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September 7thThe argument in one line.
The gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it isn't a discipline problem, it's a belief problem, and the belief you hold about a behavior, not the behavior's difficulty, is what determines whether you quit.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You know exactly what you should be doing (the workout plan, the content schedule, the outreach) and still can't make yourself do it consistently.
- You've diagnosed your own inconsistency as laziness or lack of discipline and want a different explanation to test.
- You've been given a label (ADHD, imposter syndrome, perfectionist, 'not a morning person') and have started using it to explain why you stop trying.
- You're a creator or founder who has quit a project right before it would have worked and wants a framework for telling the difference between quitting too soon and quitting for the right reasons.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for tactical, step-by-step productivity systems (time blocking, task apps) rather than the psychology underneath motivation.
- You want hard clinical guidance on diagnosed mental health conditions rather than a productivity-creator's take on how labels can become self-limiting.
The full version, fast.
Ali Abdaal and Nir Eyal argue that most people already know what to do and why they should do it. What's missing is belief: the conviction that this specific action, done by you, right now, will work. Nir's motivation triangle says benefit and behavior collapse without belief holding them up. He backs this with the Kurt Richter rat-swimming study (rats given hope swam 60 hours instead of 15 minutes), the Stansfeld-Candy burnout formula (high expectations plus low control, not workload, causes burnout), and a four-question technique for dismantling a limiting belief on the spot. The actionable conclusion: quit only when you've hit a pre-set mile marker, you've stopped learning, and persistence genuinely doesn't pay, and treat any label you've been given (ADHD, imposter syndrome) as a map, not an identity.
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00:08guestNir Eyal
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:57
01 · Intro
Cold open on the 'I am' line, then Ali frames the episode's question: why do we know what to do and still not do it.
00:57 – 05:17
02 · Why do we know what to do, but then just not do it?
Nir argues the problem isn't information, everyone already knows what to do; the missing ingredient is belief.
05:17 – 08:54
03 · The motivation triangle
Nir lays out the benefit-behavior-belief triangle: without belief holding it up, motivation collapses even when the benefit and behavior are clear.
08:54 – 11:39
04 · How our beliefs change our behaviour
Nir explains beliefs become biology via behavior, using the 'math person' and aging-belief examples; includes the Whisperflow sponsor segment.
11:39 – 12:45
05 · The placebo steroid study
Men told they were taking a steroid (but given a placebo) gained more muscle and strength than the control group, purely from believing the pill worked.
12:45 – 16:00
06 · The rats that swam for 60 hours
Kurt Richter's 1950s experiment: rats given one rescue swam 60 hours instead of giving up at 15 minutes, once they believed persistence could be rewarded.
16:00 – 19:07
07 · The real formula for burnout
Stansfeld and Candy's Oxford research: burnout is high expectations combined with low control, not workload itself; raising control matters more than lowering expectations.
19:07 – 21:05
08 · Facts vs Faith Spectrum
Nir distinguishes facts (true regardless of belief), faith (no evidence required), and beliefs (convictions open to revision), positioning beliefs as tools rather than truths.
21:05 – 25:05
09 · When should you quit
The three-part test for legitimate quitting: you've hit your pre-set mile marker, you're no longer learning, and persistence doesn't actually pay in this arena.
25:05 – 27:50
10 · The turnaround method
Nir tells the story of a fight with his mother over flowers and demonstrates Byron Katie's turnaround technique on his own limiting belief.
27:50 – 30:02
11 · The four questions
Is it true? Is it absolutely true? Who are you when you hold the belief? Who would you be without it? Nir runs his own belief through all four.
30:02 – 32:13
12 · Finding four other beliefs
Nir generates four alternate interpretations of the same event and picks the one that reduces suffering rather than the one that's most 'true.'
32:13 – 34:36
13 · Liberating beliefs vs limiting beliefs
A liberating belief increases motivation and decreases suffering; a limiting belief does the opposite. Neither is more factually true than the other.
34:36 – 37:00
14 · The reality objection
Ali pushes back: what about situations where the deck is genuinely stacked against you? Nir clarifies beliefs still need to be grounded in evidence, but most people quit long before hitting real limits.
37:00 – 38:45
15 · Pain is not suffering
The brain evolved to protect survival, not happiness, so it reads ordinary discomfort as danger. Pain is the signal; suffering is the optional story added on top.
38:45 – 40:43
16 · See the suffering differently
Reframing hard moments ('this is what it feels like to get better') as evidence of progress rather than a reason to quit, drawn from Nir's coaching students.
40:43 – 42:51
17 · Why manifesting backfires
Visualizing the outcome (manifesting) is shown in studies to reduce goal achievement; the effective technique is mental contrasting, visualizing the obstacle and working through it.
42:51 – 46:33
18 · Old beliefs can expire
Nir does a live turnaround on Ali's own limiting belief about hitting record on YouTube videos, showing a belief that once served him now only demotivates him.
46:33 – 51:02
19 · Label becomes limit
Nir discusses his own ADHD diagnosis: helpful at first as a map, harmful once it became his identity. Imposter syndrome gets the same treatment as a limiting belief dressed up as a diagnosis.
51:02 – 52:24
20 · You're already gaslighting yourself
Nir reframes self-gaslighting: you're already choosing beliefs based on old priors, so you might as well choose beliefs that serve you instead of ones that don't.
52:24 – 53:57
21 · Suffer less, persist longer
Closing thesis: beliefs are tools, not truths, and the viewer is asked where in their own life they're quitting at the 15-minute mark.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The number one determinant of whether you reach a goal isn't intelligence or resources, it's whether or not you quit.
- Successful people fail more often than unsuccessful people; they just don't stop after the failure.
- A study at Yale found that holding positive beliefs about aging added 7.5 years to lifespan, more than the effect of exercise, diet, or quitting smoking.
- In a placebo steroid study, men who believed they were taking steroids gained more muscle and strength than men who knowingly took nothing, despite both groups taking an inert pill.
- Kurt Richter's rats swam for about 15 minutes and gave up when there was no hope of rescue, but swam for 60 hours, 240 times longer, once they'd been rescued once and believed rescue was possible.
- Burnout isn't caused by workload. Stansfeld and Candy's Oxford research found it's caused by the combination of high expectations and low control; high expectations with high control produces no burnout at all.
- People with an internal locus of control do better in life even in circumstances that are factually outside their control, which means the belief itself is doing the work, independent of whether it's provably true.
- A belief is different from a fact and different from faith: a fact is true whether or not you believe it, faith requires no evidence, and a belief is a conviction that's open to revision, which makes beliefs tools you can swap out.
- The four questions for dismantling a limiting belief are: Is it true? Is it absolutely true? Who am I when I hold this belief? Who would I be without it?
- A 'turnaround' means writing the exact opposite of your limiting belief and finding genuine evidence for why the opposite could also be true, without pretending the original belief was a lie.
- You're allowed to quit only when three things are all true at once: you've hit a pre-committed mile marker, you've stopped learning from the failures, and persistence genuinely doesn't pay in that specific arena.
- Athletes who visualize successfully aren't visualizing the trophy, they're visualizing the obstacle and themselves working through it, a technique called mental contrasting; visualizing only the outcome (manifesting) actually reduces goal achievement.
- A label like an ADHD diagnosis is useful as a map showing you where you are, but it becomes dangerous the moment you start treating it as your identity instead of a tool.
- Imposter syndrome isn't in the DSM. It's a limiting belief wearing a clinical-sounding name, which is exactly what makes it easy to hide behind.
- Pain and suffering are not the same thing: pain is a signal your brain sends to protect you from a threat to survival, while suffering is the optional story you add on top of that signal.
- The brain evolved to keep you alive and reproducing, not to help you flourish, which is why it interprets ordinary discomfort (a hard sales call, an uncomfortable workout) as danger and pushes you to quit.
