Stop Limiting Yourself: How Your Beliefs Become Your Biology | Nir Eyal

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Do you want to spend your time with your children? In just a few minutes, goFantMe.com, goFantMe.com. It turns out that people who can persist the longest are the ones who are more likely to succeed. When I did interviews for this research, I talked to billionaires and I talked to people who were broke and you would expect that people who don't succeed in life,

that they would have more failures. That's actually the opposite. People who are more successful are the ones who failed more, because they were more persistent. And when they persevered, even though they failed more times,

eventually if they hit it, sometimes they hit it big. Wow. He has an author, a behavioral design expert, and teacher who focuses on the intersection of psychology, technology, and human behavior, the inspiring, ear, I/O.

“So, what happens if day after day, week after week, year after year?”

We constantly recite a script about our limitations, about our labels, about what we can't do. It becomes physiologically as well as psychologically true. Really, if you have positive views about aging at 30, studies have found as a study at Yale that found that people who had those positive

Lisa at 30 lived on average seven and a half years longer. That is more of an effect size than quitting smoking. Then diet, it's more of an effect than exercise. How important or terrifying is the words we think or say about ourselves and our limits to our life?

Incredibly important. The best things you can do is, welcome back at one of the school of greatness. Very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring mirror, I/O, in the house. And he is an author, a behavioral design expert, and teacher who focuses on the intersection of psychology, technology,

and human behavior. He sold millions of books worldwide, helping people overcome distractions, build habits that stick, and take back control in a world that is designed to pull us off track. Thank you so much, near for being here excited about this man. Thanks. Great to be back. It's going to be fun, man.

This is a topic that I love, because most of my life, I grew up feeling very insecure originally because school, I was in the bottom of my class all through grade school, all through middle school, high school, and college. Bottom of my class, bottom four, because you used to rank us on our grade cards and tell us essentially their house smart or how stupid we are based on the rest of the class.

And I was always in the bottom four. So I always had this belief that I wasn't smart enough.

It was like this feeling that I wasn't smart enough. But for whatever reason, there was something else inside of me that said, "No, you can make something of yourself." There was like some calling, some voice, some feeling, some essence that was like, it doesn't matter if you're stupid on your grade card, or if you're lack the intelligence in school. If you have the courage to risk, to put yourself

out there, to drive and fail, to make mistakes, you can get better, and you can do a short of everything. And that belief, thank goodness, has cared me over the last 20 years, to, you know, excelling in athletics and sports, to building a business where I had no skills or anything about business, to launching a podcast, to writing best-selling books. When I didn't have any of the evidence that those things would be possible. But I had this

“essence or belief that I was like, I think I can figure this out. If I just take the next step,”

if I meet the right person, if I asked the right questions and then try, try, try, something's going to work out. And that belief has given me the ability to, I think, outperform so many people who are way more intelligent than I am, who are way smarter, who have more degrees, who have higher education than me, all that stuff. But I just have the courage to believe. And why is it in your opinion that so many people who are extremely smart,

extremely talented have all the degrees accolades in the world, still lack the courage or the belief that they can go and launch the thing that they really want to launch. We see this all the time, and the myth is that in order to succeed, you have to be the smartest. That's the defining trait.

Really? Because you start looking for facts. So facts are very different from beliefs. A fact isn't objective truth. And in school, we're graded by how many facts we can regurgitate onto a piece of paper. A fact is something that is true whether you believe it or not. That's one of the spectrum. And the other end of the spectrum is faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. There are two different sides. In the middle, however, is a belief.

A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. So unlike a fact which won't change, unlike a faith that doesn't require any kind of evidence to be a conviction, beliefs can change. And those people who hold themselves to their beliefs rather than sticking to things that they will only do if they know they are objectively true, they succeed more. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken with in researching around the power beliefs,

who tell me the same story. Is that something inside me? I just believe that it was going to

“succeed, and it did. And that's why I've done this research over the past six years,”

is because there is an untapped power that people do not realize that they can access, that releases their potential by harnessing the power of beliefs. My favorite story around this, my favorite piece of research, is the Kurt Richter Ratt Study, where in the 1950s, Kurt Richter took these rats, and he put them in a cylinder. And he wanted to see that you can't do this kind of study. And he wanted to see how long these wild rats could survive swimming in water.

In a cylinder with water. Halfway filled with water, he put a wild rat in. So how long? How long they could swim? And he sat there with a timer. And it turns out the average wild rat can swim for about 15 minutes, or droughts before it drowns. It gives up to 10 droughts, right? 15 minutes. Then here's where the experiment really started the interesting part. He brought in a new group of wild rats. He put them in the water. And he wanted to see now what would happen if

as soon as he knew that they would give up. As soon as they were about to drown after 15 minutes, he plucked them out, dried off the rat, let it catch its breath, and then put it back in the water. And he did this a few times. Wow. Okay. Have you heard this study before? No. Okay. It sounds like torture, but it's okay. So how long here's the question? You know there's a trick here, right? You know there's something surprising. If originally the rats could swim for 15 minutes,

how long could the rats swim after they were conditioned? After they had been pulled out,

“dried off, caught their breath, put back in the water, how much longer could they swim?”

I would say double. Double. That would be amazing. Yeah. All right. If they went for 15 minutes,

to 30 minutes of extra perseverance. Wow. That would be incredible. It wasn't double Lewis. It wasn't triple. It wasn't quadrupled. It wasn't from it for an hour. These rats after they had been conditioned could swim for 60 hours. What? Not 60 minutes, 60 hours, 240 times more persistent. Now, oh, wow. What changed? The experiment was exactly the same. These rats bodies hadn't changed. Nothing physically made them more perseverant. What had changed? We think we can't ask rats what

they believe, but what we think happened was that something in their minds had changed. They had now seen the possibility that salvation was possible. They had learned hope. Yeah. And that made them more perseverant. So what does that need for us? What's the takeaway here? That when we attach ourselves to these limiting beliefs versus liberating beliefs, when we find what those limiting

“beliefs are, do away with them and then find the liberating belief that can harness that motivation,”

we unlock something. And it's not magic, right? It was always there within us. These rats could

always swim for 60 hours, but they gave up for 60 after 15 minutes because they thought it was hopeless. And we all do this. So they had the ability. They had the skill set, I guess. They had the physical capacity to swim for 60 hours, but they didn't have the belief. That's right. And so most of them would die around 15 minutes on average. They would give up. And once they learned the belief system, you know, even as a rat, I guess, and you learn hope or this idea that, oh, maybe I can survive.

Or maybe I could go a little longer, right? They were able to go 250, 40% more. Sort of 40 times. 240 times more than originally around survival mode. That's exactly right. Holy cow. Right. And so this is what's being unlocked. It's not magic. It's not anything supernatural. It's that all of us inside of us, we have these powers that we don't even realize aren't there. And what's holding us back are these limiting beliefs? I mean, it kind of sounds like the David

Gorgons of rats. It's like, you know, okay. He talks about once you feel like you're about to die, you haven't even begun. Like your body can endure so much more. It might feel like you're dying,

but maybe you do just need a little bit of rest to deal. And then you get this thing called a second wind.

Mm-hmm. Right. There's this thing called a second wind where you feel like you have all this energy because you can go forever. Right. And that is interesting. Now, I'm curious that they went 60

And we all have our natural life. Yes. But what we think are our natural limits are way longer

than we would expect. There's all these things that are unlocked within us that are beliefs

“hold back. Now, is it a fear of, is it a lack of skill of enduring pain that most people have?”

Is it a lack of skill of enduring humiliation and embarrassment? Is it a lack or skill of overcoming the idea of fear of failure, fear of success? What is the skill that people are lacking that is holding them back the most? Mm-hmm. So when we look at what differentiates successful people, it's not necessarily intelligence. It's somewhat correlated, but that's not at the top. What's really at the top is two things. Number one is perseverance. Number two is adaptability.

Yeah. Why? Because it turns out that people who can persist the longest

are the ones who are more likely succeed. When I did interviews for this research,

I talked to Billionaires and I talked to people who were broke. And you would expect that people who are who don't succeed in life for, let's say, that they would have more failures. Right? People think to themselves, you know, I don't succeed because I failed so much and it's actually the opposite. That people who are more successful are the ones who failed more because they were more persistent. They kept trying and trying. There was just like those rats who kept swimming

and when they persevered, even though they failed more times, eventually if they hit it, sometimes they hit it big. Do you un-successful people just don't try enough? Is that kind of what you researched? That what's lacking is motivation. At the end of the mentally, what these beliefs unlock is your motivation. But the way we think about motivation is completely wrong. The way we've been taught about motivation is if you do this behavior, you'll get this benefit.

“So that's why we need motivation. Right? That's kind of the classical economic explanation.”

