]:

You don’t see the world as it is. You see the world as you are, or as you believe it to be.

Nir Eyal [00:17:29]:

The practical implication is that how you think about and believe in the world will expose opportunities to you—or hide opportunities from you—that other people experience differently.

Nir Eyal [00:17:44]:

People used to say Steve Jobs had a reality distortion field. He saw the world differently from everybody else.

Nir Eyal [00:17:55]:

Science has backed some of this up. We call it entrepreneurial alertness. Entrepreneurs can literally see things that the rest of us don’t see. They see hundred-dollar bills all over the place while the rest of us see nothing.

Nir Eyal [00:18:09]:

There was a study where two groups of people were asked to complete a simple task: look through a newspaper and count how many images it contained.

Nir Eyal [00:18:20]:

One group consisted of people who believed they were lucky. It wasn’t necessarily a fact; they just believed they were lucky. The other group consisted of people who believed they were unlucky.

Nir Eyal [00:18:35]:

The unlucky people took about two and a half minutes to complete the task. The lucky people took only 11 seconds.

Nir Eyal [00:18:48]:

Why the difference? On page two of the newspaper, there was an image that said in large, bold letters, “There are 43 images in this newspaper. Collect your reward.”

Nir Eyal [00:19:01]:

The lucky people saw the image, read it, understood it, got out of their chairs, collected the reward, and were out the door in 11 seconds.

Nir Eyal [00:19:15]:

The unlucky people counted all 43 images correctly, but they never processed what the image on page two said, even though it was directly under their noses.

Nir Eyal [00:19:27]:

Why? “Things like that don’t happen to me. I’m unlucky. That’s just how life is.” They literally didn’t see the image staring them in the face.

Nir Eyal [00:19:40]:

This happens to us all the time. One person starts and says, “This is never going to work. I’ll give it a shot, but it’s probably bogus. Things like this never work for me. Who do I think I am? I’m not an entrepreneur.”

Nir Eyal [00:19:57]:

Those are limiting beliefs. Another person believes there’s an opportunity, feels passionate about it, and thinks it’s going to work. Oftentimes, it does.

Nir Eyal [00:20:09]:

Again, persistence doesn’t guarantee success. Nobody can guarantee success. But quitting always guarantees failure.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:18]:

Real quick, Bryan here. You know me as the host of this podcast, but what you might not know is that I’m also the founder of Heights Platform.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:27]:

It’s an all-in-one platform that more than 10,000 creators have used to build their online courses, communities, and digital product businesses.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:37]:

We recently added some awesome updates to Heights AI to help you turn your idea into a viable business. Heights AI can build entire product offers, review your content, and even coach you on how to grow.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:50]:

You can try it free for 30 days. Links are in the description. Now, back to the podcast.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:00]:

That’s very powerful. I want to explore a couple of the things you mentioned.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:07]:

First is pain versus suffering. I hadn’t thought about explaining it that way, but I think that’s absolutely the right way to describe it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:17]:

I’ve referenced something from Tim Ferriss a couple of times on this show called “The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen.” You have to become comfortable with more bad things happening if you want more good things to happen.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:31]:

As an entrepreneur, I’ve built the ability to experience pain and see it as information. I’m not registering it as suffering. I don’t enjoy it, but I’m going to keep going anyway.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:44]:

The other thing is how beliefs affect us. When you mentioned surgery, it reminded me of a book I read about 20 years ago. Have you heard of Psycho-Cybernetics?

Nir Eyal [00:22:00]:

Yeah. People mention that one a lot.

Bryan McAnulty [00:22:06]:

I remember the book discussing how people would undergo plastic surgery, perceive themselves differently, and then act differently in their lives.

Nir Eyal [00:22:18]:

Absolutely. I like to say that, as a theoretical equation, pain minus suffering equals purpose.

Nir Eyal [00:22:29]:

When we experience discomfort, pain is inevitable. But pain is simply information. Suffering is the interpretation of that information.

Nir Eyal [00:22:40]:

You can have people go through the exact same experience and think about it completely differently.

Nir Eyal [00:22:51]:

We see this with trauma. One person might say, “My father was an alcoholic and beat me, and that’s why I’m not successful.” Another person might say, “My father was an alcoholic and beat me, and that’s why I had to prove him wrong. That’s the secret to my success.”

Nir Eyal [00:23:07]:

We have post-traumatic stress, and we also have post-traumatic growth. What’s the difference? It’s the story we tell. It’s the beliefs we hold.

Nir Eyal [00:23:18]:

That is the major unlock to life. Whether it’s our physical health, financial security, business, or relationships, it’s all about that interpretation.