Quitting, not difficulty, is what decides whether you succeed.
WHAT TO LEARN
The gap between knowing what to do and doing it is a belief problem, not a discipline problem, and the belief can be found and swapped in minutes using four honest questions.
02Why do we know what to do, but then just not do it?
- The problem most people have isn't a lack of information, everyone already knows roughly what to do; what's missing is the belief that doing it will actually work for them.
03The motivation triangle
- Motivation needs three things to hold together: the benefit (why), the behavior (what), and the belief (that it will work). Remove the belief and the other two collapse on their own.
- The motivation triangle explains recurring failure better than 'lack of discipline' does: when belief in a boss, a diet, or a plan collapses, the behavior stops even though the benefit hasn't changed.
04How our beliefs change our behaviour
- Beliefs aren't just mental, they change biology through behavior: a study found positive beliefs about aging added 7.5 years of lifespan, more than exercise, diet, or quitting smoking.
05The placebo steroid study
- A placebo steroid study showed men who believed they were on steroids gained more muscle and strength than a matched group, purely because belief changed how hard they trained.
06The rats that swam for 60 hours
- Kurt Richter's rats swam 15 minutes and gave up without hope of rescue, but swam 60 hours once they'd been rescued once, proof that the belief that persistence pays extends real limits, not just perceived ones.
07The real formula for burnout
- Burnout isn't caused by working hard, it's caused by high expectations paired with low control; the fix is raising your sense of agency, not lowering your ambitions.
08Facts vs Faith Spectrum
- People with an internal locus of control do better even in circumstances objectively stacked against them, which means adopting that belief is worth it regardless of whether it's 'provably' true.
- A belief is different from a fact (true regardless of belief) and from faith (no evidence needed); a belief is a conviction that stays open to revision, which is what makes it a tool you can deliberately choose.
09When should you quit
- Only quit when all three are true at once: you've hit a pre-committed mile marker, you've stopped learning from the failures, and persistence genuinely doesn't pay in that specific situation.
10The turnaround method
- A turnaround means writing the literal opposite of your limiting belief and finding real evidence for it, not to prove the original belief false, but to build a portfolio of equally valid interpretations.
11The four questions
- The four-question test for dismantling a limiting belief: Is it true? Is it absolutely true? Who am I when I hold it? Who would I be without it? It takes about thirty seconds and needs no new facts.
12Finding four other beliefs
- Once you generate multiple honest interpretations of the same event, the goal isn't to find the 'correct' one, it's to pick the one that increases motivation and decreases suffering.
13Liberating beliefs vs limiting beliefs
- A liberating belief increases motivation and decreases suffering; a limiting belief does the opposite, and neither one is more factually 'true' than the other.
14The reality objection
- Beliefs still need to be grounded in some evidence, they aren't invented from nothing, but most people quit long before hitting their actual limits, not because their goals were too big.
15Pain is not suffering
- Pain and suffering are different things: pain is your brain's protective signal, suffering is the optional story layered on top, and separating the two is what lets high performers keep going.
- The brain evolved to protect survival, not happiness, so it reads ordinary discomfort, a hard sales call, an uncomfortable workout, as a threat and pushes you to quit.
16See the suffering differently
- Reframing a hard moment as 'this is what it feels like to get better' turns the same discomfort from a stop signal into evidence of progress.
17Why manifesting backfires
- Visualizing the outcome (manifesting) measurably reduces goal achievement; the technique that actually works is mental contrasting, visualizing the obstacle and rehearsing yourself working through it.
18Old beliefs can expire
- A belief that served you in one season of life (a strict content schedule, for example) can become the very thing draining your motivation later; the fix is treating it as a tool you can retire, not a permanent commitment.
19Label becomes limit
- A diagnosis or label is useful as a map showing where you are, but it becomes dangerous the moment it replaces your identity, since 'I am X' shapes what your brain expects you to become.
- Imposter syndrome isn't a clinical diagnosis, it's a limiting belief with a scientific-sounding name, which is exactly why it's so easy to hide behind instead of acting.
20You're already gaslighting yourself
- You're already choosing beliefs based on old experiences whether you notice it or not, so the real choice isn't whether to 'gaslight' yourself, it's which beliefs you gaslight yourself into.
21Suffer less, persist longer
- The people who reach their goals aren't the ones who suffer less from hard things by luck, they're the ones who've deliberately chosen beliefs that make the hard things feel survivable.
Terms worth knowing.
- Motivation triangle
- Nir Eyal's model that motivation only holds up when three things are present together: the benefit (why you want it), the behavior (what you actually do), and the belief (that this behavior will work for you). Remove the belief and the other two collapse.
- Locus of control
- A psychological trait describing whether someone believes outcomes in their life are caused by their own actions (internal) or by outside forces like the economy or luck (external). People with an internal locus of control tend to fare better even in objectively difficult circumstances.
- Central governor
- A theorized brain mechanism that keeps the body far away from true physical or mental exhaustion by triggering the feeling of 'I'm done' well before actual limits are reached, as a protective measure.
- Mile marker
- A pre-committed number of days you decide, in advance, to keep doing a new behavior or holding a new belief no matter how it feels, so that in-the-moment discomfort can't talk you into quitting early.
- Turnaround (Byron Katie method)
- A technique from Byron Katie's 'The Work' where you take a limiting belief, state its opposite, and find genuine evidence for why that opposite could also be true, to loosen the grip of the original belief.
- Liberating belief
- A belief that increases motivation and decreases suffering, the mirror opposite of a limiting belief, which decreases motivation and increases suffering.
- Identity foreclosure
- The process of taking a label or diagnosis meant to describe your current situation and mistaking it for a permanent, unchangeable identity, which shuts down other possible ways of seeing yourself.
- Mental contrasting
- A visualization technique where you picture the obstacle standing between you and a goal, and yourself working through that obstacle, rather than picturing the outcome itself. Used by athletes; the opposite of manifesting.
- What-the-hell effect
- The moment a person's belief in a plan (a diet, a habit) collapses and they abandon the plan entirely rather than course-correcting, e.g. eating an entire pizza after one slice breaks a diet.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
00:05
“The most damaging words in the English language are I am.”
16:55
“It's not that persistence guarantees success. It's that quitting guarantees failure.”
15:06
“Successful people are losers. Successful people lose more often.”
14:55
“It's not that they're smarter than the rest of us... it's that they're the most tenacious, the most persistent.”
15:32
“60 hours, not 60 minutes, 60 hours of nonstop swimming.”
16:40
“High expectations and low control, that is the recipe for burnout.”
19:55
“Beliefs are tools, not truths.”
46:32
“The diagnosis is the map. The problem was that I thought I was the map.”
49:15
“Imposter syndrome... it's not in the DSM. It has this word syndrome, which makes it sound like it's a real thing. It's totally a limiting belief.”
39:40
“This is what it feels like to get better.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 05:17steadyFraming the problem: knowing vs doing
05:17 – 16:00denseThe motivation triangle and belief mechanics
16:00 – 21:05denseBurnout and locus of control
21:05 – 25:05steadyFacts, faith, and belief as a category
25:05 – 34:36denseThe turnaround method and the four questions
34:36 – 42:51densePain, suffering, and reframing discomfort
42:51 – 52:24denseLabels, identity, and diagnoses as maps
52:24 – 53:57sparseClosing thesis and challenge to the viewer
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metaphoranalogystory
The most damaging words in the English language are I am. Because whatever comes after I am is what your psyche will expect you to become. All right, so this video is about why you know what to do, but you are still not doing it.
And because this is a problem that we all struggle with, I was very keen to have a conversation with bestselling author Nir Eyal. We all basically know what to do. The problem is that we don't follow through because there's an element missing.
Now, Nir has previously written the wonderful book called Indistractable, which I personally found super helpful in overcoming my own tendencies to procrastinate. It's not good enough just to know what to do and why you want to do it. You also need the...
