Nir Eyal: [00:00:00] Are important decisions in life? Should I start this business? Should I work with this partner? Should I marry this person? Should I move to this city? Most of our decisions are not based on facts 'cause we can't see into the future. They're not laws of physics. It's a belief. I believe it will succeed.

Nir Eyal: That's why we have to master these beliefs or they become our masters. We have to pick them consciously or they decide our life for us.

Hala Taha: Back on young. And Profiting is near Al, a behavioral design expert and bestselling author of Hooked and Indestructible in his new book, beyond Belief, near Reveals, the missing link between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

Hala Taha: Belief

Nir Eyal: we don't see people as they are. We see our beliefs about people. That's so like him or she always does that. And we see this all the time. You know, people who the longer they stay married, the worse they treat each other. They treat strangers super well because they don't see that person anymore.

Nir Eyal: They see this. This patina that they built over the years because of their beliefs.

Hala Taha: If we know that our brain is basically playing tricks on us and we're not experiencing real [00:01:00] reality, what are we supposed to do about it?

Nir Eyal: We need to have, we know that successful entrepreneurs, they're not necessarily lucky.

Nir Eyal: They make their own luck.

Hala Taha: What are some ways that we can try to create more luck in our.

Nir Eyal: Okay, so the first thing you can do,

Hala Taha: yeah, bam. What if the real reason you're not reaching your potential isn't your habits, discipline or focus, but the beliefs quietly running your life? When near first joined us on episode 34, we talked about mastering distraction and building better habits.

Hala Taha: But this time around we're going way deeper. The hidden stories you tell yourself, shape what you notice, how you handle stress, how long you endure, and even how you perform and connect with others. Because belief doesn't just influence behavior. It defines what you think is possible. And if you can upgrade your beliefs, you can upgrade your entire life near Welcome back to Young and Profiting.

Nir Eyal: Thanks. Great to be back. I'm honored that, uh, you asked me to come back. That's a, that's a big compliment.

Hala Taha: Yeah. And I'm, I'm so excited to hear about your new book. You know, I got a [00:02:00] chance to read it. I love your work. You, you came on to talk about hooked and in distractible and you're the type of person that comes on and I'm like, okay, we can just focus on the book because it's gonna be interesting enough.

Hala Taha: Uh, because there's just so much to unpack. Like you always write like book books, you know what I mean? So, uh, I'm just really excited to kind of unpack your newest work, which is all about belief. Uh, so my first question to you is really why was belief a topic that you felt like you needed to write a book about?

Hala Taha: And I know that a lot of your books come from you solving your own problems. So what problem were you trying to solve with this new book about beliefs?

Nir Eyal: Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, they say that research is me search, and so I don't write what I know. I write about what I need to know, what I want to know.

Nir Eyal: And so when I was struggling with distraction, I wrote indestructible and it worked. It, it changed my life. The problem was that I would get these phone calls from readers every week I do these office hours where anybody who's read one of my books can call me up and [00:03:00] ask me questions about, about one of my books.

Nir Eyal: And, uh, every so often a call would sound like this. Somebody would call me and say, Hey, Neil, I read your book. I really liked it, but it didn't work. And I'd be kinda surprised, you know, I spent five years writing in distractible and, uh, I, you know, I really went to great lengths to find the latest research, 30 pages of citations to peer reviewed studies.

Nir Eyal: And so I say, well, tell me more. Why didn't it work to, you know, let's start with step one. How did step one go for you? And they'd something say something to the effect of, you know, I, I, I read step one. I read step one. I just didn't, I just didn't do it. I say, okay, no problem. Let's, let's skip step one, let's talk about step two, how step two go for you.

Nir Eyal: Oh, you know what? I, I read that one too, but also, you know, I just, I didn't, I didn't do it. And at first I got kind of offended, like, why, why, why not? Here's the answer on a silver platter to this problem that everybody says is so terrible. Distraction, you know, social media, were also distracted. Here you go.

Nir Eyal: Here's the answer. And people didn't put it to use. And then I realized, you know what? I do that too. You know, I have tons of books on my bookshelf that I [00:04:00] haven't put into practice. I've heard great advice from gurus and experts that, uh, it was in one ear and out the other. Why, especially today, in the age of ai, we all have the answers, right?

Nir Eyal: We know what to do. If you don't know the answer, just ask an LLM or ask Google. You'll find all the answers you need. There's something missing. And what's missing is that we don't understand motivation. That motivation we think is a straight line, right? If I want the benefit, I do the behavior. Simple.

Nir Eyal: Classic economics. There's obviously something missing. And the thing that's missing is belief that that motivation is not a straight line. It's a triangle. So you can know what to do. The behavior, you can even know the benefit, right? Why you wanna do it. But if you don't believe in either the outcome or that you will do the behavior, it's not gonna happen.

Nir Eyal: So for example, uh, if you don't believe that your boss has your best interest at heart, right? Maybe you're not gonna, you don't trust them to give you that promotion or that raise, then you're not gonna work that hard [00:05:00] or much more often if you don't believe in your own capabilities to do the behavior, you're gonna self-sabotage with what we call limiting beliefs.

Nir Eyal: So if you don't understand how to choose your beliefs wisely, no amount of information is gonna help you. So I want to write the book that, that, that appreciates that and teaches people not just positive thinking. 'cause we know that there's a huge negative side to positive thinking the wrong way, but rather gives people the tools to actually.

Nir Eyal: Understand for the first time, what are my hidden limiting beliefs? 'cause we all carry around these hi hidden limiting beliefs and we can't see them. That's why they're hidden. And then how do we turn those limiting beliefs into liberating beliefs? So we finally do what we say we're going to do.

Hala Taha: Yeah, I love this.

Hala Taha: And I feel like it's such an important conversation for entrepreneurs, especially, we have got so much to learn about how to make sure that we are believing in ourselves, uh, that we're believing in the right beliefs or like following the right beliefs. Um, and I just feel like it's so impactful. One of the things that, um, was really eye-opening to me [00:06:00] to kind of warm up our, our listeners about this concept of belief and why it's so important is a study about rats that you put right in the beginning of your book.

Hala Taha: Uh, the book by the way, is called Beyond Belief and um, it's this 1950s rat study that was just so interesting. Tell us about that.

Nir Eyal: Sure thing. Yeah. So this study really blew my mind and here's what it showed. So, uh, it's a little bit depressing, but that's okay. 'cause, 'cause the rats are already dead, so it, it already happened.

Nir Eyal: So we can learn from this study. So here's what happened in this study. Kurt Richter, uh, who is this, this scientist, he took these rats and at the time he wanted to figure out how long a wild rat could swim for in water. So he put a rat in a, in a cylinder. Filled halfway with water and he sat there and he timed how long the rat would keep swimming.

Nir Eyal: It turns out a wild rat swims for about 15 minutes before it gives up. Okay? 15 minutes. Then he wanted to have a little intervention. He wanted to do something to see if he could increase the amount of time that the wild rat kept swimming. And so what did he do? He took a new group of, of rats, put them in a, these same [00:07:00] exact cylinders filled halfway with water.

Nir Eyal: And he knew that after about 15 minutes they were going to give up. So right before they were about to give up, he reaches in, he pulls out the rat, dries it off, let's sit, catch its breath and plunk back into the water it goes. And now he sat there in time how much longer the rat could swim for. He did this a few times.

Nir Eyal: He conditioned the rat and he wanted to see how much longer they could swim. Now you, you've read the book already, so you already know the results and, and people guess there's gonna be some kind of surprising outcome. There certainly is. When I ask people, how much longer did the rat persist? What? What was the effect of this conditioning?

Nir Eyal: Right. And by the way, what changed here? Nothing changed in the experiment. Nothing changed in the rat's body. Something with the conditioning had changed. What changed now that they knew that salvation was possible? That they might be saved. What? How would their performance be effective? Well, some people guess twice as long.

Nir Eyal: Some people guess three times as long. If somebody is really optimistic, they might say four times longer. The rat went from 15 minutes to [00:08:00] an hour of swimming. Wouldn't that be amazing? That would be, mm-hmm. Unprecedented. If you could persist in your business four times longer, if you could spend four times longer making those sales calls or doing that difficult task, wouldn't that be amazing if you could turn on a switch and persist four times longer?

Nir Eyal: But the rats didn't persist four times longer, not even close. They didn't swim for 30 minutes twice as long, or four times as long. At 60 minutes, they swam for 60 hours, not 60 minutes. Whoa. 60. Hours from 16,

Hala Taha: I thought 60 minutes in my head when I was remembering the story. 60 hours.

Nir Eyal: 60 hours. They went from 15 minutes to 60 straight hours of swimming.

Nir Eyal: They became 240 times more persistent. So why do I tell this story? We're not rats. I tell this story because it illustrates the power of belief. Now, we can't ask the rats do they change their minds about something, but that's the only variable left. Same bodies, same [00:09:00] experiments, same conditions. We think that what happened was that now that the rats knew that salvation was possible, that their efforts would matter, that something might happen.

Nir Eyal: If they kept swimming, they might get saved. And so that greatly increased their, their perseverance. And it, it seems like magic, but really it was there all along. That that persistence was always there. And that's exactly the same case for us, for many of us, especially entrepreneurs. You know that I, I've started three companies.

Nir Eyal: The most important factor. You, you, you, you back me up here, right? You've talked to thousands of entrepreneurs. What's the most important factor for an entrepreneur's success? Is it intelligence? No. Is it background? No. Is it having the right resources? No. Is it having the right information for what to do?

Nir Eyal: No. It's persistence.

Hala Taha: Yep. Stand line.

Nir Eyal: It's persistence. Mm-hmm. Right. And let me, let me ask you this. When it comes to successful people who fails more, people who succeed or people who don't succeed, it's actually the people who succeed, right? That [00:10:00] successful people are losers, meaning they lose more often.

