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

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My Guest: Nir Eyal is a Stanford lecturer, behavioral designer, and bestselling author who has spent his career at the intersection of psychology, technology, and human behavior. He's one of the most rigorous thinkers alive on why people do what they do, and what it actually takes to change.

Notes

Julie introduced Nir to the Turnaround technique. Nir and Julie met the first week of college in 1997 and have been married since 2001. A big part of the genesis of Beyond Belief came from Julie introducing Nir to this technique called The Turnaround, which comes out of the work from Byron Katie, that she used with her mother to repair the relationship she had with her mom.

A limiting belief is a belief that saps motivation and increases suffering. It does that by creating short-term relief from discomfort. "I hate public speaking, I'm no good at public speaking, so I'm going to avoid public speaking." You reduce your motivation to go on stage, providing yourself temporary relief, but long-term suffering.

The Turnaround helps you collect a portfolio of perspectives. The problem is that our minds hate changing beliefs. We use these beliefs to justify passivity. A turnaround helps you identify many different kinds of beliefs, and then you can choose the ones that serve you versus the ones that hurt you.

Your conscious mind can only process 50 bits of information per second. Your brain is processing 11 million bits of information (the sound of a voice, light hitting your retinas, the ambient temperature of the room). Your conscious mind is not aware of all this. Your brain has to filter out and leaves you with 0.00045% of the information that's coming in.

The brain sees reality through a tiny pinhole of attention. It's the difference between reading a simple sentence or War and Peace twice every second. In order to make sense of all this data coming in, the brain has to see reality through a tiny pinhole of attention, just a tiny fraction of reality you're actually consciously aware of.

The brain makes predictions based on our beliefs. How does the brain make sense of all this information? It has to make predictions, and those predictions are based on our beliefs. We call this predictive processing. Everything you experience, everything you see, everything you feel, and everything you're inspired to do is determined by the three powers of belief.

The three powers of belief:

• The power of attention changes what you see
• The power of anticipation changes how you feel
• The power of agency changes what you do

Limiting beliefs hide themselves. A limiting belief, by definition, is hidden because we think that what we see is accurate. We all think that what we experience is a fact. "I saw it for myself. I'm stating my truth. This is the way things are." But that's not true at all. The way the brain processes information is woefully inadequate to put that burden of truth on it.

The Turnaround uses four questions to challenge limiting beliefs.

• Is it true?
• Is it 100% absolutely true?
• Who am I when I hold onto this belief?
• Who would I be without this belief?

Nir's story: "My mother is too judgmental and hard to please." Nir sent his mom flowers for her 74th birthday. She said, "Thank you very much. But just so you know, the flowers were half dead. Don't order from that florist again." Nir instantly became his 13-year-old self and blurted out, "Well, that's the last time I order you flowers again."

Venting is terrible. It does nothing but reinforce your beliefs about people because not only do we not see reality clearly, we certainly don't see other people clearly. We see our beliefs about people. We don't see reality as it is. We see reality as we are.

The Turnaround opened up new possibilities for Nir. In 30 seconds, he determined: (1) that belief may not be true, (2) it doesn't really serve him, and (3) there might be a better way to be. He could actually be happier without that belief.

The brain hates changing its mind. The turnaround asks you to look at the diametric opposite of your belief. We have a psychological immune system. Just like if you get a splinter in your finger, your body will mount an immune defense. The same happens in our minds. The more you feel "that's crazy, I don't wanna think that way, that can't be true," the more you need to explore it.

Nir found four beliefs instead of one:

• My mother is too judgmental and hard to please
• My mother is NOT too judgmental and hard to please (maybe she was just conveying information)
• I am too judgmental and hard to please (I had rehearsed a script of effusive praise I wanted)
• I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself (I felt incompetent that the flowers didn't work out)

"Beliefs are tools, not truths." This is the most important thing Nir can convey. Which one of those four beliefs is true? All of them. None of them. Who cares? Beliefs are tools, not truths.

Facts, faith, and beliefs are three different things.

• A fact is an objective truth about reality. It is so whether you believe it or not. The world is more like a sphere than it is flat. That is an objective fact.
• Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence.
• A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence.

Most problems come from thinking faith is a fact. Too many people think that their faith is a fact, and the things they think are facts are nothing more than beliefs, which are changeable. That's where most of our problems come from: interpersonal problems, personal problems, geopolitical problems.

The original belief left Nir powerless. "My mom is too judgmental and hard to please" only has one way out: she has to change so I could be happy. Good luck. The other three beliefs, Nir could do something about. They were in his control. That enabled him. It freed him. It was liberating.

Misattribution of emotion: hurt people hurt people. When we feel bad inside, if you've ever been bullied or been a bully yourself, this is always what happens. When you feel crappy on the inside, the first person you can find, you're going to punch him in the face, either physically or verbally, because you feel crappy. That's what Nir did to his mom because he felt bad. So now she should feel bad.

How to handle narcissists: acknowledge they're operating with the best tools they have. That person is a narcissist? Awesome, because you don't have to be around them. But narcissists are operating from the best tools they have. It doesn't mean you have to include them in your life, but how do you stop suffering because of them? Acknowledge they are, and reduce your suffering around them.

Nir called his mom and apologized. He said, "I'm so sorry for my behavior. I realize that you were trying to help me. You were conveying information about the flowers, so I wouldn't order from that florist. Thank you for that." That call completely changed their relationship.

We expect people to change, but we can't even change ourselves. We can't do the simplest habits like eating better, exercising more, and managing our time. Why are we expecting other people to change?

"Love is measured by the benefit of the doubt." When Nir's daughter was born, and he held her for the first time, he felt overwhelming adoration. Five minutes ago, she didn't exist, and now he loved her more than anything. He gave her complete, total benefit of the doubt. Why? She didn't do anything. She never sent him flowers. Babies poop, they need food all the time, they cry. But he never said, "she's crying to annoy me." We give babies the ultimate benefit of the doubt.

Why don't we give adults the benefit of the doubt? When those babies grow up and become adults, we don't give them the benefit of the doubt. The narcissist in your life, the person who offends you, the person that hurts you, those are the best tools they have. It doesn't mean you have to be with them or include them in your life. The requirement is: how do you figure out how to stop suffering, to be at peace?

We're constantly judging everything. Somebody cuts you off in traffic. Jerk. There's a line at the burrito place. The business thing didn't work out. The stock market goes down. Judging, judging, judging all day long. Good, bad, good, bad, good, bad. Expecting things to be different than they are. These are all limiting beliefs, and all they do is make us suffer.

"We don't have relationship problems. We have belief problems." The problem is your belief that something should be different from what it is. It's like asking Nir's daug