#117: Nir Eyal: Beliefs Are Tools, Not Truths - Here's How To Swap Them

Speaker A: This man goes under a 55 minute procedure where scalpel cuts into flesh, where metal is yanked from bone. And he does this entire procedure completely awake, no anesthesia of any kind. Am I advocating for hypnosudation? No, I'm not doing it anytime soon. However, what I want people to know is that we are capable of far more than we know. Beliefs many times get conflated with facts. But beliefs are not facts. Facts are objective truths. Facts are things that are true whether or not you believe in them. And so that turns out to be the real unlock to sustaining long term. Motivation is understanding your, your underlying beliefs, whether they are liberating beliefs or limiting beliefs. Because your brain doesn't show you reality, your brain shows you your beliefs about reality. Nobody's born knowing how to ride a bike. You learn it like any other skill. Why do we think that people are natural salespeople? No, they've just had more practice persuading. That's it.

Speaker B: Now there's another question I've been burning to ask you here. Uh, can you explain to us why people resist the things that they need to do the most? The things they resist the most are usually the things they need to do the most.

Speaker A: Well, I think it's

Speaker B: this week, team, we are super lucky. We have a guest all the way from London actually. He's uh, sometimes living in Singapore. He's a hard guy to track down. And um, this guy has been called the prophet of the habit forming technology by MIT Technology, Bloomberg, uh, Business Week simply call him the habits guy. That's what he's known as. And he's a former lecturer of Stanford's Graduate School of Business, a student of BJ Fogg and his World Persuasion Lab. He's a serial entrepreneur who's founded and sold multiple companies. And his frameworks have shaped how Silicon Valley talks, uh, about product and user or behavioral design like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all the like. He, he's a New York Times best selling author of three books, Hooked, which is widely described as Silicon Valley's handbook for making technology habit forming indestructible. And then his third new book, Beyond Belief, which together have sold over a million copies. And he's got some absolutely raving reviews from some of the heroes of mine, maybe heroes of his as well. Dan Pink, Rory Sutherland, Stephen Bartless, uh, Charles Duggar and Oliver. It just goes on and on and on. But I won't forget. So welcome to the show. Nir Eyal. Uh, how are you?

Speaker A: I'm doing very well, thanks so much for Having me.

Speaker B: Beautiful. So Sinjin's here. We're in New Zealand, you're in London. Nir, you've written these three books, and one of them is about maximizing, um, distractions with Hook. Then one is minimizing distractions with indestructible. And then you've got this third brilliant book, beyond belief. Where did this come from, this logical sequence of passenger 1? What was the origins? How did this all come about, this third book?

Speaker A: Well, let me correct you a little bit, if you don't mind, that, uh, Hooked was about how to build healthy habits. It wasn't about distracting people. Because the definition of distraction is not something you want to create in people's lives. You want, uh, you want them to want to use your product. You wouldn't want to distract them with your product. So Hooked was all about how can we use technology to build healthy habits in people's lives. And that's exactly what's happened. So companies like Fitbod use the Hooked model to get you hooked to exercise. Duolingo gets you hooked to learning a new language. There's all kinds of good uses of these technologies. In fact, I stole the secrets of Silicon Valley. Not for their benefit. They already know these techniques. I did it so that the rest of us could use these technologies for good. That's what Hooked was for. Indistractable is about how do you disconnect from the technologies and the distractions in your life? Not the same products. Right. We want the habits that hook us to good things, and we also want to disconnect from the things that are bad habits. Uh, so watching too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, Anything that is not what you said you were going to do is a distraction. So that was the link between the first two books. And then the third book is really about how do we, uh, understand motivation? So the frustration that I had with my last two, uh, books is that, you know, I would get people who say, I love the book. It was super interesting, but I didn't do it. Help me actually do it. And I didn't understand why, you know, here's on a silver platter. I've given you the secret to overcoming distraction. And, you know, here's exactly what you need to do. People complain so much about, oh, everything's so distracting, the algorithms are hijacking my brain. Well, here, here you go. Here's the answer. And a lot of people didn't do it. In fact, I as well, you know, I have books that, uh, I haven't put into practice. I've watched YouTube videos and podcasts that I've done nothing about. And so I wanted to understand why. And it turns out that the deeper why is belief, that knowing what to do and wanting the benefit of doing it is not enough. That we have to fundamentally understand the beliefs that underlie are upstream of our behavior.

Speaker B: Brilliant. And thank you for clarifying me and doing it so well. Now, you have a very, very core distinction around beliefs being tools, not truths. Could you unpack that for us and help us understand that?

Speaker A: Yeah, so let's, uh, have our definitions, because that's very important. So beliefs many times get conflated with facts, but beliefs are not facts. Facts are objective truths. Facts are things that are true whether or not you believe in them. So the world is more like a sphere than it is flat. Sorry, flat Earthers. The world doesn't care what you believe. A fact is a fact. On the other end is faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. So God rewards the righteous. There's no amount of evidence that I can present to somebody that will dissuade them of that, that that's faith. Nor should I. But in between fact and faith is a belief. And a belief is defined as a conviction that is open to revision based on evidence. So unlike faith, which people almost never change, unlike facts, which you cannot change, a, uh, belief is malleable. We can change our beliefs now. People don't realize that they carry these beliefs like heavy luggage throughout their whole lives, and they're lugging it around from one thing to the next without realizing that they never chose those beliefs, that they came from their parents, from their teachers, from their upbringing, from their culture, from something they heard someone say to them, from something they've said to themselves. We keep lugging around these beliefs that don't serve us and in fact, hurt us. So what I want people to realize with this book is that beliefs are tools, not truths. They're tools, not truths, right? Not facts. Facts are objectively true. Faith are convictions that don't require evidence. It's neither of those things. It is things that we can change if we so want. Beliefs are tools, not truth. Because many of these beliefs, they're predictions about the future that have things that haven't happened yet. I'm no good at this. I'm not ready. This is too difficult. It's not worth it. They're about, uh, typically about the future, what you can and can't do. And so that turns out to be the real unlock to sustaining Long term motivation is understanding your, your underlying beliefs, whether they are liberating beliefs or limiting belief beliefs.