Nir Eyal: Why? 'cause they try more. They persist more. They keep going. They don't tell you about their losses, you only hear about their successes. But it turns out the successful people are the ones who are more persistent. So it turns out that if you could unlock that motivation to do those hard things and to do it joyfully to, to not mind, to do them.

Nir Eyal: Wow, that's unlocks so much possibility in your relationships, in your business, in all aspects of life. And how do we do that? We use our beliefs.

Hala Taha: So would you say that beliefs are biological and that there's something like happening in our brain when we're believing something that is true? Like what is actually changing biologically?

Hala Taha: How did the rats swim so much longer than previously?

Nir Eyal: This is what's so fascinating, is that your beliefs can actually become your biology Now, not in some kind of metaphysical, magical way. There's no magic here whatsoever. It's that when we change our beliefs, we do things differently. I'll give you a great [00:11:00] example of how your beliefs can become your biology.

Nir Eyal: We now know that your beliefs at age 30 about aging. If you have positive beliefs about aging at age 30, you will statistically, according to this study, live seven and a half years longer. Okay. To put that in perspective, seven and a half years longer, that's more than the effect of smoking. That's more than the effect of a, a healthy diet.

Nir Eyal: That's more than the effect of exercise. Is your beliefs about aging? What does a positive view of aging sound like? A positive view might be growth and change is possible at any age. A negative view of aging is, aging involves inevitable decline. Okay? Those are two beliefs. One is positive, one is negative.

Nir Eyal: Uh, aging involves inevitable decline versus growth and adaptation is possible at any age. Now, let me ask you, which one of those is true

Hala Taha: that you know anything is possible at any age?

Nir Eyal: [00:12:00] Well, well, both are actually true and aging does involve inevitable decline. The point is, is that beliefs aren't necessarily truths, that that's not the deciding factor.

Nir Eyal: A belief is a tool, not a truth. A tool. A fact is an objective truth. A fact is something that is true whether you believe it or not. The world is more like a sphere than it is flat. Sorry, flat earthers. The, the, the globe doesn't care what you think the world is round, whether you like it or not. On the other end of the spectrum is faith.

Nir Eyal: Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. Okay? So that's faith and fact in between fact and faith is a belief. A belief is a strongly held conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. Okay? Strongly held conviction, open to revision based on new evidence. And the fact of the matter is that our important decisions in life, should I start this business?

Nir Eyal: Should I work with this partner? Should I marry this person? Should I move to this city? [00:13:00] Most of our decisions are not based on facts 'cause we can't see into the future. They're not laws of physics whether I should start this business. It's a belief. I believe it will succeed. Right. And so that's why we have to master these beliefs or they become our masters.

Nir Eyal: We have to pick them consciously or they decide our life for us. And once we gain that power, once we actually learn, not just think positively, but actually which beliefs serve me versus which ones hurt me, they not only do they become our biology, as was the case with a study that increased lifespan, literally increased lifespan.

Nir Eyal: How did they do that? Because when I believe that I can grow and adapt at any age, well, how do I behave? I do things differently. I'm more likely to go take a walk in the park, even if I'm a little sore. I go see my friends. I garden, I, I do things that actually help me live longer. So to answer your question, beliefs aren't magic.

Nir Eyal: Beliefs change behavior, and that behavior becomes our biology. And that is the case when it comes to our physical bodies. For our [00:14:00] businesses, for our relationships, in all assets, in all facets of our life.

Hala Taha: So to your point, beliefs can help us and hurt us. So how can we tell if a belief is useful to us or not?

Nir Eyal: So we wanna look at those areas of our life where we feel the muck, right? That, uh, new Year's resolution that you've had for years and years that keeps coming back, uh, that relationship that annoys you and somehow, you know, you can't repair for whatever reason. It just keeps being an annoyance. Uh, the little things in life that, that frustrate you anywhere, that you, you're not being your full self.

Nir Eyal: You're not living to your full potential. And what's fascinating is that everybody has these limiting beliefs. Everyone has them because they're hidden. Because at the time these limited, these limiting beliefs, they feel like facts and we don't recognize 'em for what they are. They just feel like they're absolutely true.

Nir Eyal: That person is just that kind of person. That business opportunity can't possibly work. I'm the kind of person who can't. Yeah. Oh, here's the most common one I hear. I don't have [00:15:00] time. I'm too busy. Hear it all the time. What is that? Just a limiting belief and it's not always serving us. So what we wanna do is to look for the areas where we're stuck.

Nir Eyal: Not necessarily find more information, but actually assess for ourselves. Take out those limiting beliefs, look at them and figure out are they serving us or are they hurting us? Now the hard part is that we can't see these for ourself because they're hidden, right? Because we think they're fast. It's almost like your face that we all have faces, but you can't see your own face.

Nir Eyal: The only way you can see your own face is to take a look at the mirror, and that's not always comfortable. 'cause sometimes you see things you don't like, right? Maybe you have a pimple or whatever. You have a hair where it shouldn't be. Sometimes you see things you don't like. And so we resist looking at those limiting beliefs.

Nir Eyal: Why? Because we have what's called a psychological immune system. We resist anything that might change our beliefs because our default state is passivity. We like sticking with our old beliefs. Why? 'cause they don't have [00:16:00] to do anything. That business can't possibly work impossible. These leads are crappy.

Nir Eyal: There's no way anybody could succeed. Well, if I believe that it instantly becomes true. I don't have to do anything about it. And so it's only if we wanna reach our full potential, we have to unpack those limiting beliefs, take a good hard look at them and figure out how we can change them to serve us.

Hala Taha: Yeah, fam, you know that moment when it's 1:00 PM and you realize the only thing you had all day is coffee, or maybe coffee and a banana. That used to be me for many, many years. My mom used to make the joke that I used to fast every day, even though it wasn't Ramadan, busy mornings, back to back meetings, workouts, and somehow eating just always fell off the list.

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Hala Taha: And, uh, something that you do really well is that you always give us frameworks to align around. And you've got this, I think it's called the motivation triangle, that has three sides. Talk to us about all three sides. I know you mentioned it earlier, but like, go a little bit deeper and, [00:19:00] um, then I wanna get into the three powers of belief.

Nir Eyal: Sure. Yeah. So we talked about how you need to know for motivation to persist. You have to know the behavior, right? What it is you're going to do, the benefit, why you're going to do it. And then the belief underlies it all. So it's a, a triangle where the base of that motivation triangle is of course belief.

Nir Eyal: And so you have to believe in the benefit coming and you have to believe in your ability to do the behavior. Now how do you do that? Like, how do you pick good beliefs? You know, we, we've all heard just believe that's the key. Just believe in it. Where's that magic button that I can just alter my beliefs?

Nir Eyal: Right? It's not that simple. And in fact, uh, we know that positive thinking that just, you know, manifesting and visualizing if you do it wrong and it can actually be harmful, we can talk about, about how to do this right versus how to do it mm-hmm. In a way that actually SAPs your motivation. But the right way to do it is to leverage what I call the three powers of belief.

Nir Eyal: The three powers of belief are the fact that our beliefs shape what we see. This is called attention. [00:20:00] They shape what we feel, they literally shape, they, they decide our internal states, what we feel inside our bodies. So that's the power of anticipation. And then finally, and most importantly, our beliefs define what we do.

Nir Eyal: We call this agency. So those are the three powers of belief, the power to change what we see, what we feel, and what we do.

Hala Taha: So I run a team of about 60 people all over the world. I didn't get to like, introduce myself, uh, from an entrepreneurial perspective when we first hopped on the call and as I was reading about this motivational triangle, I kept thinking, man, like how do I instill more belief in my team?

Hala Taha: So they, they get their projects done. How do I, uh, you know, use belief in our performance reviews and try to understand if the team actually believes that it's possible to do what we're doing. Otherwise we're not gonna achieve whatever we wanna achieve. So what's your advice for people who are trying to motivate themselves, but also trying to motivate others in terms of how to use this new concept of belief or ensuring that people also believe in what they're [00:21:00] doing?

Nir Eyal: We underestimate this greatly as entrepreneurs because we think we have to be very logical and fact-based, and that that is important. Of course, we, we have to speak from a place of honesty, but when we don't really know, okay, we can't predict the future, we don't know what's gonna happen. This is where what we call company culture really matters.

Nir Eyal: What is company culture? Company culture is just a codified set of beliefs. Okay, this is what we do here. This is what gets you promoted. This is what gets you fired. This is what we value. This is what, what, uh, what we would like to see around here. This is how we are going to succeed. This is how we're, we're going to fail.

Nir Eyal: So we don't wanna do this, we wanna do that. Is any of this a fact? No. It's just a belief. It's our best guess at, hey, we have to have these standards, or we wanna do things this way or this matters here. And that doesn't, this is based on the company and it's not universal that a company that has one set of values, if you transfer it to a, an industry, it might work in one industry, but it won't work in a different industry.

Nir Eyal: Mm-hmm. So it has to be a lock and key of the right company [00:22:00] culture with the right beliefs for each and every company. Now. If you don't think of those, that company culture, if you don't, uh, con, if you aren't consciously aware of those beliefs, you're gonna get a bunch of crappy default states that are not gonna help you succeed.

Nir Eyal: You're going to get just the, the, the collective background of whoever you hire, right? That this is why founders have such a profound impact, because of course, people look to the founder, they look to the founder's beliefs, and there's no better example of that than Steve Jobs. In his biography, uh, Walter Isaacson talked about how Steve Jobs used to have a reality distortion field, meaning he would see a future that nobody else could see, right?