I pay you a salary. That's the benefit so that you do this behavior. Yeah. I work out for this long and I get a result. I lose weight. But when you don't see the result within two weeks, people give up. Why? So why do we lose motivation? What's missing? I mean, we have tons of self-help books telling us what to do. We've got Google, but we can Google something if we don't know how to do what we can ask. L-A-I to tell us what to do. We all know

what to do. What's lacking is not a lack of knowledge. It's not a lack of resources. There's something else missing. And that thing that's missing is the fact that motivation is a triangle. It's not a straight line. On one side, you have the behavior. What you need to do. On the other side, we have the benefit. Why we need to do it. But holding the triangle together is belief. If I don't believe, I'm going to get the benefit. Let's say you work for a boss,

who you don't believe has your best interest said heart. They're not going to give you that promotion. They're not going to give you that raise. Are you going to be motivated to work for them? Even if you want the benefit? No. What's very likely on the other side of the triangle is the behavior. But if I don't believe in my own ability to do the behavior, if I have a limiting belief about that behavior, I'm also going to quit. So if it was just as easy as I want this, so I do that,

we'd all have six pack abs and be multi-millionaires. It doesn't work that way because of the

“power of belief. You have to have all three. The behavior, the benefit, and most importantly,”

that belief. If someone focuses only on, I'm going to go do this thing. I'm really excited and motivated to launch this thing because I want this result. I want this benefit. But they lack the behavior or excuse me, they lack the belief that they're actually capable of accomplishing it or deserving and worthy of receiving that accomplishment. What will happen if they lack that belief? They lose motivation. They don't keep trying. They're just like those rats that give up and sink.

And that's exactly what happened. And when we keep trying, invariably, we don't succeed. Now, this isn't magical thinking. This isn't positive thinking. I'm not a big savvy. If you look at the research literature, just wishing for something, actually makes you less likely to go out and get it, a Gabrielle Otoge into this wonderful study, where she hooked up people to blood pressure monitors. And she tracked what happened to them when they

did a visualization exercise. When they thought about, you know, when they manifested, when they thought about the future, they wanted, when they aligned themselves with vibrations or whatever they

thought, here's what happened Lewis. Their blood pressure dropped. And they became more relaxed.

And then afterwards, they became less likely to do the things that it would take to get the results they wanted. So what the research shows us, that just dreaming, the just visualizing about that potential outcome, just manifesting is not enough. In fact, it hurts you. It makes you less likely to get those results, because your body interprets that relaxation as the benefit. Interesting. It feels like I've already accomplished financial success,

specifically from, you know, sports psychology, talking about visualizing the outcome,

visualizing the process on the court or the field, how you're going to react and respond, you know, strategizing and planning and business in the future, when certain things happen, how are you react, like kind of putting yourself in the future, what else needs to happen alongside visualization in order to manifest what you want? So what the research literature shows us is that just the dreaming doesn't work. And this is a great example of how

the self-help industry has taken something true and manipulated into something that's false. We hear that visualization works. And we hear that athletes use visualization exercises, which is true. But what do athletes visualize? Do athletes visualize the trophy? No,

do they visualize the gold medal? No. What do athletes visualize? They visualize the obstacles

in their way. They visualize if I'm on offense, defense is coming at me. If I'm going down the mountain skiing, what could be in my way? They're visualizing the obstacles so that they are emotionally ready to deal with it when those obstacles come. So I don't know if you remember this day in our last interview, but I might have mentioned, I used to be clinically obese,

“like clinically obese, not just overweight obese, yeah. Not your machine. I believe machine.”

I read it, but how did I do that? What was kind of the secret to it? Was that I stopped dreaming about the outcomes? And instead I started planning for the obstacles. So what really made a difference for me was planning ahead, visualizing in my imagination when I go to that dinner party and someone offers me a drink or a piece of birthday cake. What am I going to do? What am I going to say? How do I deal with that discomfort of having to say no? What is a, I mean if someone is overweight

right now and they've always tried to get healthier loose weight, but they've yo-yowed or up and

down and they've never been able to keep the weight off. What would be the plan in this motivation triangle from belief behavior and benefit to say, I'm actually going to get out of obesity or lose this weight for good? What would they need to do? Well, so this is my story. First of all, I feel for anyone who's in that situation. And I still have to do this every day. I have to think about this. It doesn't just go away. It's still a struggle. Now, I'll tell you what happened to

me that from a very young age when I was very overweight from a young age for a long time. And what I did starting back in the 1990s was I would read whatever diet book was the latest

“fat, so it started with low fat and snack well cookies, right? That's what I ate all the”

long because that's how we thought we were lose whatever. And then after that, I went to a vegetarian diet. It was all tofu and potatoes. And then after that came keto and that's what I, you know, I threw out the potato and tofu and now I was all keto all day long. And then after that, I think it was intermittent fasting. And the interesting thing is every diet worked. Every diet worked. I would lose weight until it didn't because what would happen, invariably every single time,

the reason the yo-yo kept going back up and down was that when there was a little bit of doubt, when that doubt crept in somebody would tell me, oh, vegetarians don't get complete nutrients. Or keto is bad for your kidneys or whatever. Question it, you're like, "Hall, is there a better way?" That's right. What should I be doing? And then those limiting beliefs crept in. So that next time I said, "Okay, I'm going to have that piece of pizza." And you know, whatever, I have a little snack

and I have some pizza. How bad can it be? What happened? It's called, this is actually a real term in psychology. It's called the "What the Hell effect?" Yeah. I've had one piece, let me have the whole pond. Exactly. Right. Or for me, it would be, let me chase it with the beer and some fire. Yeah, right. What's the point? Add diets don't work anyway. Now I have this information that maybe the diet I was on doesn't work. Oh, no diets work. And so that became a limiting belief.

As opposed to the liberating belief of, okay, maybe I went off track and I had a piece of pizza when I shouldn't, okay. But I controlled the next thing that enters my mouth as opposed to the what the hell effect, which was a limiting belief. Yeah. And so for, for not just weight management,

“for time management, for money management, all these things. What is the core of human motivation?”

Right. It's not carrots and sticks. A lot of people kind of beat themselves into submission with punishments or rewards that they do the right thing. And this blue line on, the research now shows that it's actually not about carrots and sticks. That that's not how the brain motivates us. That in fact, the carrot is the stick. Let's point them up. Right. So it's like kind of like a matrix moment, right? There is no sooner. The carrot is the stick. What does that mean?

That all human motivation, all human motivation, is from one thing and one thing only. And that is the desire to escape discomfort. Even wanting to feel good, craving, lusting, hunger, desire, itself is psychologically destabilizing. So what that means, if all human behavior is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort, that means time management, it's pain management, money management,

that discomfort, you can unlock this hidden message. Yeah. So one more time, if you can learn to manage pain or discomfort, then you can unlock essentially anything you want. That's right. In any area of life. Anything that the laws of physics don't prevent you from doing exactly. Because everything worth having a life right, you know this, is on the other side of that discomfort.

“Yes. You want to build a great family? It's going to take hard work. You want to build a business?”

You know, it takes hard work. You want to get in shape? It's going to take work. Yeah.

But what blew my mind is that I always separated, I always, I always, I never separated pain from

suffering. What's the, that was always synonymous? What's the difference between pain and suffering? So pain is just a signal. Where does pain happen? Where does pain occur? Is pain here? Is pain here? It's behind, right? Always in the mind. It's always the, where else could it be? Right? If you break your arm, the pain isn't here. The pain is registering and your brain. Where else could it be? Doesn't mean it's not real. All pain is real. But the suffering occurs

appear. For example, let's say, Lewis, that right now, all of a sudden your heart started beating very quickly. You were short of breath, dry mouth, something would be terribly wrong. You'd have to go to the ER immediately. But if you had the same physiological sensations while you're

on a run or in the gym, that's great. Now you have a positive perception of that same exact

physiological response. And so pain is just a signal. Suffering is the interpretation of that signal. What does that mean? It means that we can shape how we experience that pain. It doesn't necessarily have to be suffering based on our beliefs. Based on the filter of perception, we can interpret differently. So I'll give you a great example. Some of the research that stopped me cold in my tracks was around hypnosis. Have you ever heard of hypnosis? Like hypnosis? Yeah, but for surgery.

Okay. It's mind blowing. Okay. Lewis, I would not believe it if I have not seen the tapes. And in the research, I did. I saw many of these surgeries. There's a guy I wrote about. Hypnosis a day. Hypnosis a day. So it's actually hypnotizing yourself to not feel pain. So you don't have to go under anesthesia. Right. And you know me, I'm a pretty science back guy.

“Right. It took me six years to write this book. It's enough to climb very skeptical, right?”

Like almost at the point of being cynical. Right. And so I needed the evidence. And so I had to watch the actual video of the surgery and it turns out that in Europe, mostly Switzerland and France. This is a technique that tens of thousands of people have gone through. And so the guy that I interviewed is named as Daniel Gistler. He was a former commodities trader. Very numbers guy analytical, not wool will in the least. And this guy, uh, young 50s, he has this freak accident.

