599: Replace your limiting beliefs with liberating beliefs - with Nir Eyal

Speaker A: There are guests you have on once and there are guests you keep coming back to. Because as the field keeps moving, so do they. Nir Eyal keeps moving, learning and informing us how to make better products and how to be better ourselves. 12 years ago, first year of the podcast, he joined us on episode 30 to talk about Hooked. How great products are built on human behavior, not just features. He came back on episode 259 for Indistractable how we take our attention back in a device filled world and. And now he's gone deeper. His new book is Beyond Belief. A science backed look at the hidden assumptions that quietly decide what we think is possible. How our psychology impacts what we can accomplish. And for product managers and leaders, the beliefs we carry about our work, our teams and ourselves shape everything we accomplish, including the products that we ship. If you'd rather watch our discussion instead of listening to it, if you are just listening, simply go to our YouTube channel. Search for product mastery now on YouTube. We'll jump right in after this.

Speaker B: How can you unlock your full potential as a product manager? We're sharing the product management insights you need. They are based on the seven research backed knowledge areas for product mastery. You'll learn to create products customers love, enhance your influence and elevate your career. Welcome to Product Mastery now hosted by Dr. Chad McAllister, product management professor, practitioner and your guide.

Speaker A: Nir. Thank you so much for being back on the podcast.

Speaker B: Oh, my pleasure. It's such an honor. Number three here. That's incredible. Thank you so much for having me back.

Speaker A: A three timer and very rare to be in a first year with us as well. It's been a while.

Speaker B: Yes. I feel like I need like some kind of jacket with a crest on it, something ceremonial.

Speaker A: I'll see what I can do by getting something sent out to you. So you've been very busy promoting this book. I'm very excited about this book. I want to get into some of the details but to kind of set the stage right. Hooked was about people's behavior and we talked about how that impacts the products that we make. And then indistractable. All the things vying for our attention and how to deal with that, to really be able to focus on what we need to focus on. Product managers certainly appreciate that. Ah. And now beyond belief, digging deeper into the fundamental beliefs, that kind of drive behavior that we may not even be aware of. And you spent five years putting this together. Can you just tell us about kind of your journey and the dedication to keep up to get this out sure, yeah.

Speaker B: So this book came out of some funny phone calls. And those phone calls were occurring because I do office hours every week. Anybody who's read one of my books can call me and we can talk about whatever they want. I do 15 minutes every week with each person. So it's an hour every week. So four people. And maybe one out of every, I don't know, 20 calls or something, someone would call me and say, hey, I read indistractable. I really liked it, but I just wanted you to know that it didn't work for me. And I'd say, oh, tell me more. I spent five years on that book. 30 pages of citations to peer reviewed studies. It changed my life. Let's walk steps through step by step here. How did step one go for you? And they'd say, oh, I. I read step one. I just didn't. I just didn't do that one. And I'd say, oh, wait, oh, okay, no problem. Maybe that was a difficult one for you. Maybe you skipped it. Let's go on to step two. How did step two go? And they'd say, yeah, step two. So I read step two. I definitely read. It is just so much that I didn't do that one either. And I'd kind of get frustrated and say, what's going on here? Uh, people would wait for months to tell the author of a book that they had read that the thing that they didn't do didn't work.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And so I was kind of wondering, what's going on? Why is that? And then I realized, you know what? I do this all the time. I have a bookshelf full of books that I've read and haven't put into practice. I've listened to podcasts and YouTube videos and hired experts and gurus to give me good advice that I haven't done anything with. Why, why is it in an age when we know what to do, and today more than ever, right. If you don't know the answer to something, read a book. Ask Google, ask ChatGPT. Uh, find some LM. Um, you're going to find the answers. There's no more secrets. The answers are all out there.

Speaker A: Huh?

Speaker B: The question is, why don't we do it? And so I really wanted to dive to the center of that question. And so that was the genesis of Beyond Belief.

Speaker A: Okay. Pretty powerful, right? Because I think we all connect to that. We spend time learning things and actually not putting them into action. And there's some things holding us back maybe with how we think that we'll get into. You do talk a lot about reframing and. And one of the things that you reframe in the beginning is just what beliefs mean. That they're not facts, but actually a tool. Tell us more about that and help us understand why that's really important. To understand what beliefs are.