But then a few months ago, I read his latest book, Beyond Belief, and I really enjoyed it. What about imposter syndrome? A lot of people feel like they have imposter syndrome.
It has this word syndrome, which makes it sound like it's a real thing. Totally limiting belief. And so I invited him to come over to Hong Kong where he and I could have a conversation in person, basically exploring the research he's been doing for the last like five plus years of working on the book to try and answer this question.
Why do we know what to do, but then just not do it? Despite knowing what to do. and why we want to do it.
So many times in life, we don't actually carry it out, right? How many times do we have all the information we need? We know exactly the framework.
We know exactly all the steps. We want the benefits of carrying out those steps, but we don't do it. Why?
So the book is about how do we use our beliefs, which are upstream of our behavior, to change what we are able to see, what we feel, and ultimately what we do. Now, you and I have both done this a lot of times in our life. We start something with the best intention in the world, and then we just stop doing the thing.
We might think it's a lack of discipline, or we're just lazy, or we're just unmotivated. But what Nir argues is that there's something deeper underlying this, and that is our belief. I spent the past 30 years being a professional dieter.
And my diet went kind of this yo -yo roller coaster for literally 30 years of my life. And what I found was that every diet worked until it didn't. And when it stopped working, it was always because I stopped believing in it.
So at first I tried going low fat. And then after that, I became a vegetarian. Then after that, it was keto.
And then after that, it was intermittent fasting. They all worked for a while, but then some bit of doubt would enter my mind. Somebody would say, oh, keto is bad for your kidneys and vegetarians don't get enough nutrients and whatever it was.
And as soon as my faith in that in that diet faltered, then I fell off the wagon and I would stop and I'd say, oh, diets don't work. Well, it wasn't that diets don't work. It was that when I stopped believing in that plan and that course of action.
My behavior changed. I would succumb to what's called the what the hell effect that, hey, you know, diets don't work anyway. So give me that that piece of pizza and I'll chase it with some French fries.
And so what was missing was that conviction. And ultimately, what I learned was that. To lose weight, to seek financial freedom, to have a better relationship with with the people you love in your life, to accomplish any long term goal.
What's really required is not the one true method. That's what I kept searching for. Give me the next book, the next guru, the next method that's going to be the one and ultimate way to do it.
When really, I think that the key is that we pretty much already know what to do. It's how do we stick with it over time? That the number one trait that will define whether you will meet your goals, it's not how intelligent you are.
It's not even what resources you have or what skills you've acquired. The number one determinant of whether you will reach your goal is whether or not you quit. It's pretty basic, right?
So if quitting is the number one determinant of whether you will fail, how do you persist? OK, at this point, I was like, OK, Nir, fair enough. Like, I agree that quitting guarantees you're going to fail at doing the thing.
But surely some problems are actually tactical or strategic in nature rather than just about quitting. And this is what he had to say. You know, I've met a lot of very successful people.
I interviewed billionaires. I interviewed people who were broke. And it turns out that people who are successful.
at whatever venture they choose to accomplish, successful people are losers. Successful people lose more often. They have more failures on their rap sheet than people who aren't successful.
Successful people try and try and try. They figure out a way. Whereas unsuccessful people, they try something once and they give up.
I mean, you know this with your creator program, right? What's the defining trait of people who go on to succeed? It's not that they're smarter than the rest of us.
I mean, a lot of very successful people, they're... modestly smart. They're not necessarily the most smart people I know in the world.
It's that they're the most tenacious, the most persistent. But there's never been a formula, I think, for understanding how do I stay persistent? And it turns out that if you persist, you will overcome these challenges.
You'll find a way. If there is a way, you'll find one. It's not that persistence guarantees success.
It's that quitting guarantees failure. So if you can do everything you can to inoculate yourself from quitting too soon, not that there isn't a time to quit. There's definitely a time to quit.
And we can talk about what are the criteria for that. But what we find in the research is that too many of us quit far too soon. That is good for us.
OK, but just don't quit, bro, is to me not a particularly satisfying answer, because that sounds like telling a depressed person to just cheer up or telling someone who's struggling to build a habit to just do it. So I think the real question is, what does it actually take for one person to persist with doing the thing, but then for a different person with the same kind of general circumstances to.
not to persist to decide the thing is pointless and to quit doing the thing and this is where we get to the motivation triangle okay so the motivation triangle is a new explanation of how motivation works that i think most people including myself i used to think that motivation was about the reward right the incentive the benefit that if you want this thing you know, you want more money, you want better health and longevity, you want to find a mate, whatever it is that you want, that motivates you to do certain behaviors.
So it's a straight line between knowing what to do and just doing it for the benefit. But that's obviously not true. Because if it was that easy, we would all have six pack abs and be multimillionaires.
Because we all basically know what to do, right? I don't think that's the problem anymore. We all have bookshelves full of advice.
We can watch YouTube videos that tell us what to do. We can ask ChatGPT or Google the answer to our questions when we don't know what to do. We all know what to do.
The information's out there. We're drowning in information. The problem is that we don't follow through because there's an element missing.
That it's not good enough just to know what to do and why you want to do it. You also need the belief. So the benefit is why you're doing the thing.
The behavior is what you're doing. But if you don't have the belief holding this triangle together, you won't sustain your motivation. So for example, if I'm working for a boss who I don't believe has my long -term interest at heart, right?
So if I don't believe I'm going to get the benefit of that promotion or that raise, because I don't think my boss has my best interests at heart, well, then I'm not going to work very hard. Eventually I'm going to quit. And on the other side, if I don't believe in my own ability to do a behavior, I also won't persist, right?
If I don't believe in the kind of person who exercises regularly or who can start a business or who can start a YouTube channel, if I don't believe I can sustain that behavior, I'm also going to quit over the long term. So even if I know what to do, the behavior, even if I know why I want to do it, I have to have that belief that holds it all together.
Now, this is the core model of this entire episode. The benefit is why you want the thing. The behavior is what you do to achieve the thing.
But if the underlying belief collapses, then so does the entire motivation triangle. Now, speaking of stuff that we know we should do, but probably don't do. So I have a massive long list of Slack messages and emails that I should probably get around to replying to at some point.
Now, this would be probably multiple hours of typing, but I can save a lot of that time by using the people who are very kindly sponsoring this video. And that is Whisperflow. Whisperflow is an incredible voice to text tool.
I've been using literally nonstop for the last several months. It has saved me dozens of hours of time. I use it on my computer.
I use it on my phone. And you can use it literally within any app. And so even though I type quite fast, I speak a lot faster than I type.
And so it's just way more efficient at getting text out onto a computer. So for example, this is something I could write to Owen, one of my team members. Hey Owen, I've got three quick things before Thursday.
Firstly, can you send Angus the updated numbers from last quarter? Secondly, we need to move the onboarding call to Wednesday. Oh no, wait, Thursday afternoon.
And then thirdly, can you find somewhere for the team lunch next week? Ideally near West Kowloon, so it's easy for everyone to get to. Boom.
So that took about 20 seconds. And what it does is that it's already formatted it as a numbered list. It took into account the fact that I made a mistake of Wednesday, um, no, Thursday.
All of my ums and ahs are gone. The punctuation is reasonable. And if you're thinking that, wait, why do I need a separate tool for this?
Like, surely my phone or computer already has Siri built in as dictation. I mean, I would say, when was the last time you tried to actually use your phone's built -in dictation? And like, was it any good?
Actually, let's try this right now. Hey, Angus, can we do the team lunch on Thursday? No, wait, Friday.
And can we do it somewhere near West Kowloon this time? As you can see here that it just doesn't understand what I'm trying to say. It's kept in the mistake.
It doesn't know what Kowloon is because I mean, it's a weird kind of word. And the nice thing about Whisperflow is that it's just sorted all of that stuff out without me having to think about it. Whisperflow is free to use, but if you use the link down below, you get a one month trial completely free of Whisperflow Pro, which is what I personally signed up for and pay for.