And he breaks a bonus ankle. And he has to get these screws put into his leg. And then it's time to get these screws taken out. Ooh. And in that, well, this is years later. He's healed up. He has to do his job. And he learns. He comes across this technique called hypnosis a day. And he gets kind of curious. He watches some YouTube videos. He decides to take a class. And he prepares his mind to the point where he goes under the surgery for 55 minutes with scalpel cutting into flesh with

metal screws being extracted from bone. Oh my gosh. Without general anesthesia, without local anesthesia. Nothing. Nothing. He just said nothing. Let me put myself on a mental state to turn off the pain signal. How does he do that? And then allow you to cut open my leg without me screaming. That's exactly right. And not only, not only want to this. And if he's, yes. And not only is he, you would think okay, well, maybe he's feeling the pain, but not letting it go back. No, we can see in his blood pressure

in his heart rate. All the things that should be going that's biking, you know, when the bait, when the body's in stress mode, nothing happens. Who turned the pain signal off? Well, he turned the suffering off. Not the pain signal. Not necessarily. So here's, this is, this is the heart of the research I've done is that beliefs have these three powers, the power of attention, the power of anticipation, and the power of agency. So what Daniel Gistler was able to do and

tens of thousands of other people do all the time is that through the power of beliefs, they can choose where to pay attention to the signals coming into their brain. Because what's happening right now, your brain is taking in 11 million bits of information. Right now, 11 million bits of information, the sound of my voice entering your ears, the light entering your eyes, the ambient temperature, the room, you're taking all this in. Okay, just to put that in perspective, that's the equivalent

“of reading Warren piece, every second twice. Okay, that's what your brain is processing right now.”

However, your conscious awareness is only 50 bits per second. 50 bits versus 11 million bits. That means

information has been able. So what does the brain have to do? It's called predictive processing.

“It doesn't see reality as it is. It sees it as you predict it to the angle. How did you know that?”

Because you've seen it a million times. These are called our priors. And so our prior beliefs dictate what we see in the present reality. So how do we shift a prior belief into creating

future evidence that we can create something we've never created before? Yeah. If we only have

proof of an evidence that we've been a failure, that we've tried and he knew the humiliated ourselves over and over again, that we're not enough that we're someone that's worth being abandoned. Whatever it is, right? How do we create a belief that we've never experienced to create a new result in our life? Yeah, so this is where the magic happens. And the magic is that number first step is to see those living beliefs because we all have it. What was yours? Oh my god,

where did the-- What was your biggest two or three like our biggest-- Oh, where do we start? Okay, I'll tell you, for me it was relationships. I had a lot of living beliefs with my relationships. Like intimacy or-- I'll tell you exactly what happened. So for me it was my relationship with my

mom that this particularly illustrates the point. So a few years ago my mom had her 74th birthday

and I wanted to do something very nice for her. And so I wanted to send her some flowers. Now, I was in Singapore. She was in Central Florida where I grew up. And getting flowers from Singapore to Central Florida is no small task. So I called up a bunch of florists. I stayed up to one in the morning, making sure the delivery would happen on time that she would get them that the flowers wouldn't wilt in the car in the Florida heat. Instead up to one of the morning,

I went to bed and I sat on myself on the back and said, "I'm a good son." Right, I did the right thing. I called her up the next morning. I said, "Hey mom, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers?" I sent. And she said, "Yes." I got the flowers. Thank you very much. But just so you know that they arrived half dead. And I wouldn't order from that place again. Oh my God. So it's finding the fault as opposed to...

Yeah, you didn't feel me on this one, right? Yeah. So I... You failed. Yes. So I said something to the effect of, well, that's the last time I ever buy you flowers again. And that went over just about as well as you'd expect. Right, not so good. And then after the call, my wife Julie, she turned to me and she said, "Do you want to do a turn around on this?" To which I said, "F" no. No, no. I missed out. I want your Mzo jumbo touchy feeling.

Yeah, yeah. I was up to 1 a.m. I did my best. I did you hear what she said. I need to vent.

“Right? Because that's what we've been told. It's lie that if somebody hurts you,”

you need to tell them how you feel. You need to get it off your chest. You have to vent. Wrong. The research literature shows that that is not helpful. That when you do that, when you vent about people, you're doing nothing but reinforcing your belief about that person. So you don't see people as they are. You see an FG of what your beliefs say they are. And so I knew this research at the time. I was writing the book. And so I knew about this.

So I stopped venting. I said, "Okay, fine. I won't vent," which I really wanted to do. True. And instead, I did what she advised. I did a turn around. Now, this technique comes from Byron KD. She's been around for a very long time. She's wonderful. And she actually channeled a technique that goes back all the way to Aristotle. That Aristotle work exactly. Exactly. Exactly. It's the work. So I did this. And I really respected it.

“And you know, it's a very, very long tradition. But Byron KD really put it into a format that, I think,”

is the true, is the true. So here's what I did. First step, I wrote down the belief.

The belief was, my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. So the first question is a true. Do you just hear, right? Okay. Next question. Let's move on. Obviously, she's too judgmental and hard to please. Next question. What's the next question? The next question is, is it absolutely true? Is it absolutely true? Well, because there be, absolutely means in all circumstances. Never, ever, ever, ever. Is it not true?

Okay. Maybe. I don't know how, but maybe there's a circumstance where it's not true. Fine. Okay. Third question. Who am I when I hold on to this belief? When I hold on to the belief that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, who do I become? What kind of person am I? I'm not very patient. I'm not kind. Frankly, I'm not myself. I'm not someone who I'm proud of. And then the fourth question, who would I be without that belief? And when I thought about that, it's okay,

if there's some kind of magic wand, I could wave it and dissolve that belief from my brain, I would be kinder. I would be more patient. I would be who I think I really am. And so I really, you know, I understood that that belief wasn't really serving me. Now, here's, here's the important part, is that beliefs are tools not truth. I'm like a fact or faith, a belief is something else.

holding on to belief that to me felt very true. And so the process, you ask, how do you go about changing these beliefs? You look for the geometric opposite of that belief in this turn around. Okay, so what's the opposite of that belief? My mother's two judgmental hard to please. What's the

opposite? My mother is not two judgmental hard to please. Okay, first, I didn't, there's no

what? I don't believe that. I don't believe that, right? But again, I'm not looking to change my beliefs. The point of a turn around is not to change your beliefs. It's to give you a portfolio of perspectives that you can now choose from to see which one serves you better. So I try it on for size. How could that possibly true that my mother is not two judgmental hard to please? Could that possibly be true? Well, let me find some instances. Let me pull the memory bank

or even with this specific incident. Maybe, maybe she was trying to help me. Maybe she was trying to make sure that I just didn't get skin from this florist. And she was trying to be helpful and not hurtful. Okay. Perhaps. Well, you come off that way, but maybe, exactly. Let's do another turn around. Instead of my mother's two judgmental hard to please, I am two judgmental hard to ask. Could that be true? You need her to have this perfect response for you to feel like it was

was a good job. Bingo. I wish you were there because it took me a while to realize it, but that's exactly

“what that is. That's what I realized is that when I called her and she didn't respond exactly the”

way I had scripted in my head. Thank you so much for thinking of me. The abuse of praise didn't come. Yeah, yeah. I lost it. And I said something that I regret. So who's being judgmental? Yeah, I was. What is a, I think Tony Robbins says when you trade expectation for appreciation, your life will start to change. Yeah. It's hard to have appreciation when you have a strong expectation. That's right. Even if you haven't voiced the expectation, you have an internal,

I was up to 1 a.m. I did this. I researched for hours to just to get my mom flowers. Yeah, and I have to all be served. Yeah, and I deserve at least a thank you. Which is what? Which is a belief. Yes. It's just a belief. But there's a fourth one, which was the most true, which was the one I most did not want to believe. Instead of my mother's two judgmental hard to please, I am two judgmental hard to please towards myself. It's not a word of how could that be true.

Well, now when I thought about it, I realized when I did something and put effort towards something that didn't work out, that I took that as a personal failing, that I had somehow messed up, that I was incompetent. I couldn't even get my mom proper flowers. And so who was judging

“who I was judging myself? Now again, are any of these true? Doesn't matter? What matters is,”

which one of those beliefs gave me peace? Yeah, which one serves you the most? Exactly. So now

I had a portfolio of to choose from. The first belief that my mother's two judgmental hard to

please, there's only one way out of that. She had to change for me to be happy. See, only way out. With the other three, I could do something about that. And so that's the real power of beliefs is that when you, for me, you said, what changed most? It was when I could look at my relationships. And now I do this probably six, 10 times a day. When someone annoys, I take step back. And I say, okay, what's the limiting belief here? What's the opposite of that limiting belief?

And how could it also be true? And my life, again, it's not about finding facts. It's not about proving the truth. It's not about truth. It's about finding peace. Yes. Now I'm happier. I'm more myself. I'm more calm and relaxed. And those benefits. And what changed all that changed was my belief? It's a, you can call it belief or a perspective, I guess, around what's happening in life. That's right. And what you choose to see and witness, right? That's right. But

these limiting beliefs, we all have them. And they're all hidden. It's almost like our face. Right? Right now, if I said, look at your face, it has it. You can't see your face. You can see your hands.

“You can't see your face. The only way you can see your face is if you hold your face up to”

a mirror. And then you can uncover your limit beliefs. And we all have them. Doesn't matter how successful you are. We all have them in one area of our life. What are the three biggest limiting beliefs of most people in the world? The one I hear most often, there's no time. I don't have time. I hear that all the time. It's too late. People like me don't do that. Or, you know, he, she, it hurt me. Or the world sucks. Or exercise is hard. I mean,

where does the list start? It goes on and on and on. Yeah. It's funny because something has

coming out for me is, I've told this story a few different times, but it always struck with me.