Speaker B: Sure. So we kind of use beliefs as synonyms for facts. We say, I believe this, I believe that. That's not exactly right, that a fact has a specific definition. A fact is an objective truth. It is something that is true whether or not you believe in it. So. So the world is more like a sphere than it is flat. I'm sorry if you have any flat Earthers in your audience, but the world doesn't care what you believe. A fact is a fact. On the other end, we have faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. God rewards the righteous. No amount of evidence is needed. That's a matter of faith, and evidence is not required there. However, between fact and faith is something very special. And that is what we call a belief. A belief is a conviction that is always open to revision based on evidence. Open to revision based on evidence. So what makes beliefs so special is that unlike faith, which people almost never change, unlike facts, which you cannot change, beliefs are malleable. And I think our problems, whether it's in the workplace, whether it's our individual problems, our sociological problems, our geopolitical problems, all stem from the same stores that we don't realize that so many of the things that we think are facts are not facts. They are beliefs. And those beliefs can change. And so what I really discovered is that in order to change our behavior, in order to stay motivated, in order to reduce our suffering in life, we have to be able to look at our beliefs and ask ourselves, is this belief serving me or is it hurting me? And that definitely has implications in our interpersonal relationships, but really in the workplace, it also has some profound implications in terms of how do we motivate our teams, how do we stay motivated ourselves in order to do our best work.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think this is some really important work for any professional to do. Or parents. Right. Husband, wife. Right. If we want to have a better life, there are things that we believe that we don't recognize that are impacting our behavior. And as you use the word not serving us. Right. They're not helping me. And we need to think through that. You have a framework that kind of structures the book based on three powers of belief that are attention, anticipation, and agency. Can you take us through each One of those. And help us understand how they apply what we can do with these.

Speaker B: Sure. So I was just fascinated by how our beliefs change what we see. This is the power of attention, literally how they change what we see. And this is not a metaphor. We know that people who are on a diet see food as larger, that people who are afraid of heights see distances as further. That what you believe, literally, this is not a metaphor, literally will affect what you're able to see. There's a beautiful study that was done where they asked two groups of people to do a very simple task. And the task was, please look through this newspaper and count how many images you see. Simple as that. Just how many images do you see in this newspaper? Now, the two groups were people who believed they were lucky or unlucky. This wasn't a fact. They didn't follow them around and actually determine whether they were lucky or not. They just asked them, what do you believe about yourself? Now, the lucky people, on average, took just 11 seconds to finish the task. The people who believe they were unlucky took two and a half minutes. Why the change? Why this huge gap? Well, so the task, the trick was that on page two of this newspaper, there was one image that said in big, bold letters, there are 43 images in this newspaper. Collect your reward. So the people who believe they were lucky instantly saw that image. They processed what it said, they got up from their chairs, collected the reward, and they were out the door. The unlucky people, even though we know they correctly counted, how do we know? Because they correctly filled out 43 images, was how many images they saw. They didn't see. They didn't process what the image said. Their brains wouldn't let them. You see, we don't see reality as it is. We see reality as we believe it to be. Things like this don't happen to me. It can't be that, uh, easy. I'm an unlucky person. Means that they literally couldn't see their brains, wouldn't let them see the opportunity that was right under their nose. So when it comes to our businesses, when it comes to our teams, beliefs are so crucial because they determine what your team thinks is even possible. And if you don't believe something is possible, you won't stay motivated to do it. Because I think one of our biggest misconceptions about motivation is that motivation is a straight line. This is what I learned in econ when I was an econ major in college. And they teach you that motivation is all about incentives, that if you Want somebody to do something, you give them a reward, right? We give them some kind of benefit, whether it's money, we give them something to work for, some kind of benefit,

Speaker A: the carrot or the stick, right?