Nir Eyal: We call this founder vision. If that is nothing more than a belief, it's not a fact, right? Steve Jobs didn't always predict the future correctly. Many times he, he was wildly off, but he always had this vision, and that vision wasn't based on fact. He didn't know the future. He chose a set of beliefs that [00:23:00] motivated.

Nir Eyal: Everyone at Apple, and that's what every single founder has to do with employees. So your most important job is to build a vision for where you're going to help people see that possible reality. And this is the second power of belief, the power of anticipation based on what we see, it defines what we will do.

Hala Taha: That makes a lot of sense. So when somebody is saying like, you know, I lost motivation. What is actually happening? Like, what belief is being impacted when someone's like, man, like I just feel so unmotivated, I have no motivation right now.

Nir Eyal: Well, it depends which of the three is missing. So is it that you don't know what to do?

Nir Eyal: That's almost never the case these days because if you don't know what to do, just Google it. Right? Ask Chachi, pt, you'll, you'll figure out what to do. That's not the barrier anymore. It used to be, not, not anymore in the information age, then you've got the benefit, right? Maybe I know what to do, but I don't really care about the reward.

Nir Eyal: That's not meaningful for me. Maybe it's not enough, uh, of a reward, so nevermind I won't do it. Those are kind of obvious. The missing element when people say, yeah, yeah, you know, I, I really [00:24:00] do want, uh, to get healthier and I know I need to go to the gym. So there's the behavior and the benefit, but I don't really want to, it's because of some kind of underlying limiting belief.

Nir Eyal: Probably something like, exercise sucks, right? Exercise hurts. Exercise is suffering. I take it from a, a former fat person. I used to be clinically obese. I would tell myself stuff like that all the time. I don't have time. This is painful. I don't like it. Uh, I, I'm, uh, I'm not athletic. What are these? Are they facts?

Nir Eyal: No, they're just limiting beliefs.

Hala Taha: Okay, so let's go over the three powers of belief and we can start off like going deep on the first one, which is attention. So the power to see what you believe. So you talk about perception in the book, um, and that essentially you, you even go as far as saying as you believe that we're basically living in a simulation because our reality is just based on our perception.

Hala Taha: Help us understand what you mean by that.

Nir Eyal: Yeah, and this is [00:25:00] probably one of the most important things if you wanna change your life, is to realize that you do not see reality as it is. It's impossible. The human brain. Absorbs about 11 million bits of information per second. 11 million bits. That's about the equivalent of reading War and peace every second, twice.

Nir Eyal: Okay? It's a tremendous amount of information. What does that information look like? It's the light entering your eyes. It's the sound of my voice entering your ears. It's the ambient temperature of the room. Your in your brain is processing all that information. You're just not conscious of it because your conscious awareness can only process about 50 bits of information.

Nir Eyal: Okay? 50 bits versus 11 million bits. That means you are aware of only 0.0, 0 0, 0 4 5% of the information available to you. So because the brain just can't handle all this information, it has to, it has to do something about it to, to, to, to help us function. In a world where we have so much information entering our [00:26:00] brains, it takes a shortcut, and that shortcut is to leverage our beliefs.

Nir Eyal: We see reality not as it is. We see it through this tiny keyhole of attention that is dictated by our beliefs. And it, that keyhole of attention determines what we can even see as possible, not only in present reality, but also in the future. I'll, I'll give you an example. Uh, do you like riddles?

Hala Taha: Yeah.

Nir Eyal: Okay.

Nir Eyal: Lemme give you a riddle. So there's a, a father and a son who are driving in the middle of the night on a deserted country road. There are no lights around, completely pitched back, and all of a sudden a deer jumps in front of the car. The car smashes into the deer. It's a terrible car accident. The father is killed instantly.

Nir Eyal: The son is in critical condition and must be rushed to the hospital. When the son gets to the hospital, he's placed on the operating table. The surgeon barges into the operating room, takes one look at the child and says, I can't operate on [00:27:00] this boy. He's my son. How can that be? If, do you know the answer?

Hala Taha: No.

Nir Eyal: Okay. Think about it for, I'll say it one more time. Okay. Think. Okay. I'll say it one more time. I'll say it a little faster this time, but, but same basic story. Okay. Father and son on a dark, deserted road. Mm-hmm. They're driving father and son together in a car. All of a sudden a deer jumps in front.

Nir Eyal: They smash into this deer. The father is instantly killed. Okay. The boy is rushed to the operating room. On the operating room table. The surgeon barges into the door, in, into the operating room, takes one look at the boy and says, I can't operate on this boy. He's my son. Now, just to don't feel bad if you don't know the answer.

Nir Eyal: 83% of people don't get this puzzle. 83% of people don't get the answer. Do you have a, do you have a clue?

Hala Taha: Um, I don't know. It's a stepfather or something.

Nir Eyal: That's an answer. That is an answer.

Hala Taha: Okay.

Nir Eyal: But that's not the answer. Okay. Can you think of anymore? The answer is, um,

Hala Taha: I would, it's his mom.

Nir Eyal: Bingo. You got it.

Nir Eyal: Yeah. You're in the [00:28:00] minority of people who got the answer. That's exactly right. Yeah. Very good. 83% of people can't figure it out. They can't see the possibility that the surgeon was the boy's mother, because typically 80% of statistically, 80% of surgeons are men, 20% of women. That's a reality, right? That's a fact.

Nir Eyal: But we can't see it. We can't even imagine that possibility because of our prior beliefs, because our prior experiences. So when you think about something as simple, like, and when you, once you know the answer like Dove, of course it's, it's the boy's mother, obviously, and by the way, men and women, this doesn't, you know, if you don't get this, if you're listening, don't feel bad.

Nir Eyal: It doesn't mean that you're a sexist or anything. The same proportion of men and women don't get this puzzle. So it's, it's, it's, it doesn't mean that, it just means that your prior beliefs have a tendency to predict future events. So if you've seen that, most surgeons are men, you will predict that most surgeons will be men in this scenario that I just outlined.

Nir Eyal: So why is this so important? Think about what this means for you as an entrepreneur, that if you [00:29:00] can't even imagine a potential future, if you can't see a reality, you can't work towards it because you don't believe it. So what great entrepreneurs are able to do, they suspend reality. I mean, think about how ridiculous it is when you started your company, right?

Nir Eyal: And you probably told people about the company. Did anybody say, no, I don't think that's gonna work. I think it's a bad idea. Did anybody do that to you?

Hala Taha: Yeah. 100. Especially, uh, people who were closest to me, actually.

Nir Eyal: Right, right.

Hala Taha: Yeah.

Nir Eyal: They, they, what did they say to you?

Hala Taha: Um, you know, keep your stable job.

Hala Taha: This is so risky. Um, you know that it's just risky.

Nir Eyal: Right, right. 'cause it, it probably is not gonna work. They could envision how it could work here. What are you gonna do a, a podcast and load your Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure. Good luck with that one. Right. Uh, because for them they couldn't see what you saw because you believed not only in your abilities, you believed in this opportunity and that shaped your reality.

Nir Eyal: You could see something that other people just couldn't see.

Hala Taha: Yeah. And isn't it true [00:30:00] that not only like does it impact your beliefs, but actually visually how we see our reality? I know that there was this checkerboard analogy where basically mm-hmm. You just see what you, what you're anticipating to see, not necessarily what is reality.

Nir Eyal: Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. So if you, if you go on Google and, and type in checkerboard illusion, what you'll see is that there's two squares, square A and square B. And square A looks much darker than square B. Very obvious, right? And everybody who looks at this says, yes, absolutely. Square A is definitely darker than square B.

Nir Eyal: But if I put a strip of the same color overlapping square A and square B, you'll see that A square A and square B are exactly the same color. Now that's very interesting. It's kind of an optical illusion. What's crazy is that. Even when you agree with me, yes, square A and B are the same color. When you look at it again, it still looks like they're different colors.

Nir Eyal: So your brain is lying to you, is literally lying to you and not allowing you to see the truth. [00:31:00] Even when you know the truth. It won't allow you to see it reality as it really is because of your prior understandings, because of your, your prior conditioning, and so that this is why you, how the power of of attention.

Nir Eyal: Changes so dramatically what we are actually able to to see in our environment.

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Hala Taha: Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply hiring. Do it the right way with indeed. So what are we supposed to do about this If, if we know that our brain is basically playing tricks on us and we're not experiencing real reality, we're experiencing how we perceive reality, what are we supposed to do about it?

Nir Eyal: We need to have practices in place that constantly remind us that we're wrong. We need to have what's called intellectual humility. That if we want to get the [00:34:00] best out of ourselves, we have to see reality, not only as it is, but as it could be. So we need strict practice in place to force us to see these opportunities, to see what's what's available to us.

Nir Eyal: And so this gets us into this subject, uh, that we call entrepreneurial alertness. Entrepreneurial alertness, that we know that successful entrepreneurs, they're not necessarily lucky innately. They make their own luck. They make their own luck. It's a beautiful study where they took people who were self-identified, people who called themselves lucky or unlucky, okay?

Nir Eyal: It was a label they assigned to themselves. They believed, is it a fact? No. They believed they were either lucky or unlucky. Then they gave them a very simple task. The task was, we want you to look at this newspaper and simply count the number of images. 1, 2, 3, 4. How many images are in this newspaper? Okay?

Nir Eyal: People who believed they were lucky. It took them about 11 seconds. People who believed they were [00:35:00] unlucky took them two and a half minutes. Why the gap? The gap occurred because on page two of this newspaper, one of the pictures, one of the images that they were counting said, there are 48 images in this newspaper.

Nir Eyal: Collect your prize. The people who saw themselves as lucky saw that opportunity. They could read the image because they were seeing something that the unlucky people couldn't imagine existed. They couldn't see it. It was right there in front of them, but they just like, you can't imagine that the surgeon was the boy's mom.