I was in eighth grade and the high school that my middle school was kind of connected to. I really looked up to these senior basketball players. I was my basketball and I was playing a lot with kind of the upper classmen because I was tall and I had developed some athletic abilities.

And I remember looking up to one specific senior who was the most gifted athlete probably I've

“still seen today in my life. Like one of the most gifted basketball players, but just”

athletically could do anything on the basketball court. Probably had a 45 inch vertical, a dunk so easily. Looks so smooth. He was a freak of nature. But for whatever reason when he was playing in a game, he was average at best. Like he wasn't reaching his abilities when he was just practice. And practice he could do whatever. But then in the game, something would happen where he was just kind of like, huh, why isn't he doing what he's capable of? And I don't know if this is true or

not, but what it reminds me of is it doesn't matter if you are, if everyone thinks that you can

accomplish incredible things. If you don't believe, it doesn't matter if the world believes in you.

You still have to learn to believe in yourself. But on the flip side, something I learned because I didn't have that athletic ability and people didn't fully, I didn't believe that people believed in me at different stages. That was no longer true later, but that was my original belief. But I was like, you know what, I'm going to believe in me. Even if no one, if the world's against me, I'm still going to believe in me and I'm going to have the courage to risk to put myself out there,

to try, to train, to be consistent, to do hard things over a long period of time. And you could have the world believing you, but if you don't believe in yourself, it's going to be hard to accomplish anything to your potential. And you could have the world

against you, but if you have unwavering belief, you can do incredible things. That's exactly right.

That's exactly what's what's manning about this is that just like you can't see your own face, but you can see other people's faces, you were able to see his limiting beliefs, but he couldn't.

“And that's what's so terrifying about this is that we all carry these hidden limiting beliefs”

and we can't see them. Why can't we see them? Because our default is passivity. We used to think, we used to believe this theory throughout psychology, throughout the literature, everybody knew this concept called Learned Helplessness. You probably heard Learned Helplessness, Martin Sellingman and Meyer, turns out, few years ago, they proclaimed that they had got it completely backwards. There is no such thing as Learned Helplessness. What we have is not that we learn

helplessness. We are default state is helplessness. Think about how we're born. Yeah. Right. You just had beautiful twin girls. When your girls were born, they were completely helpless. Say, they rely on someone else to keep them alive. Right. So we've started in survival mode, but some of us stay in survival mode for our entire lives. Right. Because that actually, that is what provides safety. Right. So that evolution is alive.

Exactly. So what we have to learn is we don't learn helplessness. In fact, we learn hope. And so the way out of a limiting belief is tiny bits of agency, the third power belief, is proving to yourself, showing your brain how an alternative belief can also be true. So for example, what happened with my mom or what happens in athletic ability or an entrepreneurial venture, it's proving to yourself with small steps that that thing that you had held onto as a

truth wasn't a truth. It was just a belief. So how do you recognize when a belief that helped you survive is now limiting your greatness? You find the areas where you're stuck. You look at the nearest resolution that you've had year after year or that dream you keep

talking about that you'd never take action. That's right. That problem that persists that you can't

find a way around that relationship that annoys a hell out of you and it's still annoying year after year. You can't find a possible solution or a smart person. Why can't you find a way to be happy? That's where you look. So that's the first step. It's figure out the areas where you have this Muck in your life and what underlies it is typically not a lack of resources, not a lack of understanding, right?

“Before you buy another self-help book, you have to understand that the OS, the operating software”

of your brain, it is those beliefs and unless you fix those, knowing what to do won't help. Yeah, and now with you, you can say, give me a detailed step by step plan and how to lose weight in a day or how to launch a business. It'll tell you everything you need to do. That's exactly everything. Yes. It'll hold you accountable with a daily plan step by step, give you the research, give you the information, backing with the data, you have the whole plan.

And you still won't do it. Why is that? Why will people not do it when they know the exact plan now on how to get the results they want? It's nothing new. It's not AI, right? Who doesn't know basically for nine percent of the population to lose weight? You better exercise and move more. You don't need a diet book to tell you that. That's, it's been around for a very long time to start a business. You need to do things that other people don't want to do.

To have a great relationship. You have to be fully present with people. We know this,

We refuse to look at these limiting beliefs. You know why? Because they feel like facts. They feel like the truth. And there's nothing more uncomfortable to our psychological immune system than changing our beliefs. We hate it. But of course, those beliefs that feel crazy, that feel like that can't be true. Those are exactly the beliefs we should lean into. So as a parent, you know, what advice would you give to me as a new parent on how to

model and communicate beliefs for my twin girls. So that they don't feel like they are stuck when things happen that they haven't learned how to do on their own yet. They haven't figured out yet in the future. How do we model and communicate the ability to have agency when you are in survival mode in some ways until a certain stage in your life? What I love about what you just said that a lot of adults say, a lot of people say, how do I get my kids to? That's a huge mistake.

“Oh, you have to model. Exactly. Exactly. That's the way we change. Everyone says they're not”

going to listen to what you say. They're going to listen to what you do. Exactly. That's exactly right. And it's crazy. My second book Indestractable was all that technology distraction. And people would come to me and say, how do I get my kid off TikTok? How do I get my kid to stop playing Fortnite? I don't know why. There's what they do. So just like if you want an Indestractable kid, you have to be an Indestractable parent in order to model the power of beliefs. You have to be a

high agency parent. You have to show your kids that, hey, here's this challenge I had and here's

how I overcame it. Here's what I used to think. And be vulnerable. A lot of parents, they think

that they need to have all the answers. And I found, at least for my relationship with my 17-year-old daughter, that when I'm the most vulnerable, when I ask for help, not only did she actually help me. She helped me with this book. It's an alien. She helped me every step of the way through this book because I would talk to her about I'm struggling with this and how do I express that? Not only do I learn from it, she learns from it. Right? She gets the most out of it because now she gets to

be in a position of authority. She gets to help you out. So I think that's one of the best things you can do is to honestly don't make it up, but show your daughters when they get a little older.

Here's what Daddy's struggling with. Yeah. What do you think I could do? I'm trying to figure it out.

What would you do? Yeah. What would you do? Exactly. And showing them most importantly, that you're willing to change those beliefs. One of the worst sentences in the English language is that's just

“how I am. That's just who I am. That's how I am. The worst. The worst. I'm not a morning person.”

I, that's my ADHD, which I, by the way, have used to tell myself all the time whenever I was distracted by something. That's my ADHD. Just excuse me, we hold on to that we don't want to change. Well, what are we doing when we're thinking about that? Right? Or now people my age now, oh, my friends, say that. I'm having a senior moment. Wow, that's not good. Why do we do that? Even if it's true. Let's say it's true. And again, the least are tools not true. So we don't even know if that's true.

Right? When I would say to myself, and again, I've been diagnosed with ADHD. And when I would forget something or have it or be distracted and catch myself, I say, oh, there's my ADHD. You're, you're labeling yourself more. You're emphasizing the belief of why you can't break through that thing to create what you want. Think of. And so what if it's hard still,

“you're holding on to a more of a limit when you continue to communicate and verbalize the belief of”

something as hard. Your labels become your limits. Yes. And what this does, it be creates what, what I call a sociological placebo effect. There's a wonderful example in the, in the psychology literature of Mr. A. And Mr. A is this guy, you know, he's an automized in this study. And Mr. A took, he broke up with his girlfriend, and a bad break up with his girlfriend. And he takes an entire entire pill box, a prescription pill box of anti-depressants. He wants to commit suicide. And after

he swallows all these pills, he changes his mind. He decides he doesn't want to die. And he grows to his neighbor. And he asks his neighbor take him to the hospital. He rushes into the ER. He collapses on the floor. And he shows the nurse the pill box. I took all my pills. I took all my pills. They take him into the ER. His heart rate is elevated. His blood pressure is dangerously low. And he has all

the symptoms, all the signs of a critical overdose. But the, the pills don't say what medicine he

consumed. All it has on the, on the pills is the number is a phone number. Turns out the Mr. A was in a clinical trial of these anti-depressants. And so he didn't know when he was taking. It wasn't real. Well, all that, so they call up this number. They say, what did this guy take? He overdosed,

the, the antidote to whatever he took. They say, we may one minute, they look at him. Obviously, oh, this person took the placebo. Wow. Right. This is a guy who passed out, had low blood pressure. He had a dangerously low heart rate. All these physiological symptoms had manifested because of a belief. It's called a no-cibo effect. The opposite of the placebo effect. And so let me ask you, Lewis, if the no-cibo effect, if the leaving something can have physiological

symptoms, that are clearly manifested in the fact that, you know, as soon as this guy discovered that he had taken the placebo, that there was totally an inert substance here. Oh, okay. 15 minutes. It's all it took. 15 minutes. He was revived. He was back to normal. So let's think, okay, that's, well, that's when you actually take a whole bottle of pills, right? Which is whatever was candy or something. Yeah, it was, it was nothing. It was an inert substance. So what happens

of day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year? We constantly recite a script about limitations, about our labels, about what we can't do. It becomes physiologically as well as psychologically

“true. So how important or terrifying is the words we think or say about ourselves and our limits”

to our life? Incredibly important. And this is one of the best things you can do. Because it's not easy. I'll be honest with you. I wish I had some, you know, overnight solution. It doesn't work like that. Changing your beliefs is not easy. One of the first steps you can take is to listen to the words you are actually verbalizing. When you say out loud, oh, that's so like me or just my luck or this is why I can't or whatever the reason, those words that you verbalize, that's the first place to start.