Nir Eyal [00:23:29]:

This doesn’t mean positivity for positivity’s sake. It doesn’t mean manifesting or vision boarding. It doesn’t mean any of that stuff.

Nir Eyal [00:23:40]:

In fact, a lot of that stuff not only doesn’t work, but can be actively harmful because people aren’t doing it correctly. They’re ordering the universe to give them what they want and expecting it to deliver like DoorDash. That’s not how it works.

Nir Eyal [00:23:56]:

Several studies show that manifesting, vision boarding, and simply expecting certain outcomes can have negative consequences.

Nir Eyal [00:24:07]:

What I’m talking about is preparing yourself psychologically for pain. That’s a much better technique. It’s called mental contrasting.

Nir Eyal [00:24:17]:

There are two big problems with only thinking positively about the outcome you want.

Nir Eyal [00:24:24]:

First, when you only think about the desired outcome, you implicitly train yourself to believe that you can only stop suffering after you get what you want.

Nir Eyal [00:24:40]:

You’re expecting a cosmic slot machine to deliver money, love, or success. You believe you can’t be happy until it delivers.

Nir Eyal [00:24:52]:

You’re always going to be miserable if you expect outside circumstances to change before you can stop suffering. Suffering doesn’t happen out there. Suffering happens up here.

Nir Eyal [00:25:08]:

The second problem is that studies find people who focus only on manifesting outcomes become more relaxed and less likely to do the things required to achieve those outcomes.

Nir Eyal [00:25:23]:

In one famous study, students visualized receiving a good grade on an exam. Another group didn’t do the visualization.

Nir Eyal [00:25:34]:

The students who visualized the good grade actually performed worse. Why? They felt like they had already placed their order with the universe, so they studied less and received worse grades.

Nir Eyal [00:25:54]:

The right way to do this is what athletes do. The self-help industry took something true and made it false.

Nir Eyal [00:26:03]:

Athletes aren’t only visualizing themselves getting the gold medal or trophy. That’s a waste of time. They’re visualizing what they will do physically and psychologically while competing, especially when something goes wrong.

Nir Eyal [00:26:18]:

Michael Phelps has talked about an important race where his goggles filled with water. Normally, someone might freak out and believe the race was ruined.

Nir Eyal [00:26:31]:

But he had prepared for problems psychologically. When the bad thing happened, he was ready.

Nir Eyal [00:26:42]:

Most people would think, “My goggles are full of water. I can’t see. I’m done.” Instead, he could think, “I expected something like this. I prepared for it. Here it is.”

Nir Eyal [00:27:01]:

Think about the power of that on an entrepreneurial journey. How many of us start a business, raise a family, or try to get in shape without preparing for how hard it will be?

Nir Eyal [00:27:14]:

We expect everything to be easy, but everything worth having in life is on the other side of hard. We don’t prepare for that.

Nir Eyal [00:27:25]:

Mental contrasting means contrasting what you want with the difficulties you’ll face and preparing yourself psychologically.

Nir Eyal [00:27:38]:

You can say, “I knew when I made this resolution that it would be hard. That’s okay.” You adopt a belief that doesn’t let pain become suffering.

Nir Eyal [00:27:50]:

I used to be clinically obese, not just overweight. Today, I’m 48 years old and in the best shape of my life.

Nir Eyal [00:28:00]:

What changed my life wasn’t sitting on the couch and visualizing a beach body. That just made me gain weight.

Nir Eyal [00:28:10]:

What changed my life was preparing for when it became hard. If I knew I was going to a birthday party on Friday and somebody would offer me chocolate cake, what was I going to say?

Nir Eyal [00:28:20]:

I knew I would want that cake. I knew saying no might feel socially awkward. How would I prepare for that pain?

Nir Eyal [00:28:31]:

I created a new liberating belief: “This is what it feels like to get better.”

Nir Eyal [00:28:41]:

Instead of saying, “I’m deprived. I’m hungry. This sucks. I have a bad metabolism. The food industry is conspiring against me,” I told myself, “This is what it feels like to get better.”

Nir Eyal [00:29:01]:

Those old beliefs decreased my motivation and increased my suffering. That’s the definition of a limiting belief.

Nir Eyal [00:29:10]:

The new belief prepared me for what would happen. Of course it’s going to feel difficult. That’s the point. It’s inevitable. Bring it on. I knew this would happen.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:26]:

That’s a powerful shift. We’re also getting into agency, which I know you have strong feelings about.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:36]:

It isn’t about the universe happening to me. It’s about how I’m going to shape the universe in a way that I want.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:47]:

One of my philosophies is that freedom comes first. I want to build my life around having the freedom to do what I enjoy now, not in some distant future.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:59]:

I define freedom as three ingredients: agency, risk, and truth. You need all three.