Speaker B: M. Yeah, I love that. I love it. And so you're saying sort of some of these maybe limiting beliefs are, uh, based on the future, but maybe in terms of parenting, socialization, with the way we've been brought up, uh, some of these beliefs baked into us through our past as well, you know, in terms of how we've been brought up. And do you think, do you think you've written the book as well to help people understand that, to try and bring those beliefs to the surface and be more aware, more conscious that these beliefs sometimes are limiting as opposed to liberating?

Speaker A: Yeah, they're always from our past. Uh, there's. There's an illusion in the book, uh, that I like to show folks. It's a checkerboard illusion. I show people a checkerboard and I ask them which square looks darker, square A or square B? 100% of people, 100% of time say, square A looks darker. Say, okay, well, in fact, square A is not darker even though it looks darker. It's not that it's actually the same exact shade. And even after they agree with me, I. I've convinced them 100%. 100 out of 100 people will say, absolutely, they are the same color. I give them conclusive evidence when I show them the original image, they still see square A is darker even when they know it's not. Because your brain doesn't show you reality. Your brain shows you your beliefs about reality. We've seen checkerboards so many times that we think they're always black, white, black, white. That's the way they work, right? But because we interrupt that, we have a little trick in that, in that visual illusion. They can't see it any other way because that's what they've always seen it as. It's impossible for them to see otherwise. So it's a great illustration of how even when we know the facts, even when we agree with those facts, we agree with the objective truths, our brain won't let us see reality clearly. So we should have the intellectual humility to realize that, hey, if we don't see our own reality clearly, we definitely don't see it properly through other people's eyes either.

Speaker B: I love that. And I think you said earlier in the book, uh, and I think it was attributed to a Naz Nin, um, we do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. So, you know, the belief is almost like the Filter or the lens that we're looking through. And, and you're sort of challenging people to sort of be more conscious of. Actually those beliefs aren't baked in. They are not. They are not that. They are not truth. They're actually a tool and we can actually change and we can be malleable about them because I think a lot of people, when I read the. It was. And we'll get into some of your journey in your life on it. But um, some people just aren't aware that they hold these beliefs. I mean, you talked about a judgment journal, didn't you, in the book, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. So this turns out to be a very useful, uh, technique where, you know, what we all have, uh, in our, in our hard wiring is what's called a negativity bias. And you've probably seen this with yourself. I know, I definitely have. Whenever I mess up, I remember the mess ups, right. I don't remember when things go well. Right. That, that just slips from memory.

Speaker B: Look, all the Haiti, uh, Haiti comments. But we don't look at all the nice ones or.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. That's right. You always look for the negative stuff. And that's because, you know, evolutionarily good things are nice, right? If you, uh, 200,000 years ago, if you found some berries in the forest, that's nice. But bad things will kill you. The tiger is much more important for you to worry about than the nice berries. So we have this negativity bias. We constantly scan for the bad stuff, which means about ourselves as well. And that means if we're constantly paying attention to the bad stuff, we are noticing it more. We're on watch for that more. So if you believe that people are mean, you're gonna find more incidences that reinforce that if you believe you're not good at something, you're gonna prove yourself. Right? And so we have to be very, very careful of our beliefs because our beliefs literally shape how we see reality. And so one of the countermeasures for this is to keep a journal, uh, to help us ground ourselves in reality. So for example, I've, uh, worked with people, uh, who have struggled with their beliefs. And uh, in one specific case, there was a woman by the name of Maria who, uh, she. She uh, gave a presentation in front of her colleagues and she didn't do so. Great. Okay? She didn't do as well as she'd hoped. Now from that she deduced I am not good at public speaking. Um, not. I did a bad job. Exactly. It's a Very dangerous, limiting belief. Anything that comes after m I am is very, very dangerous. So she believed I am not good at public speaking, it's who I am. Like my eye color became part of her identity. And so she kept looking for reinforcement around why that's true until at one point she stopped public speaking altogether. Right. And she actually got passed up for a promotion because her colleagues thought, well, you told us that you hate public speaking, you don't want to do it, so we couldn't promote you because you know, that's not what you want to do, isn't it? And it wasn't that she didn't want to do it. She just thought I was really bad at it. Well, of course, you know, that was a limiting belief. It was keeping her from the future she wanted. So one of the solutions was to actually keep track. Right? So after a talk, after she would do a presentation, she would say, okay, there was two or three things I should change. But hey, I did this well. And I did this well. I did this well. And she's found that actually when she tracked reality it was much, it was, she did much better than she originally thought, that the few mess ups were inconsequential compared to how well she had done and that if she kept preparing, if she kept practicing, she would, she would wipe out those negative moments as well, the things that she could improve on. So that's uh, a wonderful way where we can collect evidence. Remember the definition of a belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on evidence. So the way we change our beliefs from limiting to liberating is to collect evidence, is to look at things a different way and see does it increase our motivation, does it decrease our suffering? And if those new beliefs do that, well then we keep them. If not, the nice thing is we can always change them. We can, we can adopt another set of beliefs.

Speaker B: I love that. I just love that tool of the judgment journal. Now I couldn't resist near because obviously I research heavily for this. Um, one, do you keep a judgment journal? And then what is in it? Would you.