Because you're actually saying it out loud. Unless they're empowering words. Oh, absolutely. Just my luck. This happens all the time. Okay. You're a optimistic person. That's like you

intervening. I always get the first like, you know, parking spot on. And things money always comes

my way. Yeah. Easily. Yeah. Of course it does. Yeah. Why not? But most people don't do that. They don't do that. And here's what happens. There was a beautiful study where they had people who were self-identified optimist versus self-identified lucky or self-identified unlucky. Okay. People who said to themselves, I am unlucky or I am lucky. They had this label. And they took them into a room and they said, okay, here's a newspaper. We want you to do this task.

If you count as quickly as you can, all the photos in this newspaper, tell us how many photos and you'll collect your prize $250. Okay. So do this quickly as you can. Both groups do this. Those groups did this. The pessimists took two and a half minutes. The unlucky people took two and a half minutes.

“The lucky people took 11 seconds. Oh my gosh. Why? What was the difference?”

Because on page two, one of those pictures said there are 40, sorry, there are 43 photos in this newspaper, collector prize. So they just, oh. And they saw the lucky people literally saw reality differently. Whereas the unlucky people said, okay, one, two, three, four, five, six. And they sat there in counter for two and a half minutes. Whereas the lucky people, the people who say,

good things always happen to me, found the opportunity for the good thing to happen to them.

It wasn't that they were actually more lucky. They just were more observant. They're beliefs. Shape it would they could see. They could see reality differently. That's by the way. Why? Entrepreneurs tend to be more optimistic. Optifers tend to think they're more lucky. They think that good things happen. So one of the things I've adopted since this line of research is that, now instead of saying, I used to, I hate to admit it. I totally was one of these people. It says, oh God, this is happening today,

traffic or otherwise it's happening or I got sick or whatever case might be. I would constantly remind myself of the bad things. Now, every time something good happens, we see it out loud as a family. We say everything good happens to us. Is that a fact Lewis? No. Bad things happen, too. But we emphasize that everything good happens to us. Why? Because now we're more conscious of some Vanessa Van Edwards, our mutual friend. She has a wonderful phrase of not asking people,

how you doing? Right? One of people say, how you doing? Busy. Busy, fine, whatever, whatever.

“Instead, she says, what's good? I love that. Because what it's doing is training us. What's good?”

I'll tell you what's good, actually. I'm alive today. I get to breathe. I get to start there. Just focusing on something so small that is a positive thing rather than what's not working. I like to ask, what are you most grateful for today? What are you grateful for in your life?

Yeah. What are you most excited about in your life? You're the first to give people

shifting from a negative into some type of a more empowering emotion or thought. Absolutely. The more empowering emotions and thoughts we have consistently throughout the day, the more good things will happen, or at least will feel better. That's right. I guess it's one of the things don't happen. That's the future. Feel better. But you can, not only do you feel better, you start seeing more of that.

So this is one of the three defining traits of what we call entrepreneurial alertness is that people who have entrepreneurial alertness are more grateful. They, uh, Tina Seligman at uh, a Tina Selig, sorry at the Stanford has this practice where she just sends thank you notes

she sends them a handwritten thank you note or an email or quick SMS. And that turns to

about one of these, these qualities of successful entrepreneurs, successful people, is that they constantly look for opportunities to say thanks. Yeah. That's so interesting you're saying that because I've literally been for the last like three weeks thinking that I need to order thank you notes like custom thank you notes because all I want to start doing is sending more. So you're another confirmation in a sign that this needs to happen ASAP and I do

that through text and video messages and things like that and calls. But there's something

“about receiving a letter. Yeah. That my dad used to do a lot as well. And I think it's one of”

the reasons why he became such a successful entrepreneur is because he was just constantly thinking about others. Yeah. And he was thinking about, hey, how can I send a nice note or I saw something in newspapers back in the day that newspapers cut out a clipping and send it to someone with a little bench you note because of a long way. People remember and what the crazy thing is this is called provoked luck. How we can manufacture our own luck. What happens when that thank you note lands

on someone's desk and right next to the thank you note is a potential opportunity to do business with somebody. Oh, the thinking of that person. Exactly. You're creating your own luck. You're creating your own luck. It's so interesting because what kind of business did you dad start? Who's the life insurance salesman, which was hard? Yeah. It's hard reach out to someone you want life insurance. Yeah. But he would do that constantly and send people notes and just show up also and just like

acknowledge people. Hmm. So that's something I've just always taken on and I think it's one of the

“keys to being able to be where I'm at in life is constantly thinking about hey, I saw you doing this”

thing. Just want to say congrats. Yeah. You're doing awesome. Keep it up. Not asking for anything. Just hey, keep it up. You're doing great. Congratulations. Yeah. And I think when we get out of our own, I'm not enoughness or jealousy of what someone else is accomplished or what we're not accomplishing that we see other people doing. We just acknowledge them and congratulate them. Good things are to come back. That's right. And it's not magical. It's not that it's not vibrations in the

universe. It's not quantum anything. It's because it changes what we see, what we feel that we do. The three powers of belief anticipation, attention and agency. It's by believing differently that we ultimately do things differently. You talk about there's facts, there's faith and then in the middle is belief. How much does faith plan to unlocking success in people's lives? So it's interesting that I grew up pretty secular. I didn't pray. I pray when

I was very young. My family immigrated to America and by the time I was six years old, they had been scammed out of every penny. They some American saw that these immigrants barely spoke the language and he's count them. Well, basically took their life savings, which they used to come to America and start a living. So I used to pray then when I was very young because we were going through such hard times. I didn't pray again until I started doing this

research. Really? Yeah. You couldn't read something years later? Yeah. Well, here's what I found.

Was that you didn't pray at all for the last four decades? I didn't know because here's what happened. I used to pray. Do you pray? Yeah. You do. You have a fight? I prayed growing up and then I kind of paused for like a death and a pause, but I was in this active participant in prayer

“for maybe a decade. And then the last four years have gotten much deeper. Last four years?”

Yeah. Does this be the Martha? Yeah. I guess five years almost. And how's it been for you? Game changer. Game changer. I mean, there's so many things that we do and I do that support my inner peace. Yeah. And I think going through a healing journey, a reflection journey, you know, where I looked within all of my hurts and pains and past and all of these things and allowed myself to heal over many years brought me a harmony in peace. Yeah. But having a sense of faith,

and a true belief and praying about it every morning and every night gives me more confidence that I'm exactly where I need to be. Yeah. And that good things are coming. And it's not about me, it's about being of service. And as long as I continue to show consistently and essentially following the triangle of motivation and doing these things consistently, good things are going to happen. So I would hear people say that. But tell me the science. And yeah, yeah, that I'm just,

I just, it didn't resonate. The supernatural part didn't resonate for me. And so I, I would hear people say that and I would be very jealous that you get all these benefits. Yeah. And I couldn't feel that. Yeah. Yeah. And it turns out now. You're like, that's just my ADHD. I can't pray. It turns out now people like me are the largest religious group in America. Tell me. They're

the largest religious faith group in America today are nuns that just happen actually fairly recently.

“A lot of them, they say there's not atheists. No, just no affiliation. Some atheists, so many of”

them are what they identify as spiritual but not religious. What's crazy about that is that people who identify as spiritual non-religious have higher rates of depression and anxiety disorder. People who more than people who are not spiritual, not religious. With people who say they are spiritual, but not religious, have higher rates of depression and anxiety disorder, then people who say they are religious. Much, much higher. Really? Yes.

When someone says, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. Right. What are they saying? Like they, they have some kind of conviction in some kind of higher power, but they don't connect with any kind of faith tradition. Okay. So they have higher rates of depression than those with religious faith. That's right. And we've known that for quite some time. That's that people who have people who pray have all kinds of benefits. They live longer. They're healthier. They make more money. They contribute

“more to the community. There's all kinds of benefits to prayer. And I knew that. Back by sign.”

Oh, yes. Many, oh, that's this is what happens. There are signs. Everything else. Very well established. Now, I read this research as I was writing this book and I came across it and I was kind of jealous, but I thought it's not for me because I don't have that particular faith in the zero natural.

And then I came across this study that blew my mind. And the study, here's what they did.

They took three groups of people and they, one was a control group. So nothing, no intervention. One were people who prayed from a particular faith tradition. Catholic, Jewish, Muslim. They had some kind of particular faith tradition. And one group were people who had never prayed that they taught how to pray. And they said, if you don't have any kind of faith tradition, you don't have to say God, say whatever is meaningful to you. Substitute the sum of all forces

or mother nature or higher power. Whatever. It doesn't have to be anything supernatural. Whenever it is that you want substitute that word, but here's how to pray. They taught them how to pray. Like a 60-second prayer. Some kind of they had a standardized intervention. Then they took those three groups and they gave them this is that there's a standard protocol to test pain tolerance. The test is essentially they take your hand and they tell you to put it

in an ice cold bath. Very, very copainfully cold water. And then they have a researcher who looks at your face and they see every grimace and every, you know, your contortion.