So thank you so much Whisperflow for sponsoring this video and let's get back to it. But okay, we're talking about belief. And at this point, things can start to sound a little bit mystical, a little bit woo, a little bit like manifestation -y.
And so what's actually going on here? Like how does the underlying belief actually... change our behavior.
We see this a lot when someone is told in school that you're bad at math. Right. That you flunked out on an exam.
So you're bad at math. And people start internalizing that, you know, they have one bad experience and they think I'm not a math person. Well, what happens the next time they have that challenge?
Well, you know, I'm not a math person. So am I going to really study as hard as a person who thinks I'm great at math? No, I'm going to give up early.
I'm not going to try very hard. And then actually that belief becomes the reality. This is actually so fascinatingly demonstrated.
You know, how much time do we spend on longevity and health? We talk about eating right and exercise and don't smoke, don't drink, all these things. Do you know that we have found that beliefs will affect your longevity more than stopping smoking or eating right or even exercise?
That in a study at Yale, they found that having positive views of aging increased lifespan by seven and a half years. Seven and a half years, that is more than the effect size of exercise, diet, or stopping smoking. Now, that doesn't mean that having positive use of aging magically changes your mitochondria because of the vibrations of the air.
Nothing to do with that at all, right? It has nothing to do with that. It's that your beliefs become your biology via behavior.
So if you have the kind of person who says to themselves that I'm having a senior moment or I'm getting too old for this, what type of behavior, will they do in their day to day of life versus someone who has a positive view of aging? What does that sound like?
Something like growth is possible at any age. If you believe growth is possible at any age versus I'm having a senior moment, I'm too old for this. How does your behavior change?
Your behavior, your beliefs become your biology because you behave differently. You're more likely to take care of your body, to exercise, to not smoke, to do these behaviors that will increase your lifespan much more than just telling people, don't do this, don't do that. If you change your beliefs, you're much more likely to do those behaviors yourself.
Because again, these beliefs are upstream of the behavior. So I think we should, you know, we should constantly be preaching. to not reinforce these limiting beliefs, right?
Why do we tell ourselves I'm having a senior moment or I'm too old for this? Why do we tell ourselves that? Because which is true?
Which is true? I'm too old for this. I'm having a senior moment versus growth is possible at any age.
They're both true, right? They're both potentially true. But the person who defaults to this belief, the negative belief versus the positive belief is going to behave differently.
There's another amazing study where they took a group of men. And they told them that they were enrolling in a steroid study. There's a new steroid pill that they would be a part of.
And these were guys who exercise regularly in the gym. And that group of people who were told they were in this steroid study, they were actually given a placebo pill. So no steroid.
But they were told this is a steroid. Now, those men who were told. that they were taking a steroid, gained more muscle mass and became stronger than the guys who didn't get the placebo steroid, even though both of them were taking nothing, right?
Both groups had, it was a completely inert substance. Why did the group get stronger when they were taking a placebo steroid? Well, because when they went to the gym, they pushed out another rep.
They worked a little bit harder. And so that's not a trick. That's not magic.
It shows you how our beliefs become our biology via behavior. I really like this. I found myself taking notes on it while we were doing the podcast.
Your beliefs become your biology via your behavior. Now, there is a really cool scientific study that backs this up from the 1950s. Let's just say it would not pass through an ethics board of approval if someone were to try to do it today.
But because it's from the 1950s, we can talk about it. And so I'm going to give you a trigger warning here. If you do not like animal cruelty, cruelty, then please feel free to skip this next section.
One of my favorite studies that demonstrates this is a study that was done in the 1950s by a biologist by the name of Kurt Richter. And Richter had this very simple experiment. What he wanted to do was determine how long rats could swim in water.
This was in the 1950s. He did kind of a ethically dubious study, but here's what he did. He took some rats and he put them in a cylinder of water and he stood there with his stopwatch and he measured how long they could swim.
It turns out a wild rat can swim for about 15 minutes before it gives up and dies. It's interesting. It didn't exhaust itself.
It just kind of gave up. So what Richter observed was if the baseline was 15 minutes, he was looking for how he could make that rat persist for longer. How could he change how long the rat could swim for?
So he had a second experiment. The second experiment, he took a new group of rats. He put them in the same exact cylinders of water.
He waited till they swam for 15 minutes. And at the 15 minute mark, he reached in. pulled out the wild rat, dried it off, let it catch its breath, and then plunk back in the water it went.
And this time, he wanted to see would there be any difference in how long the rat swam for. And when he did this intervention a few times, when the rat saw that if it persisted, that it might be saved, that salvation might be possible.
The rat didn't swim for 15 minutes anymore. Do you want to take a guess how much longer it swam for? Do you know already?
One hour, two hours? That's what most people say. They say maybe it swam for twice as long, for 30 minutes, for maybe an hour, which would be crazy.
Think about that, right? If I could make you four times more persistent, imagine if everybody who takes one of your courses, if you could make them four times more persistent, if you could run a marathon for four times longer, that'd be crazy, right? That'd be an unbelievable intervention.
But the rats didn't swim for 60 minutes. or two hours, 120 minutes. They swam, Ollie, for 60 hours.
60, six zero. 60 hours, not 60 minutes, 60 hours of nonstop swimming. So what can we learn from this?
Nothing changed in the rat's body. Same exact rat body. They didn't suddenly become super rats.
Nothing changed in the environment. As much as we talk about, well, you know, the environment shapes behavior, nothing changed in the experiment. Same cylinders, same rats.
What changed was we can't ask the rats, obviously, but we think the only variable left was that something changed their minds, that some switch was flipped all of a sudden in this experiment when the rats saw, hey, if I persist, then I might survive. They swam way longer, 240 times longer. So the lesson here for us is where are we quitting at the 15 minute mark where we believe we're done versus when we are actually at our limit?
and that we quit way, way, way too soon than is good for us. So that's really what this research reveals, is that our beliefs that shaping how we see a challenge will dramatically affect how long we will persist, and persistence dramatically shapes whether we will succeed. The useful question here is not, could I work 240 times harder?
The question is, where am I stopping? Because I believe that I've hit my limits, whereas my actual limits might be way further ahead than what I think I can achieve. And so, as Nir was telling me about this stuff, I was like, objection, your honor, what about burnout?
Are you just saying that you should just keep going? Like, surely burnout is a thing, right? We know that there is a formula for burnout.
This is what most people don't understand. They think that burnout is having to do too much. And that's not necessarily the case, that there's something more to it.
Or, you know, when I thought about... you think, oh, it's about doing a difficult job. That's why people burn out.
It's not necessarily the case. Did you know that there's actually a formula for burnout? It's a two -part equation for burnout.
This is the work of Stansfield and Candy. They did this at Oxford University a few years ago. And they determined that the formula for burnout is a confluence of two things.
It's not whether you're working a sad job. Like when I first saw this research and I guessed, hey, why would a job cause burnout? Why does it lead to more anxiety and depression disorders?
turns out it's not what you do it's the environment you do it in that the recipe for burnout is a confluence of two factors high expectations coupled with low control that is the recipe for burnout high expectations and low control interestingly if you have high expectations and high control no problem we rise to the occasion it's when we have low control despite having high expectations that's when we get into trouble so what does that mean it doesn't mean we lower expectations no that doesn't solve the problem it means we raise control we raise our sense of agency well it turns out that our beliefs shape what we believe we can do what where we have control there's a concept in psychology called locus of control locus of control says that people have two types of views of the world.
There are people who have what's called an external locus of control. An external locus of control means things happen to me. It's the economy.
It's AI is taking over the jobs. It's this war going on thousands of miles away from me that has nothing to do with me. That's what's controlling my life.