Speaker B: And then to do it we need a behavior. So your job description is what you do, that's the behavior, and then you do it because of some kind of benefit. But it's not that simple. That if it was that simple, we would all be millionaires and have six pack abs because we basically want those benefits and we know what to do. It's not that you're missing the information, we know what to do. What's missing of course is a belief that in order to sustain motivation over the long term, which is the highest determination of success is whether or not you quit, you need to have not only the behavior, what you're going to do, you not only need to know the benefit, why you're doing it, but most importantly, you have to have the belief that motivation is not a straight line. Motivation is a triangle. And without that belief, you will not sustain your own motivation, you won't sustain your team's motivation. And I'll give you an example. If I don't believe that I'm going to get the benefit of my work, let's say I don't believe in my boss's leadership, maybe I don't believe they have my best interest at heart. Well, am I going to keep working hard for that person? Probably not. I'll probably slack off and quit now. Conversely, if I don't believe I can do the behavior, this is too hard. I'm not ready for this. People like me don't do that kind of thing. Even if I know exactly what needs to get done, I won't do the behavior unless I have the belief. So again, in order to sustain long term motivation, you need the behavior, the benefit and most importantly, the belief. Oh, but I didn't answer your question. Sorry, let me continue. So if beliefs are so important. That's right. So we talked about attention. That's the power to change what we see. Then we also need. The second power of belief is the power of anticipation, the power to change what we feel. This is a, uh, this is an amazing one where we know our beliefs not only change our feelings, our psychological state, but actually our physiological state that what we believe can literally change how we experience pain and suffering. We, which is a very important factor. We talk all about how placebos work, nocebos, some amazing stuff that we can use to change how we physically experience reality. And then finally, beliefs change what we do. We call this the power of agency. How based on what we believe, it determines what we think we are capable of doing. And so it's those three powers of belief. The power to change what we see, what we feel, what we do ultimately determines who we become.

Speaker A: Okay, I've talked with people, including some, um, inner talk to myself at times. But that might say, well, this is just the way I am.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: It's like, well, I'm stuck in this dark place, uh, and things are just terrible and awful and bad. Like, well, is that really just the way you are? Or is that what you're thinking about all the time right now? Maybe you could change if you thought about different things. What would you say to such a person?

Speaker B: Yeah, so, uh, the most dangerous word in the English language is whatever comes after I am that based on what you determine you are. Right. That's immutable. And so we hear a lot of people saying things like, oh, uh, I'm not a morning person, or, that's just the way I am, or, I'm having a senior moment. Or they say these things as if it's like their eye color, and it's so destructive. And I'll show you why. There's a case study about a man by the name of Mr. A. And this really happened. This is in the medical literature. Mr. A had a very bad breakup with his girlfriend, and he decides he wants to end it all. He wants to commit suicide. So he goes to his medicine cabinet, and he takes out an entire bottle of antidepressants, and he swallows every single one. Now, just as he's swallowing the last one, he decides he's going to change his mind. He runs over to the neighbor's house, he tells them what he did, and they zoom him over to the hospital. When he gets to the hospital, he collapses on the floor. And. And as he's on the floor, he manages to tell the nurse, I took all my pills. I took all my pills. And he hands her the pill bottle that he took, all the antidepressants. They rush him into the E.R. um, they take his blood pressure. It's dangerously low. His heart rate is falling, and he's slipping in and out of consciousness. Now, they look at this pill bottle, and they're trying to figure out what did he overdose on. And they, to their chagrin, they look at it, and they realize it doesn't say the name of the medication. It only says a phone number. They called this mysterious phone number, and they determined that Mr. A was in a clinical trial, and in fact, he was in the placebo group, meaning he had taken an entire bottle of an inert substance. There is no way that what he took could have caused those physiological symptoms. They tell him this, and within 15 minutes, his heart rate stabilizes, his blood pressure returns to normal, he's able to walk out of the hospital completely fine, maybe a little embarrassed. And so the reason I tell this story is because it demonstrates the power of the nocebo, that if something as benign as a placebo pill can change our, uh, physiological symptoms. Right. I am having an overdose is what caused these physiological symptoms in Mr. A. They changed his bodily reaction based on his beliefs that he had taken a pill that he had not taken. And so you can't tell me that there isn't evidence for how our beliefs affect everything we do. Right. Based on what we think. When you think you are. Okay, I understand. There's chronotypes. Okay. When someone says, I'm not a morning person, I understand. Yeah, I've read the literature. But how sure are you that's the reason? Is it 100% or is it 1%? What happened to Mr. A? That it's. That it's psychosomatic, that, uh, you generated this based on the nocebo effect? Is it 100%? Is it 99%, 80%, 50%? There's some trade off there. And so this is why we have to be very, very careful, because it turns out our labels can become our limits.

Speaker A: Absolutely. That's a very powerful example, and it should be one that helps to wake us up a little bit and say, well, maybe this is more malleable. Right. Maybe I can think differently and have a different outcome. And if we're not where we want to be, think about where we want to get to. That kind of progression I was leaning towards can get us into the space where there's the law of attraction, there's manifesting different beliefs, there's like, I just need to be more positive. That's not what we're really talking about. Definitely not. Can you frame that properly for us?