Nir Eyal: People couldn't see what was right in front of him. The same exact image the unlucky people couldn't see, and it took him two and a half minutes versus 11 seconds. This is exactly what happens to us every day because if you believe opportunities won't happen to you, if you, uh, uh, believe they will happen to you, you're right.

Nir Eyal: You see reality differently. And so we have to institute these practices and there's a few that we can all implement that force us to provoke luck that in [00:36:00] fact, luck isn't chance. It's something we manufacture for ourselves.

Hala Taha: What are some ways that we can try to create more luck in our lives?

Nir Eyal: Okay, so the first thing you can do is to show extreme amounts of gratitude.

Nir Eyal: Extreme amounts of gratitude. So this comes from Tina Sealey at Stanford, and she has this practice she shared with me where she has a stack of thank you cards, and she has this daily habit of whenever anyone does something nice, makes her feel good, makes her feel appreciated, just has a pleasant sensation, she wants to thank them.

Nir Eyal: Whether that's saying it out loud, whether that's writing a little thank you card, whether that's sending an email, never ever miss an opportunity to to say thank you to show gratitude, right? Whether it's. The, uh, the someone who serves you at a restaurant and does a nice job, whether it's, uh, your child that you thank them for being extra polite to you or what, whatever the, your spouse, giving them an extra hug or an employee or colleague.

Nir Eyal: Always be, be gracious to people and show them how appreciative you are. Now, why is that good? It's not just good karma turns out [00:37:00] that you are provoking luck. How does that happen? Imagine when, when you send someone a, a handwritten thank you note, which takes maybe 30 seconds when that thank you note lands on their desk and just so happens to land next to a business opportunity that they're thinking, well, who would be someone I should share this with?

Nir Eyal: You're top of mind. So you're, you're kind of pollinating opportunities. You're creating these opportunities, you're provoking luck. So that's one thing we can do. Another thing we can do that we have to get into the habit of doing is intentionally exiting our comfort zones, finding ways to do things that are a little weird, a little uncomfortable, because it turns out that, you know, motivation.

Nir Eyal: Is in large part about discomfort. It's about overcoming something that's difficult because what spurs us to action is that we want something and wanting itself hurts, right? So if for the more we can get comfortable with the pain of doing something, the better we become at it, the less resistance we have, right?

Nir Eyal: It's just like practice. The first time you learn to ride a [00:38:00] bike, it was very difficult. You kept falling over. It was so hard, and then it, it became easy peasy. First time you learn to drive a car, first time you learn to do anything. It's difficult until it's not. And so what we find in the research is that people who consistently push themselves outta their comfort zone, they take opportunities that maybe were a little uncomfortable, they talk to people that was a little bit uncomfortable.

Nir Eyal: They do things that push themselves slightly out of their comfort zone again and again and again. Turns out they not only provoke luck, they become more lucky. They start seeing opportunities where they didn't before, for example. Uh oh, no, I can never just walk up to a stranger and have a conversation. I, I just did this on the plane right over, I'm in la I just, I just took a, a flight from Spain and uh, uh, I had a conversation in the flight, uh, in the, in the galley, right where they had little snacks and drinks.

Nir Eyal: I talked to this wonderful lady who lives in la. We had this great conversation. Now we exchange information. We might do some business together in the future. That would only happen if I was pushing myself. If I was looking for opportunities to push myself out of a comfort zone. That was something I wouldn't do before, is just talk to a random [00:39:00] stranger for an hour and a half on a flight that, that's super weird and uncomfortable.

Nir Eyal: But you know what? It provokes luck. It makes those opportunities. And then the next thing, and this is probably the most important of the three, is to relish failure. Opportunities that people see failure as a sign that they're doing something wrong. And that's not the attitude of successful people. That in fact, successful people.

Nir Eyal: Relish those opportunities, right? So, hey, I'm making my sales calls, not, oh, a lot of people said no, but, oh man, I've got more to do. And look how many nos I got. That means the next one might be a yes. So for example, if I told you whatever goal you might have, if you know, I tell you I traveled into the future and I know that you have only five more failures before number six is gonna be a success.

Nir Eyal: If you're looking for love, go on five more dates. Six, one, you're gonna find your soulmate. Uh, five more leads. And the sixth one, you're gonna close a deal. Uh, whatever it is. If I knew five more failures, and then you're gonna have the six one's gonna be a big success, would you avoid failure? [00:40:00]

Hala Taha: No, I'd run to it.

Nir Eyal: You, you would. Yeah, exactly. You look forward to it. Come on, let's, let's fail so we can get to the success. Well, that's reality. And if you believe that it becomes your reality. If you believe that failures are an opportunity, you're going to try more, you're gonna persevere, you're gonna stay more motivated, and guess what?

Nir Eyal: You're going to get lucky more often.

Hala Taha: I know that you, you give a case study of the lady who launched Solid Core and she had exceptional entrepreneurial alertness, and it allowed her to see opportunities where most people wouldn't see an opportunity there at all. Can you tell us about that story?

Nir Eyal: Sure.

Nir Eyal: Ann Malam, uh, she's, she's an amazing story. She's an amazing example of the power of beliefs and the power of attention specifically. So, um, she, uh, was in Philadelphia. Uh, she was working for some job she wasn't too happy with, and she, one day she, she ran by this homeless shelter, this, uh, this homeless mission.

Nir Eyal: And, uh, and then she ran by it again, it came, kind of became part of her routine. And for years she would just [00:41:00] run by this homeless shelter and didn't do anything about it. Like many people today, you know, we see someone suffering, eh, just the way it is, right? Someone's on the street, it's probably a drug problem.

Nir Eyal: Nothing you can do. Okay? I, I, you know, that's someone else's problem. Well, one day, one of these men at the homeless shelter makes a joke. Says is all you do, run all day. And she jokes back, is all you do, stand there all day. And then they start having a little rapport and the next day they have a little bit more of a conversation.

Nir Eyal: And this is something she would never did before. She would never had this conversation with, with a person at a homeless mission. And then they started forming a bit of a relationship. And then after a few days of this, she stops in her tracks and she asks herself, how come I'm the runner and they're homeless?

Nir Eyal: Why can't we all be runners? And so she has this crazy idea of what would it be like to run with homeless men? And that's exactly what she does. She forms a group called Back On My Feet that teaches, uh, home, uh, unhoused people. How to get back on their feet, how to get their life back [00:42:00] in order. First by starting with physical fitness.

Nir Eyal: Now she's not trying to fix homelessness as a systemic issue. We're all very aware that homelessness is not, uh, you know, fixable just with running shoes that it involves, you know, uh, unaffordability of housing and it involves mental health issues. There's lots of issues to, uh, to, to homelessness. But she, she wasn't worried about all that.

Nir Eyal: She just wanted to help people in, in this one mission in her neighborhood. She wanted to do something for them. So she looked for agency, the third power belief, something that she could actually do something about. She used the power of attention to notice potential in these, these men that she saw something that everyone else discounted this potential.

Nir Eyal: And then she anticipated that they might change. And so what did she do? The first session they got together, I think it was about nine guys, and they went on a little jog. It turns out that that little bit of, of, of hope that, that they saw that, Hey, I could do something. I set a difficult goal and, and do it.

Nir Eyal: Day after day, they started to change. They would talk to each other about what they're [00:43:00] going through. They would be a little bit more vulnerable. They would exchange different opportunities. And this organization now, several years later, is, is still up and running. I think it's in eight different cities and they have run together collectively, millions of miles together.

Nir Eyal: Now, that experience that Anne had where she saw potential where others did not transferred into her next act when she went to Los Angeles and she saw a little fitness studio and she thought it was super cute and pink and very la. And so she got inspired and she took elements of that fitness studio and her next venture was to start a fitness company where it was called Solid Core, where she opened up these studios that nobody saw an opportunity to, to open.

Nir Eyal: And she sold that company a few years later. What was interesting about this, she sold it for over a hundred million dollars. And what's fascinating is she totally called her shot. The day she started the company, she wrote down on a piece of paper, I will sell this company for a hundred million dollars.

Nir Eyal: And that's exactly what she did. [00:44:00] Now, was that a fact? No. It was a belief, and I'm sure she had all kinds of other predictions that she didn't tell me about that maybe she didn't accomplish. That's not the point. It doesn't matter if it's true because beliefs are tools, not truths, because writing it down and saying, I will do this, allowed her to see it.

Nir Eyal: It became a possibility and when you can see it, you can do it. She's a wonderful example of, of how these beliefs can become a reality based on, on your beliefs. On your perception.

Hala Taha: That's such a good story. It's such an inspiring story. I knew that you have a whole chapter on, in your book about relationships, and initially when I saw that, I was like, well, how did relationships really relate to beliefs?

Hala Taha: But then I soon understood that really you're also perceiving people and making judgements on people. And a lot of these judgments will stick on people. Ju it's like, you know, the concept of first impressions. You know, you, you meet somebody for the first 20 seconds and that's the impression you have, uh, indefinitely with that person no matter what they do or how they change.

Nir Eyal: True.

Hala Taha: So help [00:45:00] us understand, um, relationships, perceptions related to relationships and how we can make sure that we're also seeing people in their reality or in reality.

Nir Eyal: Absolutely. So I'll start with a, a, a little story, a personal story. It's a little difficult to relay, but I think it, uh, it conveys the point.

Nir Eyal: That, uh, this happened with my mom and talk about relationships and difficulties. So, uh, my mom a few years ago had her 74th birthday and, um, I wanted to do something nice for her. I wanted to get her some flowers. And I was in Singapore at the time. She was in central Florida where I grew up, and it was a bit of a challenge to get her flowers for her birthday.