“And then ultimately when you can't do it anymore, when you have to take your hand on the water.”

Now, both the group that prayed out of faith tradition and who didn't have a faith tradition, but prayed way out last of the control group. They were way more pain tolerance. They were like the rats like it goes 60 hours. Exactly. Now, what's fascinating about that, that even the people who didn't have a faith tradition, but learned how to pray, also had those benefits. They also had greater pain tolerance.

They had a people that didn't pray at all. And so this is something I've changed. When you ask what's the power of faith, it turns out that prayer works even without faith. Wow. And so this is kind of my call to action. I think a lot of the problems we have today in America come from the fact that many people like I used to say, I can't step into church because I can't prove that everything that was said here is absolutely the truth. I was looking at everything

through the fat lens. I can't either. I like everything for me isn't like, how is that really truthful 2000 years ago when the translations and this and this, but you still, you still don't. I still go because I asked this to Arthur Brooks recently. I don't know if you know where to brush anything. He's like a devout Catholic. He goes to Mass every morning, like six a.m. or something. And I go, Arthur, you're a smart guy, like you're intelligent. You're like Professor

this, like that's something author. How can you really say that everything is true? He goes, I can't. But the belief of these things and the essence of it and the stories and the lessons give me more peace. Yes. And help me live a more peaceful life. And that's the goal. So I don't call myself an atheist or a gnostic. I call myself a free-thinker. And this is a term I learned when I lived in Singapore that you could be a free-thinking Christian. You could be a free-thinking Muslim.

You could be a free-thinking atheist. It doesn't matter. It means that you're not asking that question anymore. I stopped looking for proof. And what I'm looking for is peace, as I said. Gosh, let's go. That is what people need, any peace. Yeah. They don't have it. A lot of people don't

have it. Because beliefs are tools not true. We're never going to know. Okay, what I was not going to

know. But what I find when I walk into a church or a synagogue, and I start with a prayer, which I never used to do since I was six years old. Now I do. They bet if it's me. I feel better. I am better when I adopt this belief that I can pray even if I don't have all the answer. Yeah, you're more you're more present and probably the less reactive, you're more tolerant, you're more. I can

I went to five religious leaders. I went to a rabbi, a priest, an Imam, a monk, and a swami. And I asked them to walk into a bar. All walks into a bar. And the same question was, how do I pray

“when I have uncertainties about God? Oh, wow. What do they say? And so I learned these five key”

tenants of prayer that, uh, so everybody gave me a different piece of the puzzle. Now a lot of it was overlapping. Uh-huh. Nobody has them monopoly on these devices. But what I was doing was that I threw out everything. I said, well, if I can't, if I don't have perfect certainty, then I can't do any of it. And then I learned from these religions that there's, we can't pray even if we do

have doubts. So from, from the, from the rabbi, I learned that, uh, you can do first and understand

later. So on Mount Sinai, uh, the Jews say when they receive the Ten Commandment, they say, "Nah, seven ishma." First we do, then we will hear. First we do. So that, to my, in my life, first I do the ritual. Then I will see. Don't ask why I'm supposed to do this, or what the result will be, but just have the faith, I guess, that you're supposed to do this first. The book, I would call the belief. Not the blind faith. Okay. Not, not the belief. Yeah, the belief

that I'm doing this because it serves me. Right. I'm not going to, I'm not going to accept everything whole cloth. I'm not going to do everything that someone tells me. I'm not, I'm not going to be gullible. I'm going to, uh, I was the definition of belief. It's a conviction that is open to revision based on evidence. So if, you know, as opposed to before, first I need it to be a fact,

then I can do it. First I'm going to do it. And then I'm going to see what comes at it.

The rituals. Right. From the Imam, I learned about the simplicity of prayer and Islam, you pray five times a day, same prayer, five times a day. Doesn't have to be super complicated. You don't have to have a prayer that's, you know, a super liturgical and has all kinds of practices. You can create a very simple ritual of just sitting and being with your thoughts for a minute and showing gratitude and just a moment of peace, right, to solve these problems on your own.

You can, you can create that in your life, whether you have a faith rich or not. From the, the Catholic priest, I learned, is, is beautiful. He told me about how people come to church looking for their prayers to be answered. And they ask for things, right? They say, you know, I, I want to find love. I want to find a business success. Please heal me, etc. And what they oftentimes don't realize is that the coming to church, the community aspect,

is many times how prayers are answered, that it's the person down the pew, who can help you with your business, who can help you find love, who can solve it in his problems. It's that community aspect. And that's something that a lot of us who are, who don't have that faith tradition, don't get unless we go, right? And then from the Swami, from the Hindu leader, I learned about how it has to be about something bigger than yourself, how about the power of, of, of, of your

finding a cause, finding a, of a purpose that's more than just you. And then from the Buddhist, the separation of pain from suffering, about the practices and Buddhism, you know, my, my wife is Chinese and, and something that she heard growing up in her Buddhist household was bitter now, sweet later about how you can separate the pain from the suffering in order to sustain motivation in order to keep going. Wow. And so you can take, every religion has aspects of, of all these

things. But even if you don't have a particular faith tradition, you can do what I call constructive interpretation. You can walk into a place of worship and say, you know what, I don't need every

“single thing to be true in order for me to get these benefits. And I think that's what holds”

a lot of people back. They need the facts to really like say, well, did that really happen if not, then I'm going to discount this whole thing. Right. And to be fair, it's not just the believers, it's not just the participants. There's a lot of faith institutions that want a purity test. Uh-huh. Right. You have to believe, every, it's not good. That's not constructive either. It's not good. Right. That pushes people away. Yeah. It's so interesting because every time

we got a church, Martha just feels, she's so grateful. She just feels better, just going. She's like, I feel so much peace. Yeah. So if prayer gives you that peace, now if it makes you feel bad, I guess it's not good. Don't do it. But if it brings you a peace, why not do that more frequently? Right. Even if you don't have any answers, I can't remember a little Wayne Dyer said this quote or where this quote came from. But it's like, you know, a lot of people think seeing is believing,

but believing is seeing. It's like, how do we switch it? Like, I'll, I'll believe it when I see it. No, it's like start believing it and it will reveal itself. That's right. Right. Isn't that did Wayne Dyer's? I thought I was going to come up with that. That's a chapter of title.

“Exactly. That's exactly right. Because that's what we tend to think. We think, oh, you know,”

when I see it, I'll believe it. But we do not see reality as it really is. We have this simulation

running in our brains because of the, you know, the 11 million bits versus the 50 bits. We all have

the simulation. None of us are seeing reality clearly. Right. So when I advocates, one of the, one of the things that sometimes people will say is, you know, are you telling people to lie to themselves?

delusional. You're already gaslighting yourself. You're just negative way. Exactly. You're gaslighting

“yourself with these existing limiting beliefs and refusing to see another potential reality,”

which if you considered, could actually be just as true if not more true than your current limiting belief. Yeah. But I mean, come on. You study, you know, psychology and human behavior, how can we put all this into prayer? Like, that's not what you've lived your entire life. I feel like you're the, gosh, who am I thinking of? You're the, uh, who is the, the newscaster, Dan, um, Sullivan? No, no, gosh. Why am I forgetting his name right now? This is, he did the

meditation stuff. Yes, not Dan Sullivan, but Dan Harris. Dan Harris, Dan Harris. Yes, yes, yes. You're like the Dan Harris a prayer now. You know, it's like a skeptical, like analytical,

yeah, never going to believe in this stuff. But now you're saying prayer. I believe in the practice.

I'm not, I'm not, uh, I just stopped asking about the questions that I, I don't think I'm going to answer. Yeah. I don't think anyone will. Yeah. Because you just, just to have blind faith and trust from people from thousands of years ago. That's right. For me, that's hard to do too. But I think the essence of the stories, the essence of the historical things that happen when they did or didn't do certain things. Yeah. I can see how can that relate to my life today?

I think that what's unusual about you is that a lot of times when I talk to people of faith, they, they feel a little uncomfortable admitting that. Well, because I think I have question in my whole life. You have questions. I think I have. Yeah, because I'm like this doesn't make sense.

“But you, but how can you kept going despite thinking, why stopped for life? That's why you do it.”

Yeah, I mean, I stopped just because I was just kind of like on my own journey and I was a critical

thinker and I was a free thinker. So as a guy, let me try this. Let me try this. Let me try this. And I think I still question a lot of stuff. I'm like, why do they do these traditions? Why do they do that like all this stuff? I question, but I'm like, you know what, let me, if I know it benefits, doesn't mean I have to agree with every specific thing or I can still question it, but how can I apply the things that I know are helpful for me, for my wife, for our marriage and

our relationship that just help us feel better? Yeah. Like I don't have to have all the answers. But I can believe that good things are going to happen for me if I continue to believe them. Right? Yeah. That is a type of prayer in itself. I don't even have to say God give me these things. It's just more of like, it's more of a gratitude prayer. Thank you so much for the blessings. Thank you for the opportunities. Thank you for the hard lessons that have given me appreciation now.