Speaker A: I don't keep a judgment journal anymore. It's one of the techniques that I think is very helpful. It's kind of like a 101 type tool. Um, um, but there is a tool that I constantly use which is uh, the uh, the work from Byron Katie, which is called inquiry based stress reduction that I do constantly. I do these turnarounds all the time. That's the technique that I've actually found the most helpful. And let me Tell you I have to do this like two or three times a day. Sometimes if I'm having a really late.

Speaker B: For me unpack it for the layman. Like, what's that all about? Tell us what that, what that tool.

Speaker A: Yeah, so inquiry based stress reduction, uh, was developed by a woman by the name of Byron. Katie. She calls it the Work. And uh, it's a technique that's actually been scientifically validated by several studies. You know, we never have a conclusion. Right. There's always more evidence when it comes to the scientific method. But this, this particular technique seems to have very good results in the studies that have been done so far. And it's actually a technique that if you look at the origins, it actually goes back all the way to Aristotle. That Aristotle did something very similar where the idea is to test your beliefs to see are your beliefs really serving you? Are they, are they true to you? And so the big picture idea is that you find a belief, okay, that is, that is, that is causing you suffering in some way. Um, and the way to look for that is to ask yourself, where am I stuck? It could be, uh, you know, there's a relationship that I think I should have a better. I should repair. It could be, I don't like how I'm annoyed in traffic. It could be, I don't like how I'm scrolling on my phone all day, um, and not being fully present with people. I don't like how I'm consumed by the news as opposed to paying attention to how I can help my neighbors. It could be, I, uh, want to start that, that book project. I've been meaning to write a book that I haven't gotten to. Or, uh, I've been meaning to lose some weight for every year and it keeps showing up on my New Year's resolution year after year. It could be literally anywhere. You're stuck. And the idea is then first to ask yourself, well, why? What's the reason? Okay, uh, I'm not ready for it. I need more information. I'm not sure how. I don't think it's going to work. Uh, uh, there's no time. It's too hard. All these reasons why, and all these reasons are going to sound like facts. They're going to sound like good reasons. Now the thing we want to do is to test them to see is that really a fact or is it a belief? And if it's a belief, is it hurting you or is it serving you? So the first thing we do is we write down where we're Stuck where we feel, uh, an amount of suffering in our life. And then we write down the reason, and then we take out that reason and we ask ourselves these four questions. This is what inquiry based stress reduction is all about. We ask ourselves, number one, is it true? Okay, is it true? Then the second question, is it absolutely true? Sounds like the first question. It's a little bit different. Is it absolutely true? Meaning there's no exceptions 100% of the time. There can't be any other reason. Right. Question number three. Who am I when I hold onto that belief? And then question number four, who would I be without that belief? How would I feel? How does my body react? Do I feel more motivated? Less motivated? Do I suffer? Do I not suffer? And then what we're able to see, typically by running that belief through those four steps, is that in actuality, that thing that we thought was a fact, we thought it was a truth, turns out not to be a truth, typically. It's just a belief that holding onto it makes us feel crappy, makes us suffer, and that letting it go actually frees us, can feel quite good. And then we do what's called a turnaround. So this is the next step. The turnaround is when we ask ourselves, could the exact opposite be true? Okay. Could the exact opposite be true? That doing this is too difficult and that's bad. Uh, that this relationship is beyond repair, that, uh, that person annoys me, that whatever it might be, that, uh, I can't do it because. Or, uh, that person does such and such. Could the exact opposite be true? I'm paraphrasing here, but that's essentially the technique that asking yourselves, could the opposite be true? What you will reveal to yourself is that there are multiple potential beliefs, not multiple potential truths. Okay, Multiple potential beliefs. Because you're asking yourself, could this be true? I don't know for a fact yet. Many of these things are about predictions about the future, right? About the way people will react, uh, the way you will react in the future. So asking yourself, could the exact opposite be true? Opens up that option set for you to choose. You don't have to keep that same belief you've always been carrying around. You can say, actually, you know what? That other belief motivates me to work on that problem. It decreases my suffering while I'm attending to that problem. And that has been shown to be a very effective way to increase your persistence and then ultimately achieve that goal.

Speaker B: I love that. Thank you so, uh, much for sharing that framework. Um, now let's talk about your Mum, shall we? And those flowers. So, uh, you use that framework. Can you tell the listeners the story that you share in the book?

Speaker A: Sure, yeah. So I'll demonstrate exactly how this works. And an area of my life that's changed quite a bit because one of the beliefs that I've held for decades is that my mom is very judgmental.

Speaker B: Okay?