Nir Eyal [00:30:11]:

Walk me through that. That’s cool.

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:15]:

Agency means being willing to take action in the world to achieve what you want.

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:22]:

Risk means being willing to put something at risk to get there. If you’re unwilling to accept any risk, you can’t be free.

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:31]:

And truth means that you can’t be a liar and be truly free.

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:40]:

What would you say to somebody who understands these ideas but still isn’t fully taking agency and control of their life?

Nir Eyal [00:30:52]:

A lot of the research aligns with what I call the three powers of belief: the power of belief to change what you see, feel, and do.

Nir Eyal [00:31:01]:

I call these the power of attention, which changes what you see; the power of anticipation, which changes what you feel; and the power of agency, which changes what you’re able to do.

Nir Eyal [00:31:15]:

All three of the things you described—agency, risk, and truth—are highly affected by your beliefs. The problem is that you don’t realize it.

Nir Eyal [00:31:28]:

Let’s take truth. What is truth? What is a fact? A fact isn’t a belief. Those are not the same thing.

Nir Eyal [00:31:38]:

A fact is an objective truth—something that is true whether or not you believe it. The world is more like a sphere than it is flat. The world doesn’t care what you believe. A fact is a fact.

Nir Eyal [00:31:53]:

If you believe the world is flat, you’re simply wrong. You can’t change facts.

Nir Eyal [00:32:03]:

On the other end, you have faith. Faith is a conviction that doesn’t require evidence. You aren’t going to change someone’s mind by presenting evidence because their conviction doesn’t require it.

Nir Eyal [00:32:18]:

Belief is neither of those things. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence.

Nir Eyal [00:32:30]:

That’s the beauty of beliefs. Unlike faith, which people rarely change, and facts, which you can’t change, beliefs are malleable.

Nir Eyal [00:32:41]:

The most important thing I can impart after six years of research is this: Beliefs are tools, not truths.

Nir Eyal [00:32:53]:

Beliefs directly affect your agency. They determine what you are able to do.

Nir Eyal [00:33:00]:

Imagine two marathon runners who are identical in every way. Every cell in their bodies is the same. They trained the same, ate the same, and prepared the same.

Nir Eyal [00:33:11]:

The only difference is that one believes they can finish the race, and the other believes they can’t. Who are you going to bet on?

Nir Eyal [00:33:20]:

One hundred percent of the time, you’re going to bet on the person who believes they can. That’s the power of agency.

Nir Eyal [00:33:30]:

As Henry Ford said, whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.

Nir Eyal [00:33:38]:

When it comes to risk, why do we have limiting beliefs? Why would the brain be wired to lower our motivation and increase our suffering?

Nir Eyal [00:33:50]:

It’s actually trying to help us. It wants to prevent us from entering risky or dangerous situations.

Nir Eyal [00:34:02]:

Your brain doesn’t care whether you’re happy, flourishing, or reaching your potential. Its primary objective is to keep you alive. Its second objective is to get you to procreate.

Nir Eyal [00:34:14]:

Evolution wants to keep you alive, and the easiest way to do that is to minimize risk. Good things are nice, but bad things can kill you.

Nir Eyal [00:34:23]:

That’s why your brain constantly whispers limiting beliefs: “Maybe you’re not ready. Are you sure you want to try? You probably need more information. Are you sure there’s enough time? Are you sure you’re good enough?”

Nir Eyal [00:34:41]:

Your brain tells you these things to keep you safe. The safest thing it can do is keep you thinking and doing what you did yesterday because yesterday’s behavior got you here alive.

Nir Eyal [00:34:55]:

When it comes to truth, your brain is constantly trying to assess what’s true. But we don’t see reality clearly. We perceive reality through our beliefs.

Nir Eyal [00:35:06]:

The best way to change our beliefs is to give ourselves new evidence. We can first adopt a new belief and then collect small pieces of evidence to support it.

Nir Eyal [00:35:18]:

When we learned to ride a bike as children, most of us were scared. We thought we might fall or get hurt.

Nir Eyal [00:35:26]:

Then we gave ourselves evidence. “I can do it a little bit. I can do it with someone helping me. I can do it with training wheels. I can do it for a few seconds. I can do it for a minute. I can go around the block.”

Nir Eyal [00:35:42]:

It’s no different with anything else in life. You collect evidence based on the belief that you can, even if the belief initially feels false.

Nir Eyal [00:35:53]:

Beliefs are tools, not truths. We can try on new beliefs even when they sound ridiculous.