Nir Eyal: I had to stay up late and talk to the florist and figure out when it arrive on time and make sure that the flowers wouldn't wilt by the time they arrived at, at her house and all that. I went to bed at one in the morning. I patted myself on the back. I said, M you did a good job. You're a good son. You did a nice thing.

Nir Eyal: I woke up the next morning, I called my mom on her birthday and I said, Hey, mom, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers? I said, and she said, yes, I did. [00:46:00] Thank you very much. But you should know the flowers arrived kind of half dead. You shouldn't order from that florist anymore. To which I got very offended.

Nir Eyal: And I said something to the effect of, well, that's the last time I buy you flowers. Uh, that went over just about as well as you'd expect. And so, uh, after the call, my wife turned to me and she said, um, do you wanna do a turnaround on this? I turned around and I said, no, I do not wanna do a turnaround. I don't wanna do your touchy feely hocus pocus.

Nir Eyal: Uh, you know, mumbo jumbo. I need to vent because venting is what we've been taught to do, right? When somebody makes you mad, you're not supposed to keep your feelings to yourself. You're supposed to let 'em out. You're supposed to vent. You're supposed to tell people how you really feel. Well, it turns out that's not true.

Nir Eyal: That venting is one of the worst things you can do because venting does nothing more than cement. This, this, this effigy that we build at people. 'cause we don't see people as we as they are. We see our beliefs about people. We don't accurate, [00:47:00] especially the people you know the best in your life. You know, that's so like him or she always does that.

Nir Eyal: Or we see people as we believe they are not as they truly are. And we see this all the time. You know, people who, the longer they stay married, the worse they treat each other, right? When they first fell in love with each other, they treat each other nicely. Or maybe they, you know, I've seen this with, with some of my friends.

Nir Eyal: They treat strangers super well, but the person they love more, they're supposed to love more and be more loyal to than anybody else in the world. They, they treat poorly because they don't see that person anymore. They see this, this patina that they built over the years because of their beliefs. So anyways, I knew that that venting was not going to be helpful.

Nir Eyal: And instead I did a turnaround. Now, what is a turnaround? This technique comes from Byron Katie. So she deserves credit for it. And she developed these four questions that help us evaluate the usefulness of our beliefs. And, and it turns out that this practice is actually thousands of years old. It goes back all the way to, to Aristotle.

Nir Eyal: So she gives us four questions. The first question is, is this belief true? Okay. So I wrote down my belief. My belief was. My mother is too judgmental and hard to [00:48:00] please. And that was my belief, my, my, in that instance, my mother was clearly too judgmental and hard to please. Are you, are you gonna back me up hollow?

Nir Eyal: Is that, is that right?

Hala Taha: Uh, yeah, to, I mean, it seemed maybe, maybe

Nir Eyal: come on. I was after convinced. Right? Yeah. And I, that's why I didn't want, you know, to, to do this exercise. I wanted someone to acknowledge that I had been wrong. That like, who says that to their son? Who gets them flowers?

Hala Taha: But she should just be thankful and say thank you and that's

Nir Eyal: it.

Nir Eyal: Yeah, exactly. Just be thankful. So, okay, question number one. Easy peasy, right? Obviously. Is it true? Yeah, it's true. She was clearly she did, she was in the wrong, I was in the right. But here's the second question. Second question is, is it absolutely true? Is this belief that my mother was too judgmental and hard to please?

Nir Eyal: Absolutely true. Is there no possible interpretation? Absolutely means a hundred percent without exception, every single time. There's no possible way she wasn't being too judgmental and hard to please. Well, I'm honest with myself. I mean, maybe, maybe I could come up with a reason. Maybe she was, uh, uh, [00:49:00] trying to just help me, right?

Nir Eyal: But she didn't want me to get scammed by this florist. Well, okay, maybe there's another explanation. Okay. Reluctantly, I, I agreed. The third question. The third question is, who am I when I hold onto this belief? Who do I become? What do I act like? How do I feel? And by the way, if, if this doesn't resonate with your mother, you know, this is a business podcast.

Nir Eyal: Think about it with your employees, your boss, your coworkers. You can do this with any relationship or any, any challenge for that matter. So the third question is, who do I become when I hold onto this belief? When I believe that my mother is true, judgmental, and hard to please, I'm short tempered. I am, uh, not very kind.

Nir Eyal: And frankly, I'm not myself, right? I regretted what I said to her. Now, the fourth question, who would I be without that belief? Well, if I had a magic wand and I could tap my brain, and all of a sudden this belief would dissolve. I'd probably be nicer, I'd be more myself. I wouldn't be embarrassed by something I said and later regretted.

Nir Eyal: So what we [00:50:00] established with just four questions is that that belief may not be true. It wasn't serving me, and I would be better without it. So now it cracks open a possibility because remember, our immune system, our psychological immune system hates changing our beliefs and the beliefs that we think we are most certain about, particularly about other people.

Nir Eyal: That's just the way they are. Those are the beliefs we most need to examine, or even more so beliefs about ourselves. Those are the really, really hard ones to change. And if you feel resistance, if you say, well, no, that's, that's not something I want to evaluate. I don't want to think differently, that's probably the beliefs you need to be most conscious of, that you most need to explore.

Nir Eyal: So now we do a turnaround. Okay, A turnaround. The idea behind a turnaround is not to change your beliefs, not to change your beliefs, to collect a portfolio of perspectives, a portfolio of perspectives. 'cause right now I only had one belief. My belief was my mother is too judgmental and hard to please.

Nir Eyal: It's the only perspective I had. Now what you do is you do a turnaround to create more potential beliefs to see if any of those might be more [00:51:00] helpful. 'cause remember, beliefs are tools, not truths. So we don't wanna just use a tool just because that's what we've always used, right? A, a carpenter doesn't say, oh, I've used a hammer before.

Nir Eyal: So everything I do, I have to hammer. No, sometimes you use a screwdriver, sometimes you use a wrench. Sometimes you use a saw based on the job, which one is helpful? So to do a turnaround, we ask ourselves if the exact opposite could also be true. So what's the exact opposite of my mother's? Too judgmental and hard to please.

Nir Eyal: My mother is not too judgmental and hard to please.

Hala Taha: Mm.

Nir Eyal: Could that be true? Could be true. Yeah. Yeah. Like maybe she was just trying to to be helpful, right? It could be that maybe she wasn't being too judgmental and hard to please. Okay. That's why. That's perspective number two. Let's go deeper. This is called a turnaround to the self instead of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please.

Nir Eyal: Could it be true that I am too judgmental and hard to please? Could that be true? Well, in my mind, I had rehearsed that when I did this nice thing for her, [00:52:00] I expected her to give me effusive praise. I wanted her to tell me how nice I was that I did this for her. Mm-hmm. And when that praise didn't come, I lost it and I lashed out.

Nir Eyal: So who was being judgmental and hard to please?

Hala Taha: Maybe you

Nir Eyal: were. I kind of was, wasn't I?

Hala Taha: Yeah.

Nir Eyal: Right. And now there's a fourth perspective. I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself that when I put all this effort and things didn't work out exactly as I planned, I took it to mean that I was incompetent, that I was a bad son, that I wasn't capable of doing this very simple task of ordering her some flowers.

Nir Eyal: And so what had happened is it's called a misattribution of emotion. We do this all the time that we feel something, and as soon as we can see someone dependent on. That's the person who was causing that discomfort. But really it came from me. 'cause I felt bad that I had messed up somehow. So I was being too judgmental and hard to please towards myself and I can't help it.

Nir Eyal: If the floors delivers crappy flowers, it happens. Right? [00:53:00] That's okay. I won't order from them again. But I lashed out at her because I felt bad about what I had done, that I took blame that I didn't deserve to take. So which one of those four perspectives is the truth? Which one is a fact? None of them. All of them.

Nir Eyal: It doesn't matter because beliefs are tools, not truth. The one belief that I had that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, that only had one solution, there's only one way outta that. She had to change so I could be happy. Not gonna happen. Okay. That happens all the time in business, right? That that jerk said this and this.

Nir Eyal: How could they do that? Well, what you're essentially requiring is that they have to do something so I can be happy. If you hold your breath, you're gonna suffocate. And that doesn't happen very often, right? Rather, with those other three perspectives, whether they were true or not, gave me more peace, allowed me to be myself.

Nir Eyal: I could act the way I was proud of as opposed to a way I regretted. And that's the goal. Is it true? It doesn't matter. What [00:54:00] matters is, does it make me better? Does it make me treat others better? That's how we use these beliefs in our relationships.

Hala Taha: I think that's really powerful, especially for entrepreneurs, whether you're dealing with employees or you know, another business partner or even your spouse.

Hala Taha: Um, so I just wanna recap that to the audience. So when you, when you do these turnarounds, you wanna think, uh, to the opposite, to the other and to the self. Those are the three kind of perspectives that you wanna think about. So you have portfolio that's a, we do PA portfolio of perspectives. That's, that's what a turnaround is.

Nir Eyal: Exactly. So the opposite is, is the exact opposite is true. My mother's not too judgmental is, and hard to please to the other. I, I am too judgmental and hard to please. And to the self, I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. And then you could do, you know, variations. It's not gonna all be the same.

Nir Eyal: I do, I literally do this type of exercise six, seven times a day whenever someone annoys me or I'm feeling like I'm not being myself, or I'm saying something that I might later regret, now I catch myself and I can, I can act in, in with, with, with more patience, with more calm, more rationally [00:55:00] than just letting my feelings control, uh, me through my beliefs.

Hala Taha: You have this second power of belief called anticipation. And we touched on it a bit, but I wanna go deeper in terms of how brand is impacted by anticipation. Like what we can do as entrepreneurs to build a brand where people expect certain things and we'll pay more for it and things like that.