Speaker B: Sure, yeah. I'm pretty allergic to that stuff. In fact, there's a chapter in the book called the Negative side of Positive Thinking. And this is what I like to call outcome oriented thinking. That when I obsess about the outcome manifesting, visioning, when it's all about the ends rather than the means, it's a big source of trouble. And, in fact, we know this, the work of a psychologist by the name of Gabriela uh, Otogen did studies where she connected people to blood pressure monitors as she had them do a visioning exercise. So they were doing some kind of manifesting, some kind of end state, right? They wanted, I want to be wealthy, I want to have a beach body, I want love in my life. And they envisioned what their life would look like with those ends. So they fixated on the ends. Turns out that when they did that, they became more relaxed and they became less likely to do the things they had to do to get those outcomes. So, for example, in one study, students who manifested getting a good grade on their exam and they could envision the A and how happy they would be, they actually studied less and did worse than students who didn't do the visioning exercise. So there is actually a right and a wrong way to do this. The right way is what athletes do. This is a great example of how the self help industry took something that was true and made it false. Because what athletes do in a visioning exercise, they don't vision the outcome. They don't sit there and dream about the medal and the trophy. That's pointless. What they do is they visualize what they are going to do, how they are going to react physically and more importantly psychologically when something gets in their way. So I'm on offense and defense is coming at me. What am I gonna do? I'm skiing down the mountain and if I slip, what's gonna happen? How do I recover? That's how to do it properly. So in a business context, fixating on, uh, the ends. The ends, the ends versus preparing for the pain, that's a much more important practice. Preparing for the pain. You know, it's gonna be difficult, there's gonna be challenges, and this is what we can prepare our teams around. We're gonna, we have a good idea for a product sprint and we're gonna launch it. And we need to prepare for what's gonna happen when it doesn't work. We shouldn't be surprised if, if it doesn't work, because as you and I both know, it takes 100 iterations to find a, uh, success. And so if we just envision things and expect the universe to deliver us magic candy like it's some kind of cosmic slot machine, we are going to be disappointed versus when we believe something different about the pain, that the pain can serve a purpose and therefore it does not become suffering.

Speaker A: That's really good. I remember once I was out running, uh, over lunch, off from work and going up the hill. And this is a hill That I have ran before, and I don't like running to start with. Right. It's just something I was doing to be good to my body. And telling myself as I run up the hill, this is really painful. And I realized that wasn't serving me well in that moment. And I simply reframed it and said, this is uncomfortable, but I'm doing it for a specific purpose, to help me stay healthy. I love it in the future. Those hills weren't nearly as bad. Right. The next day, out for the run, it's like. Well, it's not really painful. It's just discomfort. Beautiful.

Speaker B: That's beautiful. Yeah.

Speaker A: What we tell ourselves matters.

Speaker B: Yeah. That pain without suffering is purpose.

Speaker A: Huh.

Speaker B: That if you want to stop suffering now, pain is inevitable. Right. Like, you will experience pain. And I think maybe the biggest limiting belief out there is that feeling bad is bad. Where do we get that notion? That's just a limiting belief. Feeling bad is bad. Who said maybe feeling bad is great? If you're sacrificing for someone, you're a parent as well.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: There's a lot of stuff when you're raising a kid that's not so comfortable, but you're doing it with a purpose. You're sacrificing for somebody else. Right. Is a marriage easy? Is a startup easy? Is writing a book easy?

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: None of this is easy. But it doesn't have to be suffering. It can be painful, but it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be suffering. And that turns out to be a major unlock of top performers, that top performers can feel the same pain the rest of us do, but they look at it differently. They have a different belief around the purpose of their pain, and therefore they can sustain their motivation over the long term as opposed to quitting. Okay.

Speaker A: Uh, let's talk about product managers a bit more specifically. Over the years, I've talked with product managers that kind of feel stuck in their career. They don't see where it's going. Right. Today with AI, things feel even more uncertain. And we're trying to get our hands around that. Right. These are capable and experienced people, but they're not really advancing. Right. And I don't know what they're telling themselves that might be leading to this. And I say telling themselves in the terms of what they're believing about the state that they're in. Right. Um, how do those limiting beliefs, when you're not advancing, and it seems like everyone around you is, impact you? And what might we do in that situation?