Speaker A: She's a very hard to please person. So, uh, one year I wanted to buy her some flowers. It was her birthday a few years ago, and, uh, I stayed up late at night, and I made sure that I found her the very best bouquet from the best florist I could find. The problem was that she was on the other side of the planet. I was in Singapore. She was in central Florida, where I grew up. And I spent all this time finding her the right flowers. And then that night, I went to bed, and I was sure that she was going to call me and tell me what a fantastic son I am. But that's not what happened. What happened was I call her the next day, and I said, hey, mom, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers I sent? To which she says, yes, I got the flowers. But just so you know, those flowers, they arrived half dead, so don't order from that florist again. To which I said something like, well, that's the last time I buy you flowers. Something not so nice. And this really upset me. This caused me a lot of suffering. And my wife, who was sitting next to me and we do our research together, she's my editor, and, uh, she heard of this, and she turns to me and she says, nir, would you like to do a turnaround on this? To which I said, no, I don't want to do a turnaround. I don't want to do your hocus pocus mumbo jumbo. I need to venture, right? Uh, well, it turns out that's the exact opposite of what we should do. That, in fact, when we vent about people, we're reinforcing our beliefs about them until they become true. When we see people a certain way, we see them not as they are, but as we believe them to be. So I didn't do that. Instead, I did this turnaround process, and I wrote down what was causing me suffering. The thing that was causing me suffering is that I had this crappy relationship with my mom. That my. My mom is very annoying, and that's caused me a lot of suffering. Why? What's the reason? Why am I stuck? Because my mom is very judgmental. She's very hard to please. Okay? Now, the four steps, the four questions. Is it true? Obviously it's true, right? If someone sends you flowers from halfway around the world, you say thank you. That's it, right? No, you don't complain about the flowers. Okay, that stupid question, right? What a dumb question. Let's skip that one. Second question. Is it absolutely true? Well, that one kind of gave me pause, right? Is it, is it one of Newton's laws, uh, that my mom is judgmental? No, it's my perception of her, so I couldn't be 100% certain. Right? There could be another reason. I don't know what it is, but there could be another reason. Third question. Who do I become? How do I feel when I hold onto the belief? Well, I become very judgmental. I become, um, very anxious. I become this 13 year old version of myself that I don't really like. And then finally, the fourth question. Who would I be without that belief? Even just considering, hey, if I could, you know, wave a magic wand and be rid of that belief. Feels good, right? It feels freeing. Feels like I'm, um, more myself, the person I want to be. So in just four questions, I discovered that the belief was just a fact. Sorry, uh, that the fact was just a belief. It wasn't actually a fact. That getting rid of it actually made me feel way, way better. And so now I was ready for the turnaround. And what's the turnaround here? What's the opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please? Well, the opposite could be my mother is not too judgmental and hard to please. Okay, how could that be true? What?

Speaker B: What?

Speaker A: Could there be any evidence that supports that? Well, she, she did say thank you for the flowers. She, uh, also, um, was just saying a statement of fact. Right. The flowers weren't so nice. So maybe she wasn't trying to be judgmental. Maybe she was trying to be helpful, not hurtful.

Speaker B: Maybe she had your best interests at heart.

Speaker A: Could be right. Could be that she just didn't want me to get scammed by this florist. Could be there is evidence there for that. Okay, so now here's another one. Now we have two beliefs. Let's see if we can go for a third. The opposite of my mother is judgmental and hard to please. Could be I am judgmental and hard to please. How could that possibly be true? Well, wasn't I the one who had stayed up till one in the morning rehearsing exactly the script for the praise that I deserve for doing this nice thing? And when I didn't get it. I lost it. So who was being judgmental? I was.

Speaker B: Right. So good.

Speaker A: So now there's a fourth belief. The fourth belief, fourth turnaround, could be the opposite of my mother is hard. Judgmental, uh, and hard to please. Could be I am, um, judgmental and hard to please towards myself.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a real one. Yeah, right.

Speaker A: That one turned out to be the most true because what had happened in actuality is that when I had done something nice and spent all this time and money and effort on it and it didn't work out the way I hoped, I meant, I thought it meant that I'd done something wrong, that, that I was incompetent somehow, that, that, That I was bad. And so this is called a misattribution of emotion when we attribute how we feel on the inside to something happening on the outside. She did that to hurt my feelings.

Speaker B: Like, like the sort of shadow self with Carl Jung or my completely barking up the wrong tree there.

Speaker A: I. I don't know. I don't like to mix methodologies, but could, uh, be I'm not, you know, honestly, I'm not well versed enough.

Speaker B: You know, All I'm saying is the thing, thing that annoys you in other people is usually the thing that annoys you about yourself. And I think that reflection exercise that you've been through there is actually, you know, but that misattribution.

Speaker A: But it could be anything happening. You know, you see this when, uh, you know, did you see what's happening in the news? And there's this thing happening there and that person cut me off in traffic or that. And then the other, you know, anything that, that annoys us, if it's happening out there. Suffering doesn't happen out there. Suffering happens up here.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Suffering is always here.

Speaker B: Well, you, you talked about internal locus of control because we've been researching on your podcast, but sometimes we think it's external locus control. It's actually all internal. Yeah. Uh, you know, a lot of suffering is creating internally. And I think that's why you're so. This book so clever about that, that reflection or that introspection about. Actually, how do I check my own beliefs here? And the story you shared with your mum. M. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So what I concluded after I had these four beliefs was that the first one, the one that I thought was a fact at first, the only way I could get out of my suffering was for her to change. That's not going to happen. If you hold your breath waiting for others to change. You're going to suffocate. So the other three beliefs I could do something about, right? I could take responsibility for my suffering. I no longer had to suffer. Now, does it mean that I have to be best friends with her? Do we have to hang out every day? No, it doesn't mean any of that. It just means I no longer have to suffer. And of course, I'm much more motivated to work on that relationship when I don't hold onto the belief that she's judgmental. Who wants to have a relationship with someone who you believe is judgmental and hard to please? It's a demotivator, right? So I figured out that that belief was a limiting belief, and then I changed it. Now my liberating belief is we're all working with the tools we have. We're all working with the tools we have. And so that reminds me now, every time I interact with her, and actually when I interact with all sorts of people in my life, my daughter, my wife, strangers even, that's my new liberating belief. That's my new habit. Instead of jumping to that person is an idiot or judgmental or, you know, whatever, it's now, hey, we're all operating with the tools we have.