Then on the other end, there are people who have what's called an internal locus of control. An internal locus of control is someone who says, no, I control my circumstances. I control what happens to me.
No big surprise here, but the people who have an internal locus of control seem to have everything good happen to them. Turns out that people who have an internal locus of control, they make more money, they have more friends, they contribute more to their community, they live longer, fewer instances of mental health. All this good stuff happens to people who have an internal locus of control.
That's interesting, not that surprising. What is surprising is that even when you have every reason. To factually say, I'm downtrodden, I'm discriminated against, I'm at the bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole.
Even when factually you have every reason to say, hey, external circumstances do control what's happening to me. Especially in those situations, people who believe they have an internal locus of control, even when factually they're fighting against circumstances they can't control, they still do better. So even if that is factually correct, you would do better in life.
to believe you have an internal locus of control. This is the important point here. If we want to avoid burnout while we are persisting with all these things, often by just increasing our agency or even our perceived agency, we are likely to reduce the risks of burnout.
But even with all this internal locus of control stuff, it is just a fact, right? That like there are circumstances in life that are just plain outside of your control. So I pose the question to Nir, and this is where we come to the facts versus faith spectrum.
And so this is the big aha that I think most people don't understand. That beliefs serve you. even if they're not true, that beliefs are not the same thing as facts.
I think this is for me was a major breakthrough that facts, the definition of a fact is an objective truth. It is something that is true, whether or not you believe it. The world is more like a sphere than is flat.
Sorry, flat earthers. It's a fact doesn't care what you believe on the other end of the spectrum is faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence.
God rewards the righteous. there's no amount of evidence that would change someone to then say that that's not true, right? Because it's a matter of faith and they shouldn't change that conviction.
But beliefs are something different. Beliefs are not facts. They're not faith.
A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. So it's not pie in the sky. It's not pulled out of thin air.
It's a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence, which means that . That's a big unlock. That when you understand that beliefs have this very, almost magical power, it's not magic, it's science.
There's no woo -woo here at all. But beliefs can literally change what you're able to see, what you're able to feel, and ultimately what you're able to do, that sense of agency. And so when you adopt the right beliefs, you can literally see things differently, feel things differently, and ultimately do things differently because of that underlying conviction, because of those beliefs.
So you don't necessarily have to ground those beliefs and hold them to the burden of proof of fact. You can use them as tools that serve you rather than hurt you. So, so far we've learned that beliefs are convictions that are open to revision and that beliefs are tools.
And often you don't even need new facts to adopt a belief. You can simply choose to adopt that belief. Now, later on in the episode, we're going to talk about the idea of, isn't this just you gaslighting yourself, which Nir has a very good response to.
But before we go there, so far we've talked a lot about how you should just not quit the thing, right? But obviously quitting is the strategically useful decision some of the time. So let me give you a very simple, but very practical framework on when do you quit?
Because I'm not anti -quitting. Sometimes, Lord knows, I've quit all kinds of things in life. I've quit book projects.
I've quit relationships. I've quit businesses. I've done a lot of quitting.
And it's not that I'm anti -quitting. I'm anti -quitting too soon. Why?
Because that's what leads to regret in life. When you say, oh, if I had just persisted a little longer, look, that person did what I wanted to do. You know how many businesses I've quit and then I see someone else succeed at it?
It's maddening. That's the worst, right? You only want to make sure that you quit under three criteria.
The first is that you quit when you've met your mile marker. This is super important.
Not when you've reached the goal per se, that's too long. What you wanna do is to persist when you've met that mile marker. A mile marker is when you say in advance, I am going to try this new behavior, this new belief for X number of days.
And I'm not gonna quit until I hit that days. Why is that so important? Because the reason we don't persist, the reason we quit is because nine times out of 10, it doesn't feel good anymore.
It's hard. It's difficult. I don't want to do that.
I don't feel like going to the gym today. I don't really want to post that YouTube video. I don't really want to work on that project right now.
It's hard. But if you have that mile marker that you say, I will keep doing this for X number of days, no matter what, you've protected yourself from quitting too soon because you've said in advance, this is how many days I'm going to try this belief or this behavior. That's number one.
The second criteria is, are you still learning? So failure doesn't necessarily mean you should quit. that if you're failing, but you're learning, that's a good thing, right?
So if I were to tell you, hey, I know that in the future, you're gonna have five more failures before the sixth success. You make five more sales calls, the sixth one, you're gonna close the deal. You're gonna post five more videos and the sixth one's gonna be a banger and go viral.
You're gonna go on five more dates and then you're gonna find the love of your life on that sixth date. How much more excited would you be to get through failure? Yeah, let's get through those failures quickly so I can get to that sixth success.
So if you're still learning about why you're failing, don't quit. The third criteria is, does persistence matter? In many ventures in life, persistence doesn't matter.
So for example, if you're working at a company that has toxic culture, people aren't happy to be there, they're bringing you down. It's a place that on Sunday nights, you're dreading going to work on Monday morning. Well, that company culture, is not something you're going to change readily.
It's going to that company culture is going to outlive you. So that might be a condition where persistence doesn't matter. But in other areas of your life, exercise, right?
When I was losing weight, I used to be chronically obese. And many times there were months, even years where I would plateau. where I wasn't losing weight, where nothing was happening.
But it turns out in physical fitness that persistence pays off, that if you just continue, you're going to break out of that plateau. I mean, you know this when you're creating content. It doesn't work, it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
Oh, my God. And then suddenly you've got something that goes viral or reaches a ton of people. Persistence pays in some areas, but in other areas it doesn't pay.
So, for example, trying to change a toxic work environment that you might be working in, a workplace that people are down and has a work environment that doesn't suit you, That's not an environment where persistence might pay. So if you meet that three criteria of, I met my mile marker, I'm not learning anymore, and persistence doesn't pay, now you can quit.
But short of those three criteria, don't quit too soon. And are we saying all three need to be true or just one of them needs to be true? I think all three need to be true.
So that's a very reasonable framework for deciding when to quit. And if I'm honest with myself, and maybe if you're honest with yourself, we often quit things even when all three of these things are not true. But let's go back to the belief thing now, right?
So we talked about how beliefs are tools and we've talked about how your beliefs end up shaping your behavior, which changes your biology. And it seems like nearest point here is that you can simply choose to change the beliefs that you hold about the world or about yourself, which then begs the question of how the hell do you actually do this?
You can take out those beliefs. that don't serve you and choose better beliefs that are also just as true so you can't make up facts but you can make up beliefs based on whether they serve you or not especially in the domain of relationships that's where i think in my life what's most changed is is how i view interactions with other people i'll give you i'll demonstrate here so um a few years ago my mom had her 74th birthday and i want to do something nice for her So I wanted to buy her some flowers.
The problem was that I was in Singapore and she was in Central Florida. And I had to stay up late at night to call the florists on the other side of the planet to make sure that the flowers would get there on time, that they'd be the right arrangement and all that. And I did that.
And I went to bed that night and I patted myself on the back and said, you're a good son. You know, mom's going to tell you tomorrow what a good boy you are. And that didn't happen.
Here's what did happen. I called her up the next morning. I said, hey, mom, happy birthday.
How were the flowers I sent? And she says, thank you for the flowers. But just so you know, the flowers that you sent, not so nice.
They were kind of half dead. So don't order from that florist again. To which I said in response, well, that's the last time I buy you flowers.
And that went over about as well as you'd expect. Not so good. And my wife, Julie, was sitting next to me during this conversation.
And afterwards, she turns to me and she says. Nir, would you like to do a turnaround on this? To which I said, no, I don't want to do your hocus pocus, touchy feely, mumbo jumbo.
I need to vent, right? Because that's what we're taught to do, that when someone hurts you, you're supposed to tell them how you feel. You're not supposed to keep your feelings inside.
You're supposed to let it out, right? Well, it turns out the research shows that that's exactly the opposite. That what most people don't realize is that when we vent about others, you are reinforcing your existing beliefs about them.