Speaker B: Well, let's ask where the suffering is happening. Where is the suffering? The suffering is not out here, right? The suffering is always here. So the data. The pain is gonna come inevitable. Even if you got the promotion, even if you got this and you got that, I'm telling you, there will always be pain. It's the interpretation that makes it into suffering. So the problem is that we think that's bad. Our interpretation. I'm stuck. Okay, you are. Now you're interpreting that as bad. Is there any way that your current state is good? Could it be a gift? Probably. I mean, if you thought about it, it'd be hard. I, um, mean, whenever I. Whenever. This is one of the key techniques. It's called the turnaround. And part of it is the purpose here is to take that limiting belief that's decreasing motivation, it increases your suffering and turn it into a liberating belief. A liberating belief is a belief that increases motivation and decreases suffering. And when you stay stuck in that limiting belief, your brain doesn't let you see any other reality because your brain is trying to keep you safe, right? From an evolutionary basis, your brain's primary directive is not to make you happy, is not to get you that promotion. It's not to help you flourish. Your brain doesn't care about any of that stuff. Your brain wants to keep you alive. And so it's going to keep telling you to do and believe what you've always done and believe. Because you're here, aren't you? And so that's the safest bet, right? It doesn't want you to take risks. It doesn't want you to think differently. It wants you to stay and say, no, I'm suffering. This is bad. I'm stuck because that's safe. But knowing that fact, you don't have to believe everything you think. You can adopt a different belief set. For example, what's the benefit here? Well, if I don't take that promotion, maybe I get to spend more time with my family, or maybe I can find another opportunity. Or maybe in this time of rapid change, I'm going to find that the best thing I can do is to have extra time to go look for my next thing. So it's all about the belief we're coming into the situation with that increases our motivation and decreases our suffering. And so what I invite people to do is. Is not to go about changing their minds. It's certainly not to think positive or good vibes only. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is collecting that portfolio of perspectives to ask yourself, could the opposite of what's causing your suffering also be true? Being stuck in my career is bad. Is that absolutely true? Absolutely true. Is there any, any way, even one other reason to collect any data, any fact that makes it also true that what's causing your suffering is not bad? You'll probably find one or two, probably many more.

Speaker A: Okay. So the turnaround technique, I want to give you an example I went through and see if this fits that or not. So I was in an entrepreneur group for a while and entrepreneurs, it was great to be together with other people to just learn from everyone's struggles. But it was also a mindset group. So there's. There was someone that would come in once a week and help us think through mindset. And I said somewhat in passing at one point, I'm not always sure why customers should work with me compared to other people. Right. I'm primarily a university professor, but I get the opportunity to help product managers and work with companies at times to train product managers. And the person said, you gotta reframe that. I want you to make a list of 50 beliefs that you have about why customers should work for you, work with you. And like 50, what are you talking about? Right. And it was a lot. It was actually a bit of exercise. But after about the first 20, they kept flowing in. And I recognized in the process of thinking about, oh, I do have evidence. I've had people I do work for before. Right. I have evidence. But I realized there are things I tell myself in the process that aren't helpful. Right. As you said, they're not serving me. And I view that very much as a turning around my thinking by just taking time to write down the reasons why people actually should work with me if they want to learn more about how to be better at product management work.

Speaker B: Love it. Love it. Did you replace it with a new liberating belief?

Speaker A: I did, yes.

Speaker B: Can you share the new liberating belief?

Speaker A: I know you're going to ask. I actually recorded this. Right. It was something I listened to, just remind myself and now that's been long enough ago that I feel detached from it.

Speaker B: I can take a guess. It could be something. If you don't remember it offhand, if whether it's, I don't have anything to offer customers could. What's your motivation level? Just think in your body right now if you believe something like that, I don't have anything to offer my customers. Right. Your m motivation leaks out of you. It causes suffering and you don't Want to actually work on the problem? You want to do something else? Go watch tv, go scroll social media, Something not very enhancing, uh, something you're going to regret later. Whereas I serve the right customers, right? I don't have to serve everybody, right? And in fact, that actually is, I'm sure you've seen this as, uh, well,

Speaker A: that's quite liberating, right?