It's like a thankful prayer for me that puts me in a state of peace and appreciation.

“And I think the more grateful I am an appreciative I am of life. I believe life brings me”

more to be grateful and appreciative of whether it's a law, science, a belief that I've made up, whatever it is, it works, right? And it gives me more peace. Well, you're ahead of the game. Because I had to like see the studies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. That's excellent. I wish. Yeah. Go ahead. You wish. I wish. I wish it didn't take me so long. And then I wish more people would find that path. I think we would be much happier. I think a lot of people

dealt with so much pain and then turned pain into suffering from some type of, I don't know, believe maybe religious belief or the parent that was in a religion that then did something wrong to them and they were like, oh, this person is associated. Yeah. It's like a association with someone that said something to you or judged you or made you feel less than, who was a part of some belief system, a faith. Yeah. And then you associate it and you're like, that is bad and wrong.

Yeah. And this person was supposed to look out for me, take care of me, not lie to me, not cheat on me, not steal from me. And they did this thing. And they follow this belief, the whole belief is wrong. And if you think about it, it's very protective. Yeah. And so this is why we can't see our hidden limiting beliefs. Because to us, you know, if we are looking for

evidence, we'll always find products. We'll always find it. And so that becomes our new belief,

which we adopt without even questioning it. And so then it's then it's sealed in. We come incapable of actually testing and seeing it in any way. Right. Here's the other side of it. I could hear a skeptic, you know, listening to this and say, yeah, I get it that you were skeptical, you found a way, but I'm still skeptical. And I'm still skeptical near that, you know, I follow your four steps of the work. And at the end of the day,

I still need a boundary in place with my mother. Because every time pretty much every time I do show for her, it's a negative comment. And what am I just going to say, well, one day she was nice to me and she accepted me and she acknowledged me when I did something for her. But it just seems

So they don't either don't get taken advantage of over and over again. Because I say, well, that's not really the belief. They're really a good person deep down inside. I'm going to give them another chance because they didn't mean to screw me over. Yeah. And that just continues to happen. Well, first of all, I'm not here to change anybody. I'm relaying my journey. Yeah. And this is what's what's worked for me is that what I was looking for was that piece that it wasn't

helping me in my life when I was labeling people as constantly judging them as evil or this or that. It wasn't making me better. Yeah. It wasn't helping my life. And one of the mantras, one of the prayers that I repeat to myself is that love is measured by the benefit of the doubt. Love is measured by the benefit of the doubt. That to me is very meaningful. Because as a human, I want to love my fellow man, at least to some amount. We should offer grace to others.

But it's very difficult, right? Because we are, again, our beliefs find it much easier because we are born into passivity. Our default state is passivity. We find

“it much easier to stick with what we always have because that's what's protected us in the past.”

But it's like a tool that we keep caring that's busted and not a good tool for the job. It's only a carpenter says, oh, the hammer. It's the one and only true tool. No, a carpenter says sometimes it's a saw. Sometimes a good tool is a wrench, right? There's different tools for the job.

So just because you've always held this hammer, it's just because you've always held this belief.

Doesn't mean you can't take it out on exam. And A is this the right tool for the job. So what I found in my own life is that when I held these grudges, when I had these these belief filters about people, not that you shouldn't put those barriers on. Sometimes boundaries are the right thing to do. Sometimes you doesn't even have to constantly subject yourself to an uncomfortable situation. But without giving that grace. Now what do I mean by love is measured

by the bit of the doubt? When when my daughter was born, there was this love unlocked for this new human being, right? You just experienced a few months ago that just comes out of nowhere, right? And we give these babies ultimate grace, total benefit of the doubt. Why do we do that? Babies are kind of annoying. Let's be honest, right? They greatly cry. Yeah, all these things that they do that you can interpret as annoying, right? But you don't

interpret as annoying. A baby is not trying to annoy you. That's the best tool that baby has.

“It's to cry. That's how they get what they need. So we give them this benefit of the doubt.”

And the more we love someone, how do we measure that love? The more benefit the doubt. You give someone the more you love them. So what I try to constantly remind myself is that we're all just growing up babies. Yeah, it's true. We're all just doing our best. Why is it that when we grow up? No, you get no more benefit of the doubt. You have to do anything perfect. And if you mess up and if you hurt me, if I interpret you as hurting me, you get no grace. Because you hurt me.

Whereas what I try to remind myself now, it's not always easy. What I try to remind myself is that

that person is doing the best they can with the tools they have. It's like knee-expecting, you know, my daughter just suddenly speak Russian. She can't speak Russian. How could she possibly have that 200 disposal? She doesn't have that tool. She was a baby. She couldn't speak in complete sentences. All she had was a delay to cry. And people who who harm us, people who hurt us, people who have done things in the past. It doesn't mean that they didn't hurt us. It doesn't mean

that we should just, you know, forgive them. Blank, you know, unconsciously. It means that we would be better off. We would enjoy life more. We could be more at peace if we have a new belief. That serves us better. Yeah. I'm curious about this. What happens to a person's biology, when they expect to fail before they even start with the thing they really want to do? When happens to their mind, their body, their cells, when they expect to fail, or they don't believe,

it's going to be the ultimate outcome before they even begin the thing they want to do. Well, we know that if you expect to fail, you will. Right? So someone who's running a marathon, who's more likely to finish a marathon, okay? Someone who says, I can't finish this marathon, or someone who says, I believe I can't finish the marathon. Now, we don't know the facts, many people don't finish marathons. But who's more likely to finish? The person who believes

they can. Exactly. Because if you believe I can't finish this marathon, you quit. You're done. That's it. And the story. Right? So it's not that believes guaranteed success. It's that you're much more likely to achieve success when you believe. What if someone's just like believing,

but they're just so far, you know, they've never run a mile. And they say, I'm going to

“go run a marathon today. And I believe I can do this. What happens when the belief?”

Really, you know, you don't have that 240% or times in you, really, for what you're trying

based on evidence. So you still got to look at the evidence. It still has to be open to real

“world as such. Right? It can't just be miracle curious. You have to look at what actually serves”

you. But the point you had earlier about, about biology, you asked what happens if you don't believe. Yes. You don't have it when you do believe. What happens? We know that people who have positive views about aging at age 30. Okay? If you have positive views about aging age 30, a person who says something like growth is possible at any age. If you believe that the growth is possible at any age versus aging leads to inevitable decline. Now, between those two statements,

which is true Lewis? I can learn at any age or aging involves inevitable decline. The one you believe. Right? That's what's true. Which one is the fact? The growth kind of facts. Right? But which one becomes, which one is manifested as the truth in real life? The one you actually believe.

So here's what happens. If you have positive views about aging at 30, studies have found

a study at Yale that found that people who had this positively said at 30 lived on average 7 and a half years longer. That's crazy. You know what that means, Lewis? That is more of an effect size than quitting smoking. Then diet. It's more of an effect than exercise. Wow. Right? Now,

“is it magic? Is it that you're vibrating a certain frequency? And because I think that therefore”

I do, that therefore like these things change in my biology and my cells? No. What is it? It's got nothing to do with that. It's the fact that if I have positive views about aging from a young age, what do I do differently? Remember, the beliefs, the three powers, what we see, what we feel, what we do. So who's more likely as they age to get out there and go for a walk, to start gardening, to see friends, to work out if you believe, oh, I'm having a senior

moment. Right. Right. Right. Versus, hey, growth is possible at any age. Your behavior will continue to to show up to empower you as your age versus an disempowering behavior. Like, I'm having a senior moment. I was going to smoke all day now. Or, yeah, I can't do that because of XYZ. Let me give you another study, steroids. Okay. There was two groups. One was told just to exercise,

paranormal. Go to the gym, exercise, paranormal. The other was told, we had this amazing new steroid.

We want you to take this steroid so we could test its efficacy. Here's your workout routine. Okay, do these exercises. Now, turns out the steroid was a placebo. Okay. You know there's a trick here. The steroid was a placebo. And yet on that placebo, the men who took the pill they believed was a steroid gained more muscle mass. Crazy. They physically, their beliefs became their

“biology. It just like beliefs can add years to your life. Their beliefs became their biology. Why?”