You're building this effigy of them because we don't see people as they are. We see people as we believe them to be. First thing I did was write down that belief, the belief that was causing me suffering.
And this is something anybody can do. Whatever is causing you suffering in your life, whether it's that relationship with a coworker or colleague or your boss or your mom, it doesn't matter. Or maybe it's a reason that you're not doing something that you know you're capable of doing.
Starting a YouTube channel, starting that business, finishing that book you've been meaning to write. Why aren't you exercising? Whatever it is that you know you can do, but for some reason you're not doing.
So you write down the belief that's keeping you from being happy, the belief that's causing you suffering. The belief that was causing me suffering was that my mother was being too judgmental and hard to please. And so now inquiry -based stress reduction gives us four questions to answer.
The first question is, is it true? Okay, second question. Is it absolutely true?
Sounds like the first question, right? A little bit different. Not is it just, is it true?
Is it absolutely true? That means it has to be 100%. There's no other possible reason why things happen as they were other than the reason I believe to be a fact.
I had to admit that actually, you know, maybe there might be another reason. I can't be 100 % certain. It can't be absolutely true.
Now, the third question, who am I or how do I feel when I hold on to that belief? When I believe that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, I'm kind of impatient. I'm a little bit of a jerk.
I'm kind of my 13 -year -old version of myself. I'm not actually who I am proud of. And now the fourth question, who would I be without that belief?
So how would I feel if I had a magic wand and poof, that belief disappeared from my mind? And when even when I just asked myself that, what would reality feel like if I didn't hold on to that belief? Now, the tricky part is that your brain hates this because your brain hates changing its mind.
Your brain hates changing its mind. So when people hear about these four questions, they say, well, okay, that might work for you, but it's not going to work for me because you don't understand my mom. You don't understand what I'm dealing with.
You don't understand my circumstances. Here's what I've got in my life. And that's why what I think is a fact is a fact.
And this is what's so dangerous about these limiting beliefs is that you can't see your own limiting beliefs. It's like your face, right? We all have a face.
And if I said, Ali, look at your face. You can't look at your face. You can look at your hands.
You can look at your feet. You can't look at your own face. And yet we all have one.
The only way you can look at your face is to reflect. You need a tool to look at your own face. And the same goes with our limiting beliefs, that we all have these limiting beliefs.
It doesn't matter how successful you are. I've talked to billionaires. I've talked to people who are broke.
We all have limiting beliefs. We just can't see them in ourselves. So with these four questions, what I determined in about 30 seconds is that what I thought was a fact.
Wasn't a fact, right? It's not one of Newton's laws that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. It's just a belief.
It's just here. And so now you do what's called a turnaround. Here's what a turnaround looks like.
You're going to ask yourself, could the exact opposite also be true? Just for exercise, right? You're not changing your mind.
You're not convincing yourself of something that's not true. You're just asking yourself to collect what I call a portfolio of perspectives. What's the opposite of my mom is too judgmental and hard to please?
My mother is not. Too judgmental and hard to please. How could that be true?
Well, she did thank me for the flowers and she was just saying a statement of fact that the flowers weren't so nice. So maybe she was trying to help me, not hurt me. Maybe she was just trying to make sure I didn't get scammed from this florist.
A third belief might be the opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. I am too judgmental and hard to please. How could that be true?
Well, I had rehearsed in my brain. That if I was going to do something nice for somebody, I deserved effusive praise. And when that didn't come from my mom, I lost it.
Right. And so who is being judgmental there? I was.
Now, there's a fourth potential belief. I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. How could that be true?
This one actually turned out to be the most true. That when I'd done something nice, spent a lot of time and effort and money on doing something nice, and it didn't work out the way I'd planned, I thought that meant that I was inferior, that I did something wrong. So now I have four potential beliefs.
Okay, back to your question of, well, are we just picking things out of thin air, right? Like, are we just making stuff up? Well, now I've got four beliefs.
Which one of those is true? Which one is false? They're not facts.
They're beliefs. And so... One of those beliefs, that first one only allowed me one way out to feel happy, to stop suffering, that she had to change so I could stop suffering.
Now, I know you haven't met my mom. That's not going to happen. Right.
And that doesn't happen in general with people that sitting here and expecting them to change so I can finally be happy. That's not the way it works. If you hold your breath, you're going to suffocate.
So now I had different options. I didn't have to wait for her to change.
had the signature of liberating beliefs. What's a liberating belief as opposed to a limiting belief? A liberating belief is a belief that increases your motivation and decreases your suffering.
Unlike a limiting belief, a limiting belief decreases your motivation and increases your suffering. You still feel the signal. You still feel the pain, but you can separate the pain from the suffering.
And that's a huge concept in psychology that I think most people don't realize that pain and suffering are not the same thing. So by picking those beliefs that serve you rather than hurt you, it unlocks everything. It unlocks your relationships.
It unlocks your potential. It unlocks how you view the world, not because outside circumstances have to change, but because you've changed. I really like this turnaround method.
I came across this when I read Byron Katie's The Work a few years ago and have experimented with it on and off throughout my own life. And I do find it genuinely very helpful. But the whole idea here is that you're not trying to force out one correct interpretation.
I think this is just one of those rules, laws of life. that different people seem to realize at different ages, which is that there is no ground truth. There are no like true facts, especially as it relates to the behavior of other people.
And a lot of the interpretations and judgments and stories that we tell in particular about the behavior of ourselves and about other people, they're not actually facts. Like it's not a binary zero or one type situation. It's that there's a bunch of different perspectives that you could choose to take.
And you simply happen to be choosing a particular perspective, often subconsciously, right? Because, you know. the perspectives we have are basically a sum of the environment and the society we were brought up in and you see this if you kind of visit other countries like for example in the west it's a very sort of individualistic type culture and so the idea of the agency of an individual and you doing what you feel is best internally is like the ultimate hallowed truth kind of thing but if you look at more eastern more collectivist type cultures it's actually not about individual liberty at all it's actually more about what is good for the collective interest and so depending on what society you've grown up in the same kind of behavior can have drastic different interpretations and if you're someone who's like experienced both types of cultures you know firsthand like the the clash that can happen the clash of values that can happen when both parties feel very righteous about a particular belief a particular interpretation thinking that that is the truth when really it's just an interpretation based on the society that they were brought up in so anyway the whole idea here is that we are collecting a portfolio of evidence that supports beliefs that we can choose that increase our agency and decrease our suffering but then what about situations where the deck is truly stacked against you
Surely there is a limit to how much of a belief you can choose to have. Let's say there are like structural issues that are, shall I say, sort of preventing or maybe not preventing, but just like drastically reducing the odds of me being able to do something. For example, right now I am 31 years old and it would be very unlikely for me to be able to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming.
Absolutely. And remember, a belief is not. making up facts.
Facts you cannot make up. Facts are facts. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence.
So you are considering evidence in a belief. It's not that it's cut from whole cloth. It is based on evidence and you're revising those beliefs.
But the determining factor, what's so important about this is that for the most part, we don't base it on reality. We base it on our perception of reality. that even the things that we could accomplish, we give up way too soon based on these limiting beliefs, based on that little whisper in our head of, I can't do this.
I'm not ready. There's no time. I'm not good enough.
The real problem is not that we have goals that are too big for us. The real problem is that we are capable of so much more than we can ever imagine, right? Those rats who kept quitting at 15 minutes and died because actually, you know, the reason we do this is because your brain is actually trying to protect you.
It's a protective mechanism. We have evolved to stay way far away from our actual limits. The brain is trying so hard to protect us from actual exhaustion, from actually meeting our limits, that it's called the central governor.
It tries to keep us so far away from actual exhaustion so that we won't experience it. And why does the brain do this? Why do we even have limiting beliefs?