Speaker B: I love that, Nia. It's so, so good. Could we change checks? Because there's another fascinating story. You know, we talked about Mum and we've been through that framework. There's a guy, forgive me if I got his name wrong, Simon, who is having an operation and he's using. He's using hypnosis and belief and he's not taking anesthetic. It's a pretty serious operation, right? Yeah, that one. Because. Because that's the whole placebo effect. Because we're talking about, like, belief systems as a tool, not a truth. This is a really, really big case of using, you know, like that. When I read that, I was like, are you, um, kidding me?

Speaker A: Oh, it's mind blowing. It's mind blowing. Yeah. So Daniel Gistler is a commodities trader and he is the most cut and dry, black and white, uh, not, you know, analytical guy you've ever met.

Speaker B: He doesn't like woo woo.

Speaker A: Not spiritual, none of that woo woo stuff. He doesn't like any of that stuff. And in his early 50s, he has this freak accident and he breaks some bones in his ankle. And in order for those bones to heal, he has to have pins put into his ankle to allow them to heal properly. And it takes about two years for the bones to regrow. And then it's time to remove those pins. Now, in that time span of allowing his bones to heal, he comes across this video on YouTube which teaches him a little bit about what's called hypno sedation. Now, hypnosidation is this technique where you use the power of the mind, the power of beliefs to separate pain from suffering. Okay, this is an old concept. The Buddhists talk about it, the Stoics talk about it. That fundamentally, uh, actually now science is catching up. We know that pain and suffering are two separate things in the brain. Pain is information, pain is data. Suffering is the interpretation, the subjective analysis of that signal. Okay, so he. So Daniel learns over the span of a few years, he learns how to hypno sedate himself. And there's nothing special about Daniel. In fact, Daniel, tens of thousands of people in France and Switzerland and Italy do this all the time. It's not that unusual. And here's what Daniel did. And if, uh, I hadn't seen the video, I would not be sharing with it with you. It is so remarkable, it's so unbelievable that I had to include in a book beyond belief. It really is beyond belief. But this is exactly what happened. This man goes under a 55 minute procedure where scalpel cuts into flesh, where metal is yanked from bone. And he does this entire procedure completely awake, no anesthesia of any kind. And he does this by hypnotizing himself. He has a self hypnosis and anyone can learn it. There's nothing. He doesn't have any special genes or, you know, there's nothing special about him other than he has learned a new skill, which actually any of us can do. Now, am I advocating for hypnosudation? No. I'm not doing it anytime soon. However, what I want people to know and what I've since, you know, really been inspired to learn myself, is that we are capable of far more than we know.

Speaker B: Because.

Speaker A: Let's back up a minute. Why do we not succeed at a goal? Okay? Whether it's getting in shape or writing a book or starting a business or repairing a relationship, what's the number one reason we don't achieve our goal? It's that we quit. We quit. Why do we quit? We quit because it hurts. I don't want to go to the gym. I don't want to work on that. That's too difficult.

Speaker B: Takes us from pain, doesn't it?

Speaker A: That's right. That's right. The brain protects us from what we believe is suffering.

Speaker B: There you go. Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, so, you know, look at that. Look at it this way. If right now we had this conversation and you. You started getting heart palpitations and sweats and your muscles started getting sore, well, we'd have to rush you to the hospital. Something would be very wrong with you. But if you were in the gym, the same exact physiological symptoms would be nothing to worry about. Right? It just means you're getting a good workout. Well, what changed? Same signal, same information. Same. Completely different story.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Completely different belief. Right. The. The pain never became suffering. The signal never was reinterpreted through a belief that made it a bad thing.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: So people like Daniel have been able to reinterpret that story through this incredible power of hypnosidation, the power of beliefs, to actually separate the pain from suffering. He's able to go into this procedure not feeling any of what most of us would think was absolute torture. So it's within us. So what does that tell us about our ability to do those hard things? You know, it's all about the story we tell M. Yeah.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Now, there's another question I've been burning to ask you here, Nia, is can you explain to us why people resist the things that they need to do the most? The things they resist the most are usually the things they need to do the most. And, um, I'm being a bit articulate, but, like, why do people who need to change the most resist that? Change the most? In your. In your opinion, what's going on?

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I think it's. It's the brain doing its job. Okay, so what. What is your brain's most important job? Survival. Exactly. That's. That's what evolution has.

Speaker B: Evolutionary. Yeah, evolution. Yeah.

Speaker A: So if you think about it, what's the safest course of action? What's going to protect. That's right. That's right. So whatever you did yesterday is what your brain wants you to do and think today, because that's what's going to keep you alive tomorrow. So that's why it's so hard. Because, you know, doing the thing you've always done got you here.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So it's safe, but doing something different, that's risky. You might get hurt, something bad might happen. And of course, the more you fear something, the more painful it becomes. The more painful it becomes, the more you fear it. And so that's what we call the fear, uh, pain. Fear loop. This cycle where you make it worse and worse because the fear goes up, the pain goes up, the pain goes up, the fear goes up, and you enter this. This. This cycle that's very hard to escape. This is actually the source of chronic pain. Chronic pain is pain that has no physical cause and extends for more than six months. And so, you know, the brain should, after six months, it should heal the, wherever there's physical pain and turn down the signal that turns that, that makes something, uh, into suffering. But if it doesn't do that, it's because you become hypervigilant. And so this is, we think, explains a lot of maladies, uh, insomnia, uh, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, these conditions, not about the body keeping the score. I have big problems with that thesis that it's all trauma. I don't believe that's true. I think what's happening, it's hyper fixation, not that it's fake. I want to be very, very clear. All pain is real. All pain is real. People who have chronic pain, they're not making it, uh, up. Okay? They're not hypochondriacs. They really are in pain. And all pain is in the brain. All pain is in the brain. Right. Even physical damage, it's not. The pain isn't happening here. Pain is happening in your brain because the brain is where you are registering conscious awareness. Where else could it be? Which means when you have the right beliefs, when you install the right thought patterns, when you convince yourself that that pain, that information is just data that you're not in danger, there's nothing to be fearful of. You can actually, over time, doesn't happen immediately. Takes a lot of time. You can actually turn down the pain dial and cure yourself of chronic pain. Yeah.