Nir Eyal: Absolutely. Yeah. So one of the most fascinating studies that I came across was a study that found that, uh, wine, well, let me, lemme set up this, I'll, I'll tell you off of that. Okay. So they took, they took people and they put them into an FM RI machine and FM MRI machine measures blood flow in the brain.

Nir Eyal: Okay. And when they were in this machine, they gave him a squirt of wine. They said this is a cheap bottle of wine, $5 bottle of wine. Okay. Tell us about it. What do you think of this fine dollar bottle of wine? Uh, you know, it's a little harsh on the finish. I, it's okay. Right. Okay, great. Now we're gonna give you an expensive bottle of wine.

Nir Eyal: You ready for it? Okay. And they're sitting in the FMI machine. They get this little [00:56:00] tube that squirts an expensive, uh, sample of wine in their mouth. And now they report. Oh, you tell us what you think of this, this wine. Oh, this wine is very complex. It has hints of oak and cherry and, uh, what, you know, all the things that wine snobs say.

Nir Eyal: Of course, the trick here is, you know, there's a trick. There's always a trick. It's the same wine. The only thing that was different was that they told them one was cheap and one was expensive. Now, not only did people report that the expensive wine tastes better, right? That's not that surprising. Their brains actually experience the wine differently, so we could see areas of their brain activate differently.

Nir Eyal: Showing us that they actually did perceive the more expensive wine as tastier. They weren't lying, they weren't making it up. They actually were experiencing it differently. And this is where people really misunderstand the point of advertising. People think advertising is just to build awareness. Okay, hey, come to Joe's cafeteria, or [00:57:00] come, you know, come to my dry cleaner, whatever, like come to my consulting business.

Nir Eyal: That's not the only reason we advertise that. Advertising, in fact, shapes the experience itself. Why do you think Coca-Cola, why have we all seen thousands, maybe hundreds of thousand, maybe millions of ads for Coca-Cola? How many times have you seen an ad for Coke in your life? Again and again, we know about Coke.

Nir Eyal: Why do they keep advertising it to us? Because they are building an experience once we consume it, when we think we're supposed to feel a certain way, when we consume a product. We actually do because we expect it. So this is this loop that first you have a belief. What is that belief that that, that you have about this product?

Nir Eyal: What do you anticipate to happen? That's the second step. Then you feel that thing that you experience, and then the most important step, you confirm it. So when wine people get together and they talk about, you know, what, what do they do? They, they, they like to drink with each other and they talk about tasting nodes and they read what editors think, and they get all these, they are actually shaping the [00:58:00] experience in, in real time and confirming it for next time.

Nir Eyal: And so that loop, we can use that for all kinds of products and services. And we shouldn't take it for granted. You know, we, we, we, we shouldn't discount the amazing impact that expectations and anticipation can have on our customer's actual experience with our product or service.

Hala Taha: So what are some actionable things that we can do when we're developing our brand to kind of play into this anticipation belief?

Hala Taha: Like, what do we like? Is it the way that we price it? Is, is it like our messaging? Like what do we do?

Nir Eyal: All of that, all of that. Don't just chase the competition. That's the worst thing you can do. People do this all the time. Well, what's everybody else doing? Let's do that too. And we think that our competition knows something we don't.

Nir Eyal: No. And they're just as blind as you are. What you really wanna do is to sha is to consciously be aware of what do we want our customer to anticipate and then incept that, that feeling. Uh, we, we know that when, uh, there, there's a couple good, great examples. We know that when people were given a putter, golfers were given a putter.

Nir Eyal: That they were told. [00:59:00] This putter was used by a very famous golfer, I dunno who they told them. Some, somebody famous Tiger Woods or somebody said, tiger Woods used this putter. They golfed better. They actually did better fewer strokes on the golf course because they believed that there was some kind of anticipatory response to this special type of putter.

Nir Eyal: So it turns out we, we really do, uh, act differently based on how we anticipate a product will, will, uh, will affect us.

Hala Taha: And this placebo effect also transcends to our own health. Right. You were talking about Absolutely. Yeah. Us actually believing if, if, if, you know, we'll live longer, if we believe that, you know, it's possible to live longer, that aging isn't a negative thing.

Hala Taha: We actually live longer. Um, also same thing with, we live longer illnesses

Nir Eyal: seven and a half years. Yeah. With illnesses. Yeah. With, uh, with steroids. And it turns out when they did a study and they gave men a steroid, they said, Hey, here's a steroid pill. It's, it's an amazing new drug. And that if you take this pill, you're gonna build lots and lots of muscle.

Nir Eyal: [01:00:00] They gave him this pill, they gave a control group nothing, and they put them on a workout regimen. It turns out that the men who took the steroid gained more muscle, despite the fact that it was a placebo. There was, it was completely inert. There was nothing in the steroid. And yet these men got stronger.

Nir Eyal: They actually built more muscle mass. How? It's not magic, it's not that the brain made the muscle, you know what happened? They worked out a tiny bit harder. They actually did something differently. So placebos aren't magic. Placebos don't cure disease, right? They don't cure sickness. Sickness is a physical malady.

Nir Eyal: They change the perception, right? The, the illness sickness is in your body, illnesses in your brain. And so placebos are incredibly effective at shaping our experience and we can leverage that power of placebo, right? If, if a placebo steroid can actually build muscle, maybe it's a good investment to buy a little bit more expensive running shoes.

Nir Eyal: If you're trying to take up jogging or maybe, you know, taking that vitamin C is not really gonna cure your cold. It might actually cure some of the symptoms. It might [01:01:00] make you feel better, even if it's a placebo effect.

Hala Taha: What's the danger of labeling ourselves having a certain, uh, mental illness or sickness?

Hala Taha: Like let's say a lot of people are on this kick of, I have a DHD. Right? What's the problem with having these identity beliefs?

Nir Eyal: Hmm. Okay. So now we're into the power of agency, the third power of belief. And, uh, one of the best demonstrations of the power of agency is what happens when we sap our agency through what we call a no SIBO effect.

Nir Eyal: So we have placebo effect. Placebo effect is, comes from the Latin I will heal. A no SIBO effect is I will hurt the opposite of the placebo effect. And to demonstrate this, lemme tell you about Mr. A. Mr. A was in a, is there was a study where he was anonymized. Mr. A had a breakup with his girlfriend. He took it really hard and he took a, a bottle of antidepressants and he swallowed all the pills and he wanted to commit suicide.

Nir Eyal: The last minute after he swallowed the pills, he decided he wanted to live. He rushed over to the neighbor's house. The neighbor rushes him to the [01:02:00] emergency room. This is not a riddle, by the way. There's no, there's no riddle. It is a study. It has really happened. He's rushed into the emergency room. He collapses on the floor, and the last thing he says before he passes out, he says, I took all my pills.

Nir Eyal: I took all my pills. The doctors and nurses rush him into the operating room. His, they connect him to the heart rate monitors. His heart rate is plummeting, his blood pressure is dangerously low. He's passed out and they look at the pill bottle and they try and figure out what did he take, what medicine did he take that caused him to have these overdose symptoms?

Nir Eyal: And doesn't say what medication he took. They did. It just says it's an antidepressant, but it doesn't say what type of medicine. What it does have is a phone number because Mr. A was in a clinical trial for these antidepressants, and so it didn't say what the medicine was. They call the phone number. They say, what, what?

Nir Eyal: What was in this medication? We need to treat this person. He's just had an overdose. They look it up on the computer and they see Mr. A was in the placebo group.

Oh

Nir Eyal: my God, that in every medical trial you have the medicine, the actual active ingredient, and then you have to have the placebo group to [01:03:00] see if the medication is more efficacious than the placebo.

Nir Eyal: Right? That that's the only way you get a medicine approved. It has to be better than a placebo response. Well, he had taken an entire pill bottle of nothing. There was nothing that could have caused that physical reaction. And yet here he was sweating and convulsing low blood pressure, low heart rate passed out.

Nir Eyal: Why? It wasn't the the pills. It was his mind that he had the message that he had done something that should cause these symptoms. And that's exactly what happened. Within 15 minutes, Hala, they told him, Hey, you were in the placebo group. There's nothing in these bottles. Within 15 minutes his heart rate stabilized, his blood pressure back to normal, and he was revived.

Nir Eyal: He walked out. Now that's what happens when. Take these pills that we think are gonna have some kind of magical effect on us. And oftentimes they, they do have an incredible physical effect. Turns out we have these psychological placebos, these nonmedical placebos when it comes to our [01:04:00] labels, that when we label ourselves as well, I'm not a morning person.

Nir Eyal: I'm too old, it's too late. I can't do that. I'm a Sagittarius, I'm an ENTJ, I am a whatever. When that becomes our label, it also can become our limit. Because I, and I have a DH, I've been diagnosed with A DHD, and here's what I used to do all the time. Every time I was distracted and look, everybody gets distracted.

Nir Eyal: You don't have to have a DHD to get distracted. Everybody these days gets distracted by one thing or another, but every time I got distracted I would say, oh man, that's my A DHD again. Right? And people say something similar, even if you don't have a, that I'm having a senior moment, or I'm not a morning person, or whatever the case might be.

Nir Eyal: We say these things to ourselves and what happens instantly. When I refocus my attention in terms of my limitations, they become true because now I'm not thinking about the thing I was actually working on. I'm thinking about my limits and I'm conforming to those limits. [01:05:00] So that's where we have to be very, very careful.

Nir Eyal: Not that there's anything wrong with these diagnoses, obviously A DHD is real. It's, it's something that we have to manage. We have to find ways to overcome, which is what indestructible is all about. But having that, that as a map is very useful. So if you have a diagnosis, if you have a label that says, okay, I have this, this thing that makes what I'm trying to do a little bit more difficult than for the normal, for the average person, now it's a map that can lead me to behavioral tactics that I can change.