Speaker B: Very liberating, right. And the easiest customers to close are the ones who are the right ones, the qualified customers, the ones that you really know. You can provide 10x the value. That's who you serve. And that's so much more liberating. Now what's interesting, by the way, it doesn't matter if it's true. It doesn't matter if it's true. Beliefs are tools, not truths. So the standard that I think most rational people have is, well, I have to know it's true. It has to be a fact. No, it's a belief. It's open to revision based on new evidence. Let me give you an example. At Amazon, they have these 16 leadership principles. One of them is it's always day one. You've probably heard this, right? Everybody who's ever worked at Amazon, it's always day one. That's one of their company beliefs. Now this is patently false, okay? It is not true. It is a lie. It is not day one. It has not been day one for quite some time. It's a multi billion dollar, I don't know, trillion dollar company. I don't even know it's worth these days. It is not day one. And yet they have this belief not because it's true, but because it's useful. It's like if you had two marathon runners, perfectly identical, identical twin brothers. They've eaten the same, trained the same, everything, every cell in their body is identical. One difference. One believes they can finish the marathon. One believes they probably can't finish the marathon. Who are you gonna bet on 10 out of, uh, 10 times? You're always gonna bet on the person who believes, right, believes they can. Because persistence doesn't guarantee success, but quitting guarantees failure. And so many times it's okay for us to not have that bar of it has to be true because these are predictions about the future. I can finish the race versus I can't finish the race. Customers want what I have, the right customer might want what I have. They're true and false at the same time because they're about the future. And so it's so important to take out these limiting beliefs to assess them and ask myself, wait a minute, is this belief serving me or is it hurting me? And what most people don't realize is, is that you can put down those old beliefs and pick up these new liberating beliefs.

Speaker A: I think that's a really important point, that they don't have to be objectively true. They can be beliefs that you are working towards making that reality come into place and that helps us get unstuck. And I forget what the source ah was that made me think this way about the brain. But the brain fundamentally is just a pattern recognizer.

Speaker B: That's right. Predictive processing. That's exactly right.

Speaker A: And if we give it new patterns to focus on, we start seeing those things. Right. And like anyone who's bought a new car, it's like, man, no one has that white Escalade whatever, Right. And then you get the white Escalade and like, wow, they're all around. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: That's totally happened to me. Yep.

Speaker A: And so the patterns that we stick in our brain is pretty important. These beliefs certainly matter a lot. Can you extend this to a team for us, just briefly, if we're a product manager, product leader, and we want to try to influence our team, Steve Jobs is probably the over the top example of this, of helping people be able to do the impossible with his distortion field, how can we help people on the team feel like we can actually do more, Believe that this impossible task we've been given is something we can take on?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's important to have some of these foundational beliefs that you are willing to sacrifice that even if it costs you some profit, even if it, uh, maybe costs you a customer. I think you need to have, for each and every team, we need to have these fundamental beliefs that are true, that we are going to stake our reputation on, that are part of our values that are true no matter what. That's what differentiates you. I think as a leader, that's what differentiates a, uh, company or product is having those fundamental beliefs that we are going to stick with whether or not they are actually true. And it's not the same. I think what people miss, it's very easy to have platitudes like, oh, we're customer first or whatever. It has to fit your organization. There has to be a fit between the belief and the market. But having those beliefs that people know define your decision making, define your behaviors, and that we will hold ourselves accountable to, I think that's incredibly important. Because what is culture but codified beliefs?

Speaker A: Okay, um, do you have an example besides, like day one principle there. It sounds like these things are things we form out of our mission and vision as an organization that are relevant for us. Anything coming to mind as an example?

Speaker B: I think there's several. I mean, I remember hearing about the Sam Walton story about how they had those all kinds of beliefs around how it's all about getting the lowest price to their customers. That's what they prioritize. There are many of these examples. I don't have a bunch offhand, but what we find is that it tends to be something that the founders bring to the table. And then once the founders leave and then the executives come in, the MBAs come in, the private equity comes in, it tends to be something that, that diffuses and then becomes irrelevant over time. They start taking the, those values off the wall. They stop holding themselves accountable because it does cost revenue, sometimes it does cost relationships. And so that's something that, when we can. The generational type companies, the companies that are able to year after year, deliver these results, are the ones that establish those beliefs and stick with them.

Speaker A: Yep. Yep. As you're talking, an example came in my mind that kind of fits as the organization I joined out of college. I said, we only hire people in the top 10%. Right. So only the top 10% people work here. Whether that was actually true or not, I mean, I looked around at the, uh, employees and said, we hire pretty good people, but it didn't matter if it was actually true or not. We believed that was true. And I think that helped everyone perform better, because that was kind of just like, yeah, we're here with the best.