Nir Eyal [00:36:02]:

Your brain hates changing its mind. It will tell you, “Don’t do that. It’s too risky. You might get hurt. Bad idea.” Of course your brain is going to do that.

Nir Eyal [00:36:14]:

But you can do it anyway in small steps. Try on a new belief, give it a shot, and change it later if it doesn’t serve you.

Nir Eyal [00:36:27]:

The worst thing is when people don’t realize they’re carrying limiting beliefs. They think those beliefs are facts when they’re not.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:36]:

That’s really powerful. I want to discuss something people might not usually ask you about.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:43]:

You aren’t primarily known as a marketer, but you’ve built an audience of more than 160,000 newsletter subscribers.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:53]:

What strategy helped you build that owned audience over time?

Nir Eyal [00:37:02]:

I wish there were a strategy to it. I think I’m simply sharing what works for me. I’m not trying to change anybody. I’m passionate about what has worked.

Nir Eyal [00:37:16]:

I call my audience ambitious skeptics. People who don’t need evidence probably don’t follow me.

Nir Eyal [00:37:25]:

I annoy people when I say manifesting doesn’t work or that there isn’t much evidence for chakras and other things like that.

Nir Eyal [00:37:39]:

But I’ve somewhat come around on some of it because when you study the placebo effect, you realize that sometimes people are right for the wrong reasons.

Nir Eyal [00:37:49]:

If something works, do it. What annoys me is when we don’t have the intellectual humility to recognize that our faith isn’t a fact and we’re not open to new evidence.

Nir Eyal [00:38:07]:

What drives me is looking for undiscovered truths—the things people aren’t willing to say because they’re uncomfortable.

Nir Eyal [00:38:17]:

I’ll call people out, and hopefully they’ll call me out. My love language is for someone to prove me wrong. I love it. There’s nothing better.

Nir Eyal [00:38:29]:

In American culture, we’re too easily offended. When someone argues with you, we think they’re being rude. They’re not necessarily being rude. They’re showing you their version of reality.

Nir Eyal [00:38:41]:

You don’t have to accept it, but much of what we think is reality is actually belief. It’s our interpretation of what will happen in the future.

Nir Eyal [00:38:53]:

That’s what I’ve tried to do in my writing: feed my curiosity.

Nir Eyal [00:39:01]:

I wish I could tell you I had some kind of master plan. My first two books didn’t hit the New York Times bestseller list. This one did.

Nir Eyal [00:39:10]:

My friend Steve Camp congratulated me on becoming an overnight success—15 years in the making.

Nir Eyal [00:39:19]:

I’ve been doing this for a really long time because I like it.

Nir Eyal [00:39:26]:

Remember how we talked about differentiating pain from suffering? What I do would make many people suffer. I sit by myself, read, read, read, and write, write, write. I love it.

Nir Eyal [00:39:41]:

Many people would consider that torture. They want the outcomes. They want the New York Times bestseller title, the large audience, and hundreds of thousands of followers.

Nir Eyal [00:39:53]:

But it doesn’t happen overnight. It comes from persistence. It comes down to whether or not you quit.

Nir Eyal [00:40:00]:

If there’s one secret, it’s to find something you can do for a long time that other people would suffer from, but that you kind of like.

Nir Eyal [00:40:11]:

That doesn’t mean it isn’t painful. Writing is painful, but it isn’t suffering for me. That might be the formula.

Bryan McAnulty [00:40:23]:

That’s great advice. I think another part of it is that you’re willing to be who you are.

Bryan McAnulty [00:40:31]:

You aren’t trying to offend people, but you’re willing to say what you believe even when people might be uncomfortable or disagree.

Nir Eyal [00:40:44]:

I can’t tell you I haven’t wondered why I don’t have millions of followers. I see people on Instagram sharing photos of themselves in their underwear who have five million followers.

Nir Eyal [00:40:57]:

I’m not willing to share photos of myself in my underwear.

Nir Eyal [00:41:01]:

To appeal to the widest possible audience, you sometimes have to do things that, to me, would be suffering.

Nir Eyal [00:41:12]:

If you want to grow an audience, the common formula is to figure out what other people in your niche are doing, copy them, and rinse and repeat.

Nir Eyal [00:41:22]:

Now, the story I’m telling myself is that I don’t want to do that. I could change that story because beliefs are tools, not truths, but I don’t want to change it.

Nir Eyal [00:41:34]:

To me, copying what everybody else is doing feels like I’m not adding value to the world. If I already know it and somebody else has shared it, why would I share it again?

Nir Eyal [00:41:47]:

I only write books after I’ve read everybody else’s book on the topic and decided they didn’t answer the question properly.