Speaker B: Fascinating. So if I could go deep on that, um, you know, I trained a lot of rural sales teams. Very lucky, all over the world. And a lot of them resist change. And I think it's a belief system they have about themselves. I'm no good at sales, or I don't want to be perceived as salesy or whatever it happens to be. But is there some breakthroughs even just in the, you know, in the habit research and the wonderful books you've written? Like, how do they break this sort of narrative or identity that is self perpetuating or self fulfilling?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a great example. Right. When I believe I'm no good at sales. Sales is slimy. Sales is taking advantage of people. Am I motivated to try it? Am I motivated to, like, for example, you know, riding a bike the first time you rode a bike, if you believed, you know, only, only professional athletes can ride bikes. And riding bikes is Very dangerous. And I'm not the kind of person who rides bikes. Would you ever acquire the skill of riding a bike? Nobody's born knowing how to ride a bike. You learn it like any other skill. Why do we think that people are natural salespeople? No, they've just had more practice persuading. That's it. Uh, it's a skill like any other skill. And so. Right. It's just a skill like riding a bike. But no, it's a special category. As if it's like your eye color or something. No, you're not born. Nobody's born a salesperson. They've just had practice persuading.

Speaker B: That's it.

Speaker A: So how do you learn that? And what is persuasion? And I'll tell you, for me, you know, before I became an author, I don't know if you knew this, I used to sell solar systems door to door.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Yeah, that was, that was. I went to college, uh, and then my first school.

Speaker B: Hard knocks door to door.

Speaker A: Oh, my God, let me tell you, you know, going to people's roofs and knocking on the door and say, did you know you have a fantastic roof for solar panels? And sometimes, you know, most of the time you got rejected.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I'll tell you what, what changed my, my life really, what would help me sell was a belief. Okay. At first I went, you know, here I was, I had a college degree, I spent time at working for bcg, Boston Consulting Group, one of the, you know, most prestigious, uh, management consulting firms. And I worked for clients like three Pfizer and Delta Airlines. Very prestigious. And here I was going back to door to door sales, selling solar systems. I mean, what a, what a demotion. Right? And the way I got over that wasn't saying, oh, I'm not good, I'm not good at sales. And sales is slimy and sales is taking advantage of people. No, that would have never helped me create this business and ultimately sell it. What helped me get through it was that I changed my belief. My belief was I'm serving the customer.

Speaker B: Uh, I couldn't. I can't agree with you more because we talk about serving to sell and we talk about this concept of being a BARS assistant and helping them make good, accurate, informed decisions has nothing to do with selling. So it's kind of like a reframe or a cognitive reappraisal or. Yeah. Am I again down the wrong trail?

Speaker A: Absolutely. So, number one, telling myself sales is a skill like any other skill. There's all kinds of things, like, show me the evidence. All Kinds of things. I couldn't do that. Now I can because I practice and practice and practice. So that was number one. And then changing my mindset, um, of. I've got an amazing gift for you. I am going to save you so much money. This is going to be so great for you. You know, you're lucky to speak with me about this, right? Not, please give me, give me, give me money so I can make my quota. But, you know, this is going to be great.

Speaker B: It sounds far more motivating than demotivating.

Speaker A: Absolutely right.

Speaker B: Flipping the switch. I mean, it's like, um, neuroplasticity or, you know, we all using these big words. But your cognitive reappraising or reframing your belief system about yourself and who you represent, because it is, it's self perpetuating, it's self reinforcing. It's like, oh, I'm, you know, I can't be good at public speaking or I'm no good at sales or I don't know how to talk to strangers and everything else. You're so, so Right. So, gee, that, um, that would have been, uh, that would have been an education. That would have been education. Door to door solar.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And that's eventually how, you know, we built the business. We, uh, did millions of dollars of sales and we had a wonderful exit from that company. Uh, and we could teach it to other people as, you know, really changing our mindset around. We are saving the environment. Right. We're using less fossil fuels and we're helping the customer. We're saving the customer tens of thousands of dollars. And so, you know, this is the best thing that happened to you all day was talking to me that you're going to buy a system from me. Not that I have to sell you a system, but that you get to buy a system from me. Yeah.

Speaker B: Fantastic. So, my friend, like, what are the, some of the limiting beliefs you think that have held you back the longest in your life that you've now moved beyond? Because your book is called Beyond Belief. But like, there must have been maybe, uh, you don't share what you feel, you know, comfortable sharing. Is it marital, is it personal? The relationship you have yourself? What are some of those limiting beliefs that you've held on that held you back, that you've now moved beyond or changed?

Speaker A: I think that, uh, the beliefs around relationships are a big one. You know, when I changed my relationship with my mom and changed that limiting belief that she's a judgmental person and she's trying to hurt my Feelings into, hey, we're all working with the tools we have. You know, it's like, like expecting my mom to speak Latin. My mom doesn't speak Latin, okay? She doesn't have that tool. How could I expect her to speak to me exactly the way I want to be spoken to, to not hurt my feelings? Who cares? She doesn't have that tool. Right? So. And what's interesting is when I had that new liberating belief with my mom, it completely changed my relationship with my daughter and my, you know, with these two generations of women.

Speaker B: What happened?

Speaker A: Well, I could tell that I think what was happening was that I was doing to my daughter what I thought my mom was doing to me. You know, so many of. So much of our suffering in life comes from us judging what is

Speaker B: thinking.