Speaker B: Yeah. Interesting, interesting. And there is, I'm sure people are listening, say, well, are we supposed to lie? Are we supposed to deceive ourselves? I'll actually tell you a great anecdote around this. Serena Williams was playing in Wimbledon a few years ago, and she was not doing well that year. She was. And the reason why is that she wasn't rushing the net. She was hesitating. And that level of tennis, if you hesitate by even, uh, a millisecond, you're going to lose the match. And her coach, Patrick Montague, called her over and he says, serena, look, I've been looking at the statistics, and did you know that you score a point 80% of the time that you rush the net? Serena looks at him and says, what are you talking about? I thought I was terrible at the net. He says, well, look, statistics don't lie. This is the best news of the day. And it's true. Statistics don't lie. But he did. He totally made it up. She was not scoring anywhere near, near 80% of the points at the net. However, when he told her this, he created this new liberating belief and the lie became reality that she ended up winning the match. She took Wimbledon that year and she did end up scoring 80% of the points at the net. Now, he didn't just make up this number out of thin air. He had evidence. He had coached her for many years. He knew what she was capable of. She just needed to be reminded of what she could do. And now people would say the same way that as what you said earlier about the corporate belief, are we supposed to lie to people? Are we supposed to delude them? Are we supposed to gaslight them? Well, have you ever noticed how you can't spell belief without a lie? That in the middle of the word belief is lie. Now, I don't want you to read too much into that. There's nothing, uh, sacred about that or magical. It's just a good reminder that we're already lying to ourselves. You believe you can see reality as it is. You can't. It's impossible. None of us can see reality as it is. We are all shackled by our beliefs. And so if you are lying to yourself already, pick the lie that serves you right. Believe you can versus you can't. You can pick and choose based on evidence, right? Remember the definition. A, uh, uh, belief is a conviction that is open to provision based on evidence. But guess what? When he told her the lie, it became true. When they kept telling you we only work with the top 10%, I guarantee those people started performing at a level that did put them in the top 10% because they believed it to be true, right?

Speaker A: Absolutely. Really good example. And that was a wise coach as well. Love it. We do like innovation quotes around here. I was going to ask you to share one with us. Right before we get to that. We are talking about helping product managers and product innovators be better at their craft. If you're interested in that, and particularly if you're interested in earning a certification, there's this organization called pdma, the Product Development Management Association. They have a MPDP certification, the new Product Development Professional. This is something that helped me enormously when I went through it some 20 years ago. And I've been helping others just learn about this body of knowledge. If you want to check that out, I have a training program for that called the Rapid Product Mastery Experience. Simply go to our website. Uh, website which is the same as the podcast name productmasterynow.com and you'll find information on that and dive into the craft of being a professional product person more deeply an innovation. Quote nir what do you have for us and what does it mean?

Speaker B: I'll tell you. I think it's the biggest takeaway that I've had over the six years writing this book. And that is beliefs are tools, not truths.

Speaker A: M it sums up our conversation well. Right. And I like the positioning. But how we frame things in our brains seems to be how we interpret the things around us.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: And we need to use the beliefs as tools that serve us as opposed to getting in our way. This makes your book very important for everyone to get their hands on. Where are the best places to go to find out more about your book and the work that you do?

Speaker B: Sure. Thank you. So my website is nearandfar.com that's spelled N I R and far.com and there's actually a five minute belief change journal that is totally free. You can get it at the site. I'll give you the link for the show notes. It's just something we couldn't fit in the final edition of the book so we decided to give it away for free. And that's also at my website. And the book again is Beyond Belief.

Speaker A: And we'll make sure Beyond Belief and those other resources are linked in the show notes for this episode so everyone can find those easily. Neira, thanks so much for returning again. It was great to have you as a guest 12 years ago and then kind of in the middle there on uh, indistractable and now talking about Beyond Belief as well.

Speaker B: My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me back.

Speaker A: And listeners, if you do want to find those show notes, Simply go to productmasterynow.com 59 9. As always, keep innovating.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening to Product Mastery now, where product leaders and managers gain product mastery through practical knowledge, influence and confidence. By listening, you are becoming a product master, creating products customers love. Find additional resources@productmasterynow.com keep innovating.