Because your brain is not interested in you being happy or flourishing or meeting your full potential. Your brain doesn't care about any of that stuff. Evolution has created a brain that is there to keep you alive and procreating.
That's what evolution wants. That's got nothing to do with you being happy and flourishing and meeting your full potential. So yeah, our beliefs do need to be grounded in some kind of evidence.
But most of us don't fail. Most of us don't quit because our dreams are too big. For most of us, our dreams are probably fairly achievable.
And yet we still quit before we achieve them, even though they actually would be achievable. And what Nir is going to talk about here is the idea that we quit when we start to interpret signals of pain. as being suffering and so then our brain protects us by causing us to quit why do we quit right why why do you say i have don't have time to work on the second book or i don't have time to go to the gym i don't have time to start a family i don't have time to start a business i can't do these things the reason we give up is because it hurts at the end of the day pain is the reason that we quit it's too hard i don't like it it feels bad pain is there the suffering is there to tell you, hey, you're approaching your limit, back off.
You could get into danger here. Again, the brain is not interested in you flourishing and being happy. The brain is trying to protect you.
So pain is not suffering. Even if things are happening, right? Even if pain is that signal that's coming into our brains all the time, even if that pain is there, we don't have to suffer from it.
I find that this is very true with students within our Lifestyle Business Academy, which is the online business school that we've been running for the last six months. And this was also true back when we were doing live cohorts of my YouTuber Academy a few years ago. There would be a profound difference between the students in our academies that would actually make it, like actually grow YouTube channels or actually make tens of thousands of dollars and build their own businesses, versus the ones who had exactly the same set of skills and experiences and backgrounds and stuff, but they just wouldn't do the thing.
And one of the key differences is that the students that succeed are more able and willing to tolerate discomfort. And then other students feel the pain and treat that as a sign that they should quit because the brain interprets pain as a signal that, oh my God, our survival is being threatened.
Our brain evolved over like hundreds of millions of years to protect us and to optimize for survival at all costs. And the brain doesn't really care about helping us thrive. And probably for the goals that you're working on, they're more like thriving goals rather than surviving goals.
And so especially in that context, it's very easy for us to misinterpret a signal of discomfort or pain as a reason why we should quit. The number one hack to succeeding in business is not what you think. Most people think it's just about the right market or the right technology or the right tools or the right program that you have to take before you start the most important life hack to being successful in any venture, not just in business, is to see the suffering differently.
And if you can learn to savor the suffering to enjoy the process to learn how to prepare for the pain in a way that you believe that what's happening is not happening to you it's happening for you that the sales calls are hard to make Great.
You're learning how to be a great salesperson. That pitching to investors is uncomfortable. Amazing.
You're learning how to present properly. That the managing the team is difficult. Incredible.
That means that you're becoming a better manager. So if you can see those experiences differently, you'll be less likely to quit. You'll be more likely to persevere and more likely to succeed.
People who succeed over the long term, remember how we talked about how they fail more, but they don't suffer more. That's the trick. That if you can do these things, And it's fun.
The same thing that somebody else says is miserable. So I used to believe this is hard. This sucks.
I need a break. Instead, I believe I have this mantra that I repeat all the time. I take a deep breath and I repeat to myself, this is what it feels like to get better.
This is what it feels like to get better. Another mantra I like to repeat to myself a lot is things don't get easier. You get stronger.
There will always be the chaos and we should relish that chaos. We can see it differently. Because it serves us to think of it differently.
When we relish it, when we say, hey, it's never going to get easier. I'm just going to get stronger. It motivates us and it decreases our suffering.
Now, all of these like positive affirmations and mantras and stuff can sound a lot like manifesting. And so I asked Nir about the difference between what he's talking about and this whole manifestation, positive thinking. As long as you visualize strongly enough, then you're guaranteed to get the outcome.
But that's all you can control. By the way, this is why manifesting doesn't work. So manifesting positive thinking, magical thinking, this is what I'm actually fighting against in this book.
And so I really want to not be in that category because why is manifesting and positive thinking, you know, it's actively harmful. The reason it's actively harmful and studies have shown this, this isn't just me saying this, you're actually less likely. to meet your goals when you visualize the outcomes.
And that's what manifesting and positive thinking is all about. It's all about, you know, to get those goals, vibrate harder, be more positive. You're not being positive enough.
And it backfires because it's totally outcome focused. The unlock is that the right way to visualize is not about the outcome. This is a great example of how the self -help industry has taken something that's true and made it false.
So for example, athletes do in fact visualize. But what are athletes visualizing? They're not visualizing the gold medal.
They're not visualizing the trophy. They're visualizing what they will do physically as well as mentally when they have some kind of barrier in their way. That's what we do.
It's called mental contrasting. You're contrasting what you want, the outcome, with what you will do with what's in your way. That's the right way to do it because now you're increasing your agency and control over, not the outcome, how you will feel about the barrier.
So the trick here, the unlock, is to prepare yourself psychologically for what will happen when i know i need to do that thing and i don't feel like it and i start going down this shame spiral and anxiety loop about what if it doesn't work and people don't like it do i even like this topic what's going to happen so the useful visualization is not like visualizing yourself winning the thing it's short you visualize yourself winning the thing and then you imagine all of the obstacles that are going to get in your way and you visualize yourself overcoming those obstacles now at this point near offered to do like a live uh sort of turnaround type thing on me to explore a limiting belief that i have and see if we could turn it into something more empowering.
I'm going to warn you that, like, this is a very champagne first world problem that I'm going to talk about. Like, it's probably not relevant to a lot of people, but we'll keep it in anyway because why not? I've been in the muck for the last several years when it comes to making YouTube videos.
which is that when it comes to a filming day, before I'm hitting record, that I feel a lot of like muck around like hitting record and making a video. Are we all hearing this? That like Ali Abdaal that has a gigantic YouTube audience also feels the same exact limiting beliefs that we all feel, right?
I mean, that should be, I think, very comforting to everybody out there that... Even someone as successful as you also has these limiting beliefs, also has the same script. I love how you've just confirmed so much of what we've been talking about.
You confirmed the reasons for quitting, that it was just a mile marker, that you were learning, that it was an area where persistence did pay off, and that you used to have a situation where you had high expectations, perhaps, for yourself of, I'm just going to do this video every week for a few years. And you had high control because that was the only thing you cared about was to just do the thing.
Yes. So all the things that you talked about that were causing this muck, this uncomfortable sensation, it's because you still have these high expectations, but now you feel like you have low control. This is a perfect example of how we keep holding on to these old beliefs that actually demotivate us, right?
When I believed that my mother was too judgmental and hard to please, I became less likely to have a good relationship with her. I wanted nothing to do with her because she's too judgmental and hard to please. It's a fact.
And by you thinking to yourself, I have to create videos because I'm on a schedule that served you in the past, but actually has decreased your motivation today to keep making videos. So which one is true? Which one is false?
Beliefs are tools, not truths. So it's just like a carpenter doesn't say, hey, you know, one time I built a house and I used a hammer. And so I'm only going to use hammers from now on.
No screwdrivers, no saws, only hammers. That's stupid, right? We've got tools.
We can take a belief that served us in the past and say, you know what? Thank you very much. Great tool, no longer useful.
That doesn't motivate me more. It creates more suffering. And I can pick up a different tool at a different stage of life and say, whoa, that belief is way better.
The problem is if we don't stop to think about it and write it down and do this little exercise where we say, hey, you know, if I look to the world through these different lenses. Am I better off? No, we just keep doing and doing and doing without taking a step back and saying, I fundamentally need to shift a belief here.
We're so obsessed with the behavior part, the strategy, the tactics, but all that stuff is downstream from the belief. So hopefully you took something away from that. Maybe even if the specific situation doesn't apply to you, maybe there's something that you can take away and apply to your own life.