Speaker A: It should be different, right? That what we do as human animals. We're constantly judging good, bad, good, bad, good. We're categorizing, this is good, this is bad, this is good. Who knows? Who knows, right? Do I know necessarily what's best for my teenage daughter? Maybe when she was very little and I was responsible for her at every step, okay, sure, I had to keep her safe, but am I sure that the best thing for her to do is to do her homework? I don't know, like, should I spend my time telling her what to do? Maybe the best thing that happened is she doesn't do her homework, she does poorly in the class. She learns about the natural consequences of what happens and then she'll figure it out. How do I know the future? Right? It's a limiting belief to think, oh, I know for sure what's best for you at this age. Of course, at certain ages, you know, there's a difference between one one way doors and revolving doors. You know, one way doors. I'm not gonna let my kid play in the street. I have to keep them safe.

Speaker B: You're talking Jeff Bezos there, he says there's decisions that are one way doors and there's one doors that are rotating doors. You know, once you go through that door, you can't go back in. And that's a big, big decision. And obviously, you know, the things that keep your children safe. And there's a phrase that I keep hearing the moment, I don't know why I keep hearing it just seems to be sort of more prominent that two things can be true at the same time. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Especially when it's about the future.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so this thing around suffering, I think, I think you're saying to listen I think you're giving them a guest here is that a lot of suffering is internally created. You know, it's on, not external, because we've got so much. You know, you talked about, um, misattribution, uh, bias. You know, that person cut me up. And if it was us, we would go, oh, well, we were late, or the kids were late or the car didn't start. Yes, but we, we're blamers or judges or belief. But so when you get beyond your own beliefs, you're not only improving the relationships you have other people, but you're improving the relationship you have with yourself, which then I turn, I imagine, improves the relationship with other people again.

Speaker A: That's right. That's right. That's right. I think that's, um. You know, I think all suffering happens up here. All suffering is a judgment. And, you know, I've. We've kind of talked about some basic examples of, oh, my relationship with my mom or something like that. I mean, I have seen people transform their lives to stop suffering from unimaginable things. You know, severe trauma from, uh, you know, we talked about surgery without anesthesia. Again, if we can do it with that, if the brain is capable of, of, of. Of separating pain from surgery, Pain and suffering during surgery, it's limitless. Right. We have so much more power than we think we do.

Speaker B: Yeah. And lastly, question around. You studied human behavior. Uh, habits, time management, um, decision making. Now, we've been talking about beliefs. What's changed over the years? Because I think you're 46 now.

Speaker A: 48.

Speaker B: Yeah, 48. Forgive me. Um, 46 is better than 48. That's a good belief.

Speaker A: Okay, I'll take it.

Speaker B: 100. Um, what. What beliefs have changed about him? Studying human behavior at the levels you have over the years, over your career, what's changed for you? What beliefs have changed? How. How have. How things change or surprise you about those beliefs or assumptions about human behavior?

Speaker A: Well, as an author, I just thought, you know, we just need to give people the right information. Yeah, right. If people just knew what to do.

Speaker B: Just read the book. Just read the book.

Speaker A: Right, right. And that's woefully inadequate that, uh, you know, I want people to read my books backwards because I. I think Beyond Belief is the next book you should read before you read any other advice. Because fundamentally, even when you know exactly what to do, even when you want all the benefits of doing it, if you don't have the underlying beliefs, you won't sustain and you won't succeed.

Speaker B: So. Well said. So, uh, well said. Uh, this has been absolutely fascinating, Nia. Um, I was going to ask you one last question because I know we're very close to time. If you had to sum up one piece of advice. We asked all our listeners this one piece of advice. You're only allowed to give them one piece of advice around beliefs and their relationship with them. What would it be and why?

Speaker A: Just one. Huh? Huh. I think it would be that you are capable of far more than you know. That you're not capable of what you can do. You're capable of what you believe you can do.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that is, uh, I think that is very, very wise advice, Nia. You've been so generous. Near, um, best place, obviously we're going to put the books. We're going to. You've got near and Far, uh, blog and newsletter. Fantastic resource. We recommend everyone goes there. The books. Is there anywhere else you want to point people where, if they want to say, hey, I love what this guy's gonna say, where else can they go?

Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah. I'm gonna give you a link to a five minute belief change guide. It's totally free. It's just for your audience, for them to get started on this path. Um, again, we couldn't fit it into the final edition of the book. So I wanna make that resource available to you and I'll give you the link for the show notes.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Now, one last cheeky question. You've been married for 22 years.

Speaker A: 25 years. Now,

Speaker B: my math is, forgive me on the research. What are the lessons and beliefs you've learned around marriage?

Speaker A: Around marriage. Wow. This might be for a whole nother episode.

Speaker B: Julie's not listening.

Speaker A: Oh, maybe, uh, yeah, no, I mean, it's, uh, you know, I. Wow. I think maybe the best thing is if you marry somebody who you admire. Okay, that's, that's, that's, that's maybe where it starts. Because I've never been married to somebody who I don't admire. But if that's the case, if you marry somebody who you look up to in some way, then disagreements are not fights. Right. But I've never had a fight with my wife. Uh, we've had disagreements, but we've never had a fight because we're on the same team. And I love her. I want, I respect her opinion. I want her to prove me wrong. And I think I used to be a bit more prickly of when someone would disagree with me. That means that, uh, they disagree with me and rather than my opinion. Yeah, exactly. I took it Personally, that, uh, you know, if you think I'm wrong, it's that you think I am wrong, not my opinion is wrong. Yes, Right. Exactly. And now I've completely changed that. Like my love language is somebody proving me wrong. I love it. That's the best. Because I know I don't see reality clearly. We need that intellectual humility to realize we don't see reality as it is. We see reality as we believe it to be. So if someone can change my mind on something, well, then you're helping me see reality as it actually is.