Wasn't magic. It was the fact that when I believed that I'm on a steroid, I would get one more rep. I would put on a tiny bit more weight. I would work on a little harder because, hey, I've got the steroid in me. It's going to, I better make it pay off. So the belief became the biology, even though it was completely the plus. And it influenced the behavior. That's right. The behavior helped influence the results. It's all about the behavior. It's all about when it comes to

placebo. That's exactly what it's all about. Wow. Yeah. And this is fascinating. Your book is called Beyond Belief. The science backed way to stop living in yourself and achieve extraordinary results. I'm curious. In this book, from all the research you've done, it took you six years to write and it rewrites, you know, start praying after 40 years because you had so much research that showed the benefits to it. What was the biggest takeaway for you from researching beyond

belief? The biggest takeaway for me was that I am, and by extension, all of us, are capable of far more than we know. We're just scratching the surface of our capabilities. And there are many, many studies in the literature that I share in the book as well that just blows your mind. Right? The things that people can do when they believe, you know, monks who can raise their body temperature consciously. They can do that. There's a case study that I talk about where someone

who had Parkinson's disease, okay, who was bedridden during the day. They're in the sleep lab. And in the middle of the night, they wake up. They hop on a table. They raise a piece of furniture over their head and they start screaming alligator alligator because they were having a dream. There's a Parkinson's patient who was bedridden in the middle of the night got up and was fighting alligators in their sleep, right? They were having a delusion. They were having a, like a sleep

walking event because they weren't bound to the reality of their beliefs. They were unconscious at that moment. And so this, this goes on and on and on. That this, this demonstration is the rats we talked about earlier that when we unlock our true potential, we remove those limiting beliefs and adopt

possible for your life with all this that you've researched over the next five to 10 years? From my life specific for your life. Like it was anything that you felt like, uh, I'm only going to be able to do books a certain way or I'm going to be researcher. I'm going to be this

type of a dad or something that you always had until after this book, we're now you unlocked a new

hidden potential inside of you that you want to take on over the next five to 10 years.

“I think when, when I changed my relationship with my mom, I also changed my relationship with my”

daughter. Really? Yeah. How so? Typical teenage drama. Yeah. Like when I tell, you know, one of my friends who also has a teenage girl, oh my gosh, it's the worst teenage girls and they have other issues and drama and all that. And that's just a belief. That's just a belief. If you know in, uh, pre-industrialized countries, there's no such thing as a rebellious teenager. That's something we've invented in industrialized countries. Why?

Well, what do you mean, why doesn't it happen there? Why? Yeah. Why, why do we invent it or why is it happen? Because it's a belief. You know, the, the teenage brain that there's all these

hormones and they're all rebellious. When I tell people, this is not a fact. There is no such thing.

It's not of a foregone conclusion that a teenager has to be rebellious. Many cultures don't have rebellious teenagers. People are listening to this and saying, that's crazy. Why? Down to look at the science. Look at the science. Google it. It doesn't exist. The sugar makes your hyper. Every parent. Every parent knows you can't give your kid too much sugar. It makes them hyper. No, it's false. It's a complete myth. Look it up. But people hate this stuff because

we hate challenging our beliefs. We don't like it. We have this psychological immune system. And so if you feel that reaction, if there's a belief that's challenged, that you really don't want

“to believe that sounds crazy. Those are the beliefs you most need to explore. It's like, what?”

Principal thinking, yes. Yes. Not only is it probably not true, but it's defending you against something. Yes. Right. What is it defending? When I think to myself, my kid goes crazy when I give them sugar. My kid goes crazy when I give them too much social media. My kid is, whatever, whatever. What is that serving? What is that belief doing for me? It's getting reinforcing it. Exactly. Not only is it reinforcing. It's giving me something that's much more comfortable. It gives me

passivity. Remember, our default state is helplessness. We like that passivity. That's our default. Man, that is crazy. Yeah, it's interesting. I saw a clip online of a comedian doing an interview with a talk show host. And I can't remember what he's actually said. He said, you know, I heard something around like, oh, he has daughters. And they're about to turn teenage years. They're like 11 or 12 and he goes, oh, man, get ready. The interviewer is like, get ready.

It's about to be really hard for you. And the guy cut him off right before he goes, that's just a belief. Everyone who says that is just a shitty dad. It's like, it's just a crappy dad who didn't know how to connect with his daughters. You know, and just puts that label in this, all your daughters are about to be crazy when they're turning teenage years. This is just comfortable. Oh, yeah. Right. No, I don't have to actually do something.

You're like, there's something out there that's doing it. This is, by the way, whenever I go to the doctor, I need a prescription for something. You know how the doctor has to tell you all the side effects? I don't tell me. I don't want to know them. I don't want to hear the side effects. You don't hear it because then you're enforcing them. That's right. You're primed to look for those things. Yeah. This is how I actually I cured my insomnia. I used to have

terrible insomnia. And insomnia turns out, as I was doing this research, is highly susceptible to placebo effect. When they took, they put people in a lab who got great sleep. And they told them, hey, we were monitoring your sleep. You know, you slept really, really poorly. And then they had them take these objective tests of alertness and cognitive abilities. And guess what? These people who had gotten perfect sleep, when they were told you got crappy sleep believed,

they know on the objectively on the test they did worse. And they did the opposite. They took people who they interrupted their sleep. They gave them a bad night's sleep on purpose.

Told them you had a fantastic sleep. Wow. Look at these amazing scores. You did really well.

Great. They did very well in their hearts. I'm sharp. Right. And so I would wake up day after day.

“I think, oh, I'm feeling groggy. I'm feeling tired. I have a bad night's sleep. You only remember”

the parts when you're asleep when you were conscious. Yeah. But all that time you were unconscious, you don't remember. So today I have another mantra, one of these secular prayers that I repeat whenever I wake up at two in the morning, which happened sometimes. I repeat to myself this phrase. The phrase is that the body gets what the body needs if you let it. That's all I said. Just take a deep breath in. The body gets what the body needs if you let it. I just say that again and again.

And what that helps me do is to divert away from the rumination, which causes the leading causing insomnia. Yeah. If I don't get a night's sleep, then I can't perform tomorrow. And I've got this interview with Lewis and earlier that's going to be terrible. Whereas now I just tell myself, look, if I get a bad night's sleep tonight, I'll get a good night's sleep tomorrow. Yeah. I'm not going to have exactly what I need for today. As long as I exactly, that the body will

then you're like, or if you have some kind of severe condition, but for the vast majority of us,

this insomnia is produced because of the fear of insomnia. Of course. Gosh, that's the worst. That's the worst. Mirinfar.com, NAR and far.com. Beyond belief, the science-backed way to stop limiting yourself and achieve extraordinary results, this is going to be the book that you're going to want to get because for me, as someone who's a researcher, skeptic, if you can learn these things and really see the benefit of them, I feel like anyone who's skeptical

and who's analytical and needs the research to prove certain things, they're going to get it in this.

“And I truly believe, I truly believe that belief is everything. Like belief is everything.”

And my whole mission within my book, The Greatness Mindset, is to rid people of self-doubt, because I believe self-doubt is the killer of all dreams. Yeah. And when you doubt yourself, you will not accomplish your dreams. That's 100%. Like you said, you don't believe you can finish the marathon. You're not going to finish. But if you learn to believe in yourself, and you learn how to stay consistent with it and do what you talk about in the triangle of

motivation, have the behaviors that match those beliefs and what was the bottom one? The benefit, the behavior. Yeah, benefit, yeah, benefit, relief. You're good. And if you can stay consistent with that behavior and keep the belief that you can stay consistent with that behavior,

good things are to happen. So I want people to get beyond belief, powerful book,

change your mind, change your life. You can get it now, you can get it anywhere books are sold,

“Amazon, all the places. You're also on social media. I believe Instagram is your main spot,”

but you might be on LinkedIn as well. I think it's your content there. And EYAL99 on Instagram. I believe that's still your Instagram. But near and far dot com, got a lot of great resources and content there. Neera got a couple of final questions for you. One, I want to acknowledge you for taking this on because again, you're like the Dan Harris of meditation, but now I'm on belief in terms of stepping into new things at this season of life. You're extremely successful

as an author, speaker, business person. But to take on your own limiting beliefs at this season, it's hard to do. Most people don't risk enough to look at themselves and reflect and say, how can I try something new on? How can I let go of a belief that's not serving me in my relationship with my mom or other people in your life? How can I create more harmony at this season? So I acknowledge you for taking this on and actually applying the research that you've found. I asked you this

before, I think last time your on was like five or six years ago. But I'm curious what your three truths are now. And if you were able to live as long as you want, but at the end of the

“day you have to take all your work with you, all your writing, your books, your content is gone from”

the world. But you get to leave behind three truths, three things you know to be true, from all of your lessons. What would those three truths be for you? The three truths that I would leave behind. So that's all I get to leave these three truths. Three lessons, three truths, kind of like from all the things that you've learned up to now and all the things you think you will learn until your death. Yeah. You can't leave any of that content behind. Yeah. But you get

share of three truths. I think one is we do not see reality as it is. We see it as we are. I think another one would be that you are capable of far more than you know. And that your beliefs become your reality. You're beliefs don't become reality for everyone, but your beliefs become your. Yeah. Amen to that. Say a prayer. Say that prayer over and over again. Your beliefs become your reality. Repeat that mantra. Final question. What's your definition of

greatness? So last time you asked me that last time I was on, it was about doing what you say you're going to do, living with personal integrity. And I think now I've learned that real greatness is about having control over those beliefs. That it's one of the few things we can control. We can't control what's happening in the world. We can't control these all these things that are outside

what we're able to influence. But you always have the luxury to control those beliefs.

Can't control what happened to you in the past. Can't control what's going to happen to you in the future. But I think real greatness comes from controlling those beliefs so that they serve you rather than you serving them. Yeah. Thanks for being able to appreciate it. Thank you. Our full man. Thanks buddy. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's

episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad for you listening then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively

well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from

“you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind”

you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time

to go out there and do something great.