And actually, if you found that interesting, I'd love to hear a comment about what you personally took away from that example. But I think the general principle here is that our beliefs are often there because they served us at one point or another, right? Like we're not freaking idiots.
We're not dumbasses. We're not just holding onto beliefs that have never ever served us that are just sabotaging us throughout our whole life. It's often that when we hold a belief, it's because that belief served us.
when we were in a different season of life. If, for example, you grew up in a household where expressing anger to your parents was not allowed for whatever reason, then you adopt the belief that anger is bad, anger makes me a bad person. And that belief is very useful when you're a kid.
But then that belief, when you become an adult and enter relationships and you start carrying all this resentment that's unexpressed and all of this sort of stuff, it starts to sabotage your... It starts to sabotage you from getting the things that you actually want, which is, you know, joyful, peaceful, fulfilling life where you're not like repressing your emotions.
A belief that can be useful in one season of life can be completely useless and actively harmful in another. Now, at this point, we want to talk about the beliefs that are hardest to notice. The beliefs that are hardest to notice are the ones that become labels.
I think we are going down a very dangerous path where we don't realize how our labels can become our limits. And that doesn't mean that diagnoses aren't helpful. They certainly are.
But I think we're looking at our diagnoses completely wrong, especially when it comes to ADHD and depression, anxiety, insomnia. Many of these conditions are highly susceptible to placebo effects and nocebo effects. In fact, for me, I have ADHD.
I've been diagnosed with ADHD. And in my experience. It was very helpful at first because we have what we call the Rumpelstiltskin effect.
When we have a label for something, when we can name something that's troubling us, it's very empowering. It feels great. When I got my ADHD diagnosis, it explained so much.
It felt really good. The problem was that very soon after I got my diagnosis, it became a distraction in itself. that every time I went off track, every time I got distracted, I would say to myself, there's my ADHD again.
And am I always gonna have this? Because this is a chronic condition and I'm never gonna get better at this. And what if I don't meet my deadline?
And you see, why do I have to struggle this? Nobody else has, why? And I went down this rumination loop, which led to me thinking about my diagnosis as opposed to the thing I was trying to work on.
Because these type of diagnoses, they can be helpful, but . The diagnosis says, hey, here's where you are and here's where you want to go. And so here's a map to get to that place.
Now, the problem was that I thought I was the map. I became the identity. It became who I am.
And that is very dangerous. This is called identity foreclosure. When we believe we are a certain type of person, I'm not a morning person.
I can't remember. I have a bad memory. I'm having a senior moment.
I'm a Sagittarius. My condition becomes who I am. It becomes my identity.
Well, then we lock out any other possible perspective. And remember, beliefs are tools, not truths. So the most damaging words in the English language are I am.
Because whatever comes after I am, is what your psyche will expect you to become. So be very, very careful with those labels because those labels, if you're not careful, can become your limits.
So instead, now my liberating belief is I'm learning a new skill. I used to tell myself chronic condition, chronic condition, chronic condition. It wasn't helpful, right?
I became the map. That is who I am. I am this chronic condition.
Not helpful. I'm learning a new skill, right? I learned time boxing.
I wrote indistractable for me. I needed to become indistractable myself. And it turns out it was learnable.
You know when I couldn't overcome it? When I believed I couldn't overcome it. When I went to, well, but my prefrontal cortex isn't as developed.
And then I started spiraling into this anxiety loop, which made me more distracted. And I would give up too soon. Now I had a reason to give up too soon, right?
As opposed to, this is a skill. What about imposter syndrome? A lot of people feel that they have imposter syndrome.
What's up with that? Totally a limiting belief. It's not in the DSM.
It's not a psychological diagnosis. It has this word syndrome, which makes it sound like it's a real thing. It's totally a limiting belief.
And in fact, it's a limiting belief because if you think about it, it meets the definition. Definitely increases our suffering. Oh, what was me?
I just have imposter syndrome. It's the same thing as perfectionism. Completely a limiting belief that I don't think serves people.
I think imposter syndrome is a classic example of how your label becomes your limit. Because you don't even try. Because you say, well, that's just what I got.
So for me, I don't think it's useful. So all throughout this video, we've been talking about the idea that Beliefs are very powerful.
Like we talked about the motivation triangle. We talked about how benefit is why you're doing the thing. The behavior is what you're actually doing.
And then the belief underlying it, where if you've got a strong belief, it can cause you to persist. And that persistence and just not quitting means that you're more likely to compound towards success. Whereas if your belief is that this is not going to work or that you suck or that this sucks or that this thing's going to suck forever or whatever the thing might be, then that belief will cause the motivation and discipline to crumble.
And then you're going to quit way too soon. And so Neo's argument in his book is that, yes, beliefs are powerful and beliefs are tools. And crucially, we have the power.
to change and actively mold our own beliefs. And so the final objection I wanted to throw at Nir is that isn't all of this stuff just like self -gaslighting? Are you not simply gaslighting yourself by saying that like what you believe isn't actually true?
And so when I posed this objection to him, this is what Nir had to say. I think what we don't realize is that we're already gaslighting ourselves. We're already lying to ourselves.
We just choose those beliefs that served us in the past but may not serve us in the future. You see, our limiting beliefs, they come from somewhere. They come from what's called our priors, your prior upbringing, your prior experiences.
Whatever has happened to you in the past will color how you see the future. So we're all ready. gaslighting ourselves, when we tell ourselves that we can't do this, that we have imposter syndrome, that we're perfectionists, that we're not ready, that we're not good enough, that this is too hard.
Those aren't facts. Those aren't facts. Those are beliefs.
And so we're gaslighting ourselves because we are have chosen these limiting beliefs that decrease our motivation and increase our suffering. At our own expense, we are trapped in these cages of our own device. So I really like this vibe.
It's like you're already gaslighting yourself, whether you know it or not. You're already choosing to believe things that are actually actively sabotaging you and your life. So if we're going to gaslight ourselves, we might as well gaslight ourselves into believing things that are helpful rather than into believing things that are harmful.
And so all of this brings us back to the original question. Why is it that we know what we need to do, but we just don't do the thing? What is it that causes some people to know what to do and do the thing and continue doing the thing and causes the rest of us to know what to do, start doing the thing and then quit doing the thing?
That's what it really comes down to is that the people who don't suffer from hard things are the ones who persist and the people who persist are the ones who are more likely to meet their goals. So this is affecting me, not even just in goal setting and productivity, but just day to day life. Like I was doing this webinar the other day with people who bought the book and we had this Q &A session and somebody asked this question like, Nir, you seem way happier.
Is that true? I thought, I was like, you know what? I am not because I'm like more joyful.
That's not my goal. I just suffer so much less, right? It becomes, this isn't happening to me.
It's happening for me. Is it true? I don't know.
Is it a fact? Probably not. But I choose that belief because it empowers me.
It reduces my suffering, increases my motivation. Most important things to remember is that beliefs are tools, not truths, and you are capable of far more than you believe. So then the final question I would leave you with is this, where in your life are you actually quitting at the 15 minute mark?
Where in your life is an area where if you just persisted, you would actually end up with way better outcomes than if you allowed yourself to quit? because you have convinced yourself. You've gaslit yourself into thinking that you don't actually have what it takes.
But then having said all of that, beliefs are very helpful, but they're not a magic bullet. And often one thing that's really helpful to add to an empowering belief is an empowering system that can help you achieve your desired result or success without having to put in so much hard work and so much effort. And so we're going to be talking about that in this video right over here, which is about the five systems you can install in your life from literally today that drastically increase your chances of success.
So thank you very much for watching and I will see you in the next video.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Nir Eyal opens with a warning: whatever you say after "I am" is what your brain will work to make true. From there he and Ali Abdaal spend the next fifty minutes making the case that the reason ambitious people stay inconsistent was never a discipline problem. It's an unexamined belief, and it can be found and swapped out in about thirty seconds.
How they asked for the click.
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