Nir Eyal: It can help me navigate my path to changing my behavior. Wonderful. It's a map. When it becomes an identity, that's when we get into trouble because it's unnecessary, right? We, we think it's a fact, but it's nothing more than a belief. And so to constantly reinforce our limitations. We are putting ourselves in a cage of our own creation.

Nir Eyal: So having a diagnosis as a map to guide us very helpful. Having an identity of around our limitation can be very harmful.

Hala Taha: Yeah. And I can imagine that if you go around saying you have an identity, um, other people will [01:06:00] start telling you, you have that identity too. Like, I can, I'm always late, right? Like, I'm always, I'm somebody who's like always running behind, always late.

Hala Taha: And because people know that, like they'll tell me, I'm like, even if I'm on time, you know, they have to mention how I'm usually, oh, you're early, but you're usually late. Right. So you can't even win in those instances. Right. So it it's, it's important not to invite, let invite, let other people label you.

Hala Taha: Yeah.

Nir Eyal: Yes. I would strongly invite you. Get rid of that label and don't let people tell you that anymore because you will conform to that label.

Hala Taha: Yeah.

Nir Eyal: Rather you can, you can use a liberating belief. You can turn it around. I'm not someone who's over. Like, how could it be who you are, where you is? Is that your biology?

Nir Eyal: No, it's made up. And in fact, the more you believe it, the more it becomes true. But you can also believe a liberating belief. You can also believe a different beha, uh, uh, uh, belief that can help you modify your behavior in, in different ways. But we, you don't wanna keep reinforcing this limitation.

Hala Taha: Well, NIR, uh, I'm really excited about your book.

Hala Taha: It comes out in March. [01:07:00] Um, so I think everybody should go grab a copy of, uh, beyond Belief. Uh, before we go, I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests. Uh, the first one can be related to everything that we just talked about today. So what is one actionable thing our young and profits can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

Hala Taha: Okay.

Nir Eyal: I want you to, to tell yourself that you are no two things. Number one, that you don't perceive reality as it actually is to have more humility. So that's something you could practice every single day. You. You don't see things clearly, and that's a good thing because acknowledging your uncertainty gives you more intellectual humility to see other perspectives.

Nir Eyal: That's one thing you can do every day. Be more intellectually humble. The next thing you can do is to realize and to reinforce that you are far more capable than you think you are. You have not even touched the surface of your potential. Just like those rats who gave up and died after 15 minutes [01:08:00] and then something was unlocked and they could persist for 60 hours.

Nir Eyal: The same secret is it is within you. You are capable of far, far more than you believe.

Hala Taha: I have to say. Like, this made me realize, like I've really gotta look at my beliefs, my team's beliefs, and make sure that like everybody is able to, you know, believe in things that even might not seem so possible. Um, and having that belief itself is gonna give us the stamina to achieve the goals that we need.

Hala Taha: So I feel like that was like the

Nir Eyal: main Do you wanna do one right now? Do you have a few minutes? We can, we can, yeah. Yeah. Try and tackle one of your limiting beliefs if you want. Do you tell that to yourself? That, that I am always late? Is that one of your beliefs?

Hala Taha: Oh, that is definitely, like, if I could think of like, one, my most negative thing that like I believe, or that my, you know, boyfriend and sister and everybody believes about me is that I'm always late.

Nir Eyal: Okay. I'm

Hala Taha: always late.

Nir Eyal: Let's do you wanna do you wanna try it?

Hala Taha: Yeah, let's do it.

Nir Eyal: Let's do it. Okay. So I'm, I am always late. Is that something you do believe about yourself?

Hala Taha: Yes. [01:09:00]

Nir Eyal: Okay. Alright, so first question, is it true? You kind of answered that. Yes.

Hala Taha: Yeah, I think it is. Second

Nir Eyal: question.

Hala Taha: I think it's true in a lot of instances.

Hala Taha: In a lot of instances, yeah.

Nir Eyal: Okay. Second question, is it absolutely true?

Hala Taha: No, because it's like, not like I'm always late, like I'm not late to meetings. I'm not late to like, you know, I'm not always late. I'm just

Nir Eyal: Okay.

Hala Taha: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not always late.

Nir Eyal: All right, beautiful. Very good. Look. Question number three.

Nir Eyal: Who are you, when you hold onto that belief, what do you feel? Who do you become when you think to yourself, I am always late. How does that affect you? How.

Hala Taha: Uh, it makes me nervous, anxious, uh, because it's like I stress over not being late. 'cause I don't want people to keep saying I'm late, so it makes me more anxious, which actually slows me down.

Nir Eyal: Okay.

Hala Taha: Um, and I would say that it makes me feel, uh, you know, I'm a very accomplished person, so it makes me feel like less accomplished or, or smart enough, you know, if I can't even be on time. [01:10:00] Right.

Nir Eyal: Wow. Okay. So it makes you fit, feel unnecessarily incompetent. It makes you feel inferior. It surprisingly takes time.

Nir Eyal: It slows you down. Right. The thing you need the least if you're running late Yeah. Is to actually be slowed down. Amazing, amazing. Look at all the negatives that come from this label that you've attached. Okay. Now let's say, okay, I have a magic wand. I can wave it over your brain. And poof, that belief is gone.

Nir Eyal: You never, ever again think I'm always late. How does that feel? What would you be, who would you become?

Hala Taha: I would feel clearheaded to manage my time, hopefully in a way that I would be more on time. Um, or I wouldn't give my excuse of like, I'm always late so I could just be late. You know? They expect me to be late anyway.

Hala Taha: Okay. Or something like that.

Nir Eyal: Interesting. Wow, that's, did you hear what you just said there?

Hala Taha: Yeah. But that I'm like, uh, adapting to what everybody's telling me. I am. [01:11:00] There we go. Maybe I won't be late anymore. Talk about

Nir Eyal: anticipation, the power of anticipation. People expect you to be late.

Hala Taha: Yeah.

Nir Eyal: And so you are thinking in your head, well, people aren't expecting me to be late, so I'll just go ahead and be late.

Nir Eyal: And now everybody says you are always late, and then you start believing I'm always late.

Hala Taha: Yeah.

Nir Eyal: It's an invention. It's not true. It's just a belief and it's a limiting belief because all those bad things we just talked about. Okay. So we determin. Maybe it's not true. We've determined you'd be better off without it.

Nir Eyal: Uh, and that your life would be much, much better if, if you didn't have it anymore. Okay, so now let's do some turnarounds. Okay. What's the opposite of I am always late.

Hala Taha: I'm on time. I'm always on time.

Nir Eyal: I'm on time. Okay. How could that be true? Gimme some examples of how that's true.

Hala Taha: I'm on time for meetings.

Hala Taha: I'm on time for interviews. I'm on time for speaking engagements in front of 7,000 people. I'm on time for, you know, uh, [01:12:00] webinars, uh, that I have to present, like I'm on time, especially when it matters. Uh,

Nir Eyal: ah,

Hala Taha: okay. So I'm on time, especially when it matters.

Nir Eyal: So you went, okay, so now you had a previous belief that was, I'm, I am always late, by the way.

Nir Eyal: That, that's an identity I am, are some of the two worst words in the English language because whatever follows I am, you will become right. I am always late. I am too skinny. I am too old. I am too fat. I am whatever. That becomes your, your reality. It becomes the truth. Okay. So you went from, uh, I am always late to, I'm on time when it matters.

Nir Eyal: Is that what you said?

Hala Taha: Yeah, I'm on time when it matters or when I'm getting paid or when it's work related. I'm usually on time.

Nir Eyal: Okay. Fantastic. So now you have two beliefs, which is true, which is false. Who cares? Which one is more motivating?

Hala Taha: I'm on time when it matters

Nir Eyal: which one reduces suffering.

Hala Taha: I'm on time when it matters.

Nir Eyal: Okay. Is there another turnaround you might be able to do [01:13:00] from I am always late. Is there another turnaround?

Hala Taha: Maybe like, I, I care about other people's time, or I, or something along those lines, or like, I'm caring about other people's time or I don't know. I don't know. Uh, I don't know. Another one,

Nir Eyal: I'm late.

Nir Eyal: I'm not on time. For people who don't matter.

Hala Taha: Hmm. That's kind of nasty.

Nir Eyal: Is it? Could it be

Hala Taha: true? I think it's more of like for, if I can just speak like without, in the I ams it's more about, like, for me, I'm so busy that like, I don't want, like if some, like to me, if I'm 10 minutes late for a dinner reservation with my friends, like that's not a big deal because it's like, it's just a fun thing and we're going to dinner.

Hala Taha: We don't, I don't understand why we have to, how it, why it has to be like military or gotta start at this time. I don't function that way because to me it's not work. It's fun. So it's like I'm, yeah. Yeah.

Nir Eyal: [01:14:00] So

Hala Taha: it's like,

Nir Eyal: because it's not important. You said earlier that you're always on if, if, if, uh, uh, someone you really admire, if you say speaking in front of 7,000 people, you're on the dot.

Nir Eyal: 'cause it's important.

Hala Taha: Yeah.

Nir Eyal: So maybe there's a revelation here. You don't wanna, and I can feel the resistance, by the way, this is psychological

Hala Taha: resistance. It's always happens. Happens because I don't want my friends to think that they're not important. Right. They are important. It's more of like, I don't.

Hala Taha: Aligned to, to being so military about fun plans. 'cause then it's not fun anymore. Like if, if I'm rushing to get there, then I'm anxious, then I'd rather like take my time and come in a good mood. You know? So that's kind of

Nir Eyal: Okay. Okay.

Hala Taha: Yeah.