Nir Eyal [00:42:03]:

With Indistractable, I read around 20 books about distraction, technology, and addiction. Most of them basically said, “Stop using your phone, stupid.”

Nir Eyal [00:42:14]:

That isn’t helpful. A college professor with tenure telling me not to check my email doesn’t solve the problem.

Nir Eyal [00:42:23]:

The problem isn’t the email. The problem is something much deeper. It’s our desire to constantly escape discomfort.

Bryan McAnulty [00:42:33]:

It comes back to persistence. Some people might think the answer is to act like everyone else on YouTube, follow trends, and fit into what’s already working.

Bryan McAnulty [00:42:46]:

But you’re willing to go through the pain of doing it your way for 15 years and see what happens.

Bryan McAnulty [00:42:55]:

My belief is that this isn’t a disadvantage. It’s an advantage, and it’s how you win in the long term.

Nir Eyal [00:42:59]:

I hope so. I hope you’re right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:43:03]:

I want to get into a quick lightning round. I’m looking for a quick, ten-second answer to the next few questions.

Nir Eyal [00:43:11]:

Ten seconds? Okay. I’ll try my best.

Bryan McAnulty [00:43:17]:

What’s the best way to become luckier in life?

Nir Eyal [00:43:24]:

There are many ways, but one way is to show extreme gratitude. Anytime somebody does anything you can praise, do it. Never hold back praise.

Nir Eyal [00:43:38]:

You would be amazed by how that comes back to you with more luck in your life.

Bryan McAnulty [00:43:44]:

Knowing what to do isn’t enough. Motivation is a triangle. Explain that to me.

Nir Eyal [00:43:51]:

You have the behavior—what to do. You have the benefit—why you’re doing it. Then you have the belief that holds it all together.

Nir Eyal [00:44:01]:

To sustain motivation over the long term, we can’t only know what to do. We don’t only need to know why we’re doing it. We need the belief that holds it together.

Nir Eyal [00:44:10]:

That’s the motivation triangle: behavior, benefit, and belief.

Bryan McAnulty [00:44:15]:

That was under ten seconds. The opposite of distraction isn’t focus; it’s traction. What does that mean?

Nir Eyal [00:44:22]:

Traction is any action that pulls you toward what you said you were going to do. It moves you closer to your values and helps you become the person you want to become.

Nir Eyal [00:44:32]:

The opposite of traction is distraction: any action that pulls you away from what you planned to do, further away from your goals, and further away from becoming the person you want to become.

Nir Eyal [00:44:43]:

It isn’t about the action itself. Playing video games or using social media isn’t bad by itself. It becomes a problem when it isn’t what you planned to do.

Nir Eyal [00:44:54]:

As Dorothy Parker said, “The time you plan to waste is not wasted time.” If that’s what you planned to do, enjoy it. It’s traction.

Nir Eyal [00:45:03]:

But if it isn’t what you planned to do, and you’re doing it because you can’t handle real life—because you’re stressed, anxious, annoyed, or bored and looking for an escape—then it’s a distraction.

Bryan McAnulty [00:45:18]:

On the show, I like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. If you could ask our audience anything, what would it be?

Nir Eyal [00:45:30]:

I would ask you to consider: Where are you stuck?

Nir Eyal [00:45:35]:

Where is there an area of your life where you feel you could do better? Why are you stuck? And could the opposite be true?

Nir Eyal [00:45:45]:

Whatever reason you’re sure is a fact about why you’re stuck, could the exact opposite also be true? Try that on for size.

Bryan McAnulty [00:45:54]:

I love that. Challenge yourself to discover the beliefs that you may find are really just beliefs, not facts.

Nir Eyal [00:46:04]:

That’s right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:46:06]:

This was a great interview. Before we go, where else can people find you online?

Nir Eyal [00:46:14]:

My website is called Nir and Far, spelled like my first name: nirandfar.com.

Nir Eyal [00:46:22]:

I’ll also give you a link for the show notes to a five-minute belief change guide. We couldn’t fit it into the final edition of the book, so we decided to give it away completely free on my website.

Bryan McAnulty [00:46:35]:

All right. Thanks so much.

Nir Eyal [00:46:37]:

Thanks, Bryan.

Bryan McAnulty [00:46:39]:

I’d like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 creators at creatorclimb.com.

Bryan McAnulty [00:46:47]:

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, check out the Heights Platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. US Central.

Bryan McAnulty [00:46:57]:

To get notified when new episodes are released, join our newsletter at thecreatorsadventure.com. Until then, keep learning, and I’ll see you in the next episode.