Speaker B: Yeah. Fantastic. And then about your, about beliefs around yourself, what's, what's changing about the beliefs you have yourself as you, as you are now 48. Because in your 40s or later 40s, you're very different to your 30s and your 20s.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Change about yourself and your relationship with yourself.

Speaker A: That I'm m, Much more malleable. That, uh, I, I, I, I'm much less certain about things that, that, that hold me back. That things are the way they are. Um, that, that's not true. That, uh, uh, I'm much more open to test. Wait a minute. Am I feeling this way because it serves me or because this is just the way I've always dealt with things? And so now every, I'm much more attuned to when I'm suffering, asking myself, wait a minute, what's the opportunity here? Like the other day I was making a cup of coffee and I dropped the mug and the mug shattered. That would have annoyed me, right? That would. What an annoyance. Now I got to clean it up as opposed to now it's an opportunity to practice patience.

Speaker B: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: Small thing. But I don't have to suffer from it. And all of life is like that. All of life is, oops, a dropped coffee cup. Stuff happens, but it doesn't have to cause us suffering.

Speaker B: Yeah, I absolutely love that, uh, quick trick I learned from my dear old mum. If you want to hold a cup of tea and not spill it, don't look at it while you're walking with it.

Speaker A: Good trick.

Speaker B: I remember that. But Nia, thank you so much, sir. Uh, um, thank you. Enjoy London. What are you doing in London? Is it, is it book tour?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Amazing, amazing. Guys, you have to go and read this book. And as, uh, near. He's very, very humble fella. We are super, super lucky to have a guy this credential is on the show. Um, get this book beyond, uh, belief and then work your way back through his other amazing back comic book. Nia. We are so grateful, so appreciative. Thank you very much for sharing your time with us.

Speaker A: My pleasure. Thank you. Good to see you. Take care.

Speaker B: Hey you. Hope you enjoyed this episode and you learned lots from it. It takes a wee bit of work to get these wonderful, amazing guests who, uh, lead us our tiny little show, who share their knowledge with you freely and generously. So it makes a lot of sense for me to ask you a tiny, tiny favor in return, which is to rate, subscribe or share the podcast or grow this YouTube channel with your family or friends or colleagues or anyone in your network that you think will benefit from listening or subscribing to it. The reason for my request is really, really simple. I'm on an absolute mission to elevate and improve the world's perception and therefore performance of rural sales reps and rural managers like yourself, which in turn helps every rural business owner or leader on the planet. I do that by doing my very best to share the most effective sales and marketing strategies with world class leaders and thinkers so you can get the leads, respect and sales results you deserve. But I can only do that when you help me get this channel and our podcast out to a bigger wide audience. And the bigger the audience, the better our guests are going to be. So if you can help us with that, that would be brilliant. Now, as you know, unlike other podcasts, we don't include any of those annoying ads that interrupt your listening experience. But I would be doing a disservice if I didn't make sure that you grab a free copy of my how to Succeed in Rural Sales ebook, which would normally cost you 20 bucks on Amazon. You get that for free as a subscriber or podcast listener. Or you can find out more about our rural sales team training or rural sales manager training, um, programs. You can do all this at our Resources page, which is below the video here, which is www.ruralsalessuccess.com, where you can, um, click on and download copies of my other books here. I have another book out, uh, last year based on Ryan Halliday's brilliant book the Daily Stoic. And it's called 365 Rules to Master Rural Sales Success. So Mastering Yourself, Mastering Rural Sales and Mastering Rural Sales Management. It's kind of a three in one, so make sure you get that as well. And also in the notes below here you have an access to my free new A.I. uh, training tool called Field Coach IO, which can talk you and train you 24, 7, anywhere, any time zone, no lag, no Waiting get answers that you need right there and then for the deals that you're working on. Uh, it's got all my IP inside its knowledge base which is extensive. 13 years of IP that you're never going to access from the likes of Chat or Claude or Gemini or Grok, uh and you can instantly get access at the touch of a baton with no waiting. It uh will coach you or train you on your specific live sales scenario you're facing whether it's pricing or timing objections, existing supplier high authority farms that have ghosted you on quotes, the specific questions you need to ask to make those conversations count. It will even analyze your sales calls for you to put you right where you might be going wrong as well as map out your territories. It syncs to Google Maps and Google My Maps and process your export leads from CRM to prioritize which leads you need to follow up with the highly hyper specific customized relevant follow up. You need to get those deals, those dead deals revived in your CRM. So whatever you need is going to give you immediate specific answers and you don't need to suffer or struggle whilst you wait for answers. Ah even from me. So immediate instant coaching right there and then just when you need it or even talk to you in your truck as you're about in your territory which is awesome as long as you've got great Internet covering. So our members and Field Coach are actually loving what it's doing for me. So many more use cases I could bore you with sensors here and my development team are mere adding new tools to it the time so you can take Field Coach for a spin, a 15 day test drive and try it out, see it out for yourself for just $1. The link to Field Coach is in uh, the notes below as well. So I personally want to thank you my friend, my dear listener and subscriber for sharing the show with others. Really really appreciate that because we can make a difference. It's hearts Real sales is hard enough. Thank you for investing your time with me and my guests because I know you're super busy, very busy and noisy out there. You've got many choices and options where you choose to up spend and invest your very valuable precious time. So hope it's been time well spent for you and you've learned something from us and our guests and it's helping you become a better rep or manager or you as a human being appreciate it and appreciate you.