Nir Eyal: Super interesting. We've uncovered a new limiting belief because people are telling you it's annoying them that you're not on time.

Hala Taha: Yeah.

Nir Eyal: Like that this is causing suffering.

Hala Taha: It's

Nir Eyal: right. And so in your head, look at, look at what's happened here. Your brain so wants to fight this belief that you might be hurting people and causing suffering. [01:15:00] That you've created a new limiting belief that it's no big deal when really what you just told me is you're only on time when it matters.

Nir Eyal: So when you're not on time, it's because their interests don't matter. Just sit with that for a second.

Hala Taha: Yeah. That's not nice. Yeah. 'cause I love my friends.

Nir Eyal: Of course you do.

Hala Taha: Yeah,

Nir Eyal: absolutely. You do. And what w what, what is the whole point of looking at limiting beliefs? And the reason you say it's not nice is because your brain now has con C created a new belief so that you can keep thinking your nice and your behavior is okay, even when you know you're not behaving in a way that's nice.

Hala Taha: Mm.

Nir Eyal: Yeah. 'cause if you're, if people are telling you in your life, Hey, it's, it's kind of hurting me that you don't think I'm important. They see this. They know that you're on time for a 7,000 person event. And so your brain has manufactured a belief that what's the big deal? [01:16:00] It's a casual event. I don't wanna be stressed so you be stressed, so you miss me.

Nir Eyal: So you think that you're not that important. So again, what's true, I don't know. That's not the point. The point here is to reduce suffering. And so if this is a constant thing that nags at you, that you think, you know what? I built a huge business. I'm doing amazing. I have so many friends, but this is an area of my life that's not that great.

Nir Eyal: Like, I wish I could, I wish I could fix this. It could be something worth exploring to think, is that belief serving me? Is it worth serving me that it's, it doesn't hurt anybody when I'm late. Mm-hmm. What's the big deal?

Hala Taha: Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal: That could be a limiting belief. I don't know. It's

Hala Taha: just worth, and it could be helpful for me to tell everybody in my life too, like, Hey, I'm working on this.

Hala Taha: Like, don't call me a late person anymore, because even when I do good, I get told like, oh, you're early. What a surprise. Like, you know what I mean? It's like even when I, so it's like, it's also important for people in your life to know like, Hey, I am working on this, so that they [01:17:00] don't come back.

Nir Eyal: Yeah.

Hala Taha: In that way.

Nir Eyal: I, I, I think that's, that's great. It's another limiting belief though. Why? Because if that doesn't happen,

Hala Taha: then I'll be resentful. Yeah. Then I have to do my own turnaround.

Nir Eyal: So now, now you're offloading. It's, it's because you keep telling me, I, I keep telling people, stop calling me late. Can't control that.

Hala Taha: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nir Eyal: What you can control is your interpretation of that.

Hala Taha: Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal: Right? What you can control, what, what is in your control is being on time, which it sounds like you're, you're, you're, you're working on, which is fantastic. That's something that's important to you. It's one of your values to be seen as someone who's has personal integrity, right?

Nir Eyal: If I show up on time, I deliver the goods on time, I pay my bills on time. I'm reliable. I have integrity. That's you. I know you. Mm-hmm. That's you. This is one weird quirk about your behavior, but 99% of you is someone who lives with personal integrity. You would've gotten this far if he didn't have personal integrity.

Nir Eyal: So it's this weird little quirk, but asking others to do something to [01:18:00] change and making that dependent on why I can't change, unless they do, that's gonna be a long road.

Hala Taha: Yeah. This is so helpful. So

Nir Eyal: is it, so what, what can you do differently you think?

Hala Taha: I think what I can do differently is in the moments where I know that I need to be somewhere, like dinner reservations, right?

Hala Taha: Like, that's like my, the biggest thing that I'm like late for is like, I'll come 15 minutes late to dinner or something like that, tell myself like this, my relationships are just important as work, and so I need to treat this just as important as a work thing. So I don't let them down. I don't let me down.

Hala Taha: And also, so I start to establish this new identity of somebody who's on time. And even if it means that they're surprised if I surprise them enough times that maybe they'll stop believing that I'm somebody who's not on time. And I'll also believe in myself that I'm more on time.

Nir Eyal: Beautiful. And here's what's gonna happen.

Nir Eyal: The more you do that, at first people will say, oh my God, look at you. You're on [01:19:00] time. Wow. Good for you. They'll dig into you and you know what you're, you're gonna be able to say is, yeah, I've been hearing that a lot lately. Lately. Thanks. Yeah. And you know, you and you say that 2, 3, 4 times. Yeah. I've been hearing that a lot, that I'm on time.

Nir Eyal: Thanks a lot for acknowledging that. And then they're gonna stop saying it.

Hala Taha: Yep.

Nir Eyal: Because over time you're gonna prove it to yourself that this is something that you do, and they're gonna stop saying it because now it's, it's, it's not, it's not funny anymore, right? Like it's just, yeah. It's not, it's not interesting anymore because now your behavior has actually changed.

Nir Eyal: And the most important thing is you're going to teach your brain a new belief that I'm not always late. In fact, I'm pretty much always on time. It's not the majority. I mean, the minority of instances, almost always. I am on time.

Hala Taha: It's such a great exercise for anybody who has any sort of limiting belief, whether it's, you know, you believe that you're always late or everybody has different limiting beliefs.

Hala Taha: So I love that we went through this exercise.

Nir Eyal: Thank, well, thanks for being so vulnerable and being a good sport around this. Of

Hala Taha: course, of course. I really appreciate it. I feel like my whole audience knows, I'm always, [01:20:00] this is, this has gotten, it's brought up more than

one

Hala Taha: time

Nir Eyal: and they wanna see this. It's, it's really important that successful people.

Nir Eyal: Show that we all have these limiting beliefs. I mean, I wrote the book for me. Mm-hmm. You don't, many limiting beliefs I have, oh my God, you'll read all about them in the book. So many limiting beliefs, but our default state is always to go into what we know, what's comfortable. That's where we are safe.

Nir Eyal: Because changing is hard. It means that we have to do something differently, that we're not perfect, but that's how we grow. That's how we get better.

Hala Taha: Totally. So my last question to you is, what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond things that we talked about today beyond business, even just what is your secret to living a successful profiting life?

Nir Eyal: I think it's self-examination. I think it's the secret to a profitable life is a life lived with minimal regret. I, I don't wanna get to the end of, I don't wanna live a day, I wanna live a week, a month, a year. Certainly not a lifetime saying, I could have done that thing, I could have changed that. I could have treated people better in some way, [01:21:00] and I didn't.

Nir Eyal: I don't want regret in my life. I mean, we're gonna all all have regrets, right? We make mistakes. To know about something that I can change and not change it when it's possible.

Hala Taha: Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal: That's a missed opportunity. So to me, profiting in life is about living a life that is full of joy, is full of, uh, companionship is full of helping others and limiting as much as possible the regret we have.

Hala Taha: That's beautiful. Nir, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

Nir Eyal: Thanks. Yeah. So my website is near and far.com. That's spelled like my first name, NIR and far.com. And we have a special gift, uh, for listeners. We [email protected] slash belief change. That's slash belief dash change.

Nir Eyal: There's a five minute belief change guide that you can use every single day that gets you on this pattern. Again, this is a practice, it's repetition. That's how you change your limiting beliefs and that's absolutely free. You don't have to buy a single thing.

Hala Taha: Amazing. We'll put that link in the show notes.

Hala Taha: Uh, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting [01:22:00] Podcast.

Nir Eyal: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Hala Taha: Yeah, fam, I really loved this episode. Nir always comes with the fire. He does such great thinking, and he just always gives us something to really noodle on and really change our perspective. And today he gave us a deeper understanding of what truly drives performance.

Hala Taha: Information is abundant, especially in 2026. Advice is endless, but execution is rare, and the gap between knowing and achieving it all comes down to belief. So here are three things I want you to actually take into your life and your business moving forward. First off, use nears motivation triangle. The next time you procrastinate on a sales call, a workout, a launch, pause and diagnose.

Hala Taha: Why? Define the behavior clearly. Define the benefit clearly. Then examine the belief under it. Do you believe the effort will actually pay off? Do you believe you can execute if you catch a sentence like, this won't work, or, I'm not ready, that's the actual obstacle that you're facing. Replace [01:23:00] that belief with a belief that supports your action before you go on to touch your to-do list.

Hala Taha: Secondly, run the turnaround exercise. The moment that you feel triggered, let's say a teammate frustrates you or a partner disappoints you write that belief down. Maybe it sounds like they don't care, or they always drop the ball. Then ask if that's absolutely true. Notice how you show up when you hold onto it.

Hala Taha: Then deliberately test the opposite. Turn it towards yourself. Ask where you might be contributing to this problem. It's not about blame, it's about agency, and that shift alone can change how you lead and how you build trust with others. Third, stop turning labels into limits. Near said it all too well. A diagnosis can be a map, but the moment it becomes your identity, it becomes a cage.

Hala Taha: Start noticing the phrases that shrink you, like, I'm always late, or I'm not a morning person. And then swap those beliefs out for ones that give you ownership and get you moving again. Yeah. Bam. You are so much more capable than you think. The [01:24:00] persistence you admire in others is not reserved just for them.

Hala Taha: It's unlocked by what you choose to believe, and that choice is available to you right now. I believe in you. Yap. Bam. All right, gang, thank you so much for spending your time with me today. It genuinely means the world to me. And if you haven't already, you guys can go subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Hala Taha: It's growing super fast and I love connecting with you guys personally. So you can find me on Instagram at yap with holla or just link up with me on LinkedIn and search Hala Taha. Until next time, this is your host, Hala Taha, AKA, the podcast Princess signing off.