A (2:54)

Bingo. Wow. You saying that is so validating that you got what I was trying to say with this book. That's exactly right. And this is the paradigm. Congratulations. Confirmed, you're human. I think we all do this. We try and put our beliefs into it must meet this bar of a fact. It must be truth. Yeah, but we have different words for different things. A fact is an objective truth. It is something that is true whether you believe it or not. The world is more like a sphere than it is flat. Sorry, Flat Earthers. That's a fact. Then we have faith. On the other side of the spectrum, faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. God rewards the righteous. No evidence is needed for that. But in between fact and faith, we have a belief. And a belief is something very, very special because a belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. Which means that unlike fact or faith, it can change. But that's not how we think about beliefs. We think, this is what I believe and I always need to believe it. And so we're keeping these tools that have served us in the past without evaluating whether actually, is it still helping me or is it hurting me? And so it's that process, exactly as you said, of unpacking these beliefs and seeing do I still hold this belief because it's actually doing me good, or it's just a vestige of some other problem where it was a good tool. So the big takeaway is that beliefs are tools, not truths.

B (4:08)

And in so much as they're tools, you play with this idea that we can choose our tools.

A (4:14)

Yeah. So we do that by evaluating where we're stuck. That's, I think, step number one, you know, why are beliefs important? They're important because they change sustained motivation. Why sustained motivation so important? Because it turns out that whether you accomplish your goals or not, the key factor, the most important attribute is not resources. It's not skills, it's not information. We're drowning in information. We have tons of information. Right. Look at all these books telling us information. It's putting into practice by sustaining our motivation long enough. So that's why it's so important.

B (4:46)

Okay, let's just spend a moment on motivation. Where does motivation start? And why do we lose it so easily?

A (4:54)

So this is where I Had to completely change my mind, that I thought, you know, I studied economics in school and economics is about rational choice and that you have an incentive to do something, you'll do it. Right. It's all about trade offs and incentives. So it's kind of thought of as a straight line, that if I want to do something or if I want to get someone else to do something, there has to be a benefit and the behavior that will facilitate that benefit. Sure, but that's not good enough because we all know in reality that just knowing what to do doesn't mean we'll do it. We all basically know what to do. The information's out there. Ask ChatGPT, Google it, you'll find the answer to things. What's missing? What's missing is belief that if even if I know what to do, the behavior, right, and even if I want the benefit, if I don't believe, then it won't happen. So motivation is not a straight line, it's a triangle.

B (5:42)

I would counter that it's belief, but it's belief over time. Right. I'll give you a small example, super small, but it's like an immediate example. I want to build a writing practice. I have a writing coach. Hi, Amy, if you're listening, I have a writing coach and we make a plan. And currently our plan is that I'm going to write every day for two weeks and I'm three days in and my motivation is flagged. And my motivation is flagged because the kids woke up earlier than they were supposed to because I got really into your book and I wanted to finish it instead of reading.

A (6:10)

Sorry for that.

B (6:11)

For a million different reasons. Right. But that would be a great example of a motivation that flagged even when the result was clear and it was something that I wanted.

A (6:21)

So let's take this case study, for example. So if you want the benefit, but let's say that you don't believe you will get the benefit, so perhaps you have a boss who you don't think has your best interests at heart. So maybe they're not gonna give you that promotion or that raise and you don't believe in them, or you don't believe in this writing coach. Maybe don't. You don't really believe in Amy's process and you might not get the benefit, then motivation will decrease. Similarly, if you don't believe in the behavior and specifically your own behavior to achieve that goal. So maybe if you say, well, this keeps getting in the way, maybe this is who I am, I'm no good at this, I have a short attention span. It's too late for me. Yada, yada, yada. We call these limiting beliefs. If you don't have the underlying belief in the benefit and the behavior, you won't sustain your motivation. You won't reach the goal.

B (7:04)

Right now, motivation feels harder to hold onto than it actually did at the beginning of my professional life. Is this a narrative that I've trained myself on, or is this actually a truth or a fact?

A (7:16)

I would ask you, does it matter? Does it matter that it's true?

B (7:21)

You would come in with a question.

A (7:22)

Yes, right. That's my job. So the bar we have for a fact is different for the bar that we have for a belief that the bar for a fact needs to be that there's a. There's evidence. It's the laws of physics, for example, that make something. So whether something feels harder to you now from a motivational standpoint than it did when you first started your career. This is a belief. This is up here. And so the question shouldn't be, is it true? It doesn't matter. The question should be, is it useful? Beliefs are tools, not truths. So it turns out that having that high bar, saying, is this the case that, you know, AI does this and the market does this, and all these factors may or may not be true? The question is, does it serve you? What serves you isn't whether the belief is true per se, that you don't get some kind of, you know, gold medal for being true, for being, you know, for having the right conclusion. It's for sustaining that motivation. The, the, the big decisions in life that we spend most of our time on, these are not things where we can demand facts.

B (8:23)

Right?

A (8:23)

Should I take this job? Should I marry this person? Should I start my writing practice? We don't get facts, we get beliefs. And so we have to choose them wisely.

B (8:32)

Okay, so let's come back to the motivation triangle, which you have definitely talked me through. I took away your opportunity to name it, and I want you to name it for our listeners.

A (8:40)

Sure.

B (8:41)

How does the motivation triangle work?

A (8:42)

So that's where we consider what is the behavior I need to do? What is the benefit of why I want to do it, and do I hold the right beliefs in place in order to sustain that motivation? So for every effort, every goal, if the number one reason that people don't meet that goal is not a lack of resources or talent, it's sustaining motivation is that they simply quit. Not that quitting is always a bad thing. Sometimes we definitely should quit. But we quit far too soon than we should. And I'll give you a great case study that kind of illustrates the point. There was a study back in the 1950s by a biologist named Kurt Richter. And Richter took these rats, and he wanted to figure out how long a rat could swim. He just timed how long the rat swam for, and at about 15 minutes, the rat didn't exhaust itself. It just kind of gave up after 15 minutes. He noted that, and then he did another experiment. He wanted to see if he could increase the amount of time that the rat would swim for, how long they would persist. So he took a new group of rats, he put them in the same cylinders, and he stood that with there with a stopwatch until the 15 minute mark came. And at the 15 minute mark, he could see that the rats were starting to struggle. He reached in, pulled out the rat, dried it off, let it catch its breath, and then, plunk, put it back into the water. Now, the question was, after he conditioned the rats, he did this a few times. By the way, it's a little bit of a ethically dubious study. You can't do this anymore.

B (10:02)

I'm just gonna say that when I read it, all I could think about was, this is so cool.

A (10:05)

Yes, yes, it' but the rats are already dead, so we should learn from it. It already happened.

B (10:09)

It already happened.

A (10:10)

We can't do this kind of study.

B (10:10)

I would say secondarily, I then thought, well, I'm that rat.

A (10:14)

That's exactly right.

B (10:15)

Right.

A (10:16)

That's exactly the metaphor. So how much you already read, you know the answer. Okay, but for most people, they don't know how much longer the rat swam for. And when you ask them to guess, they say, okay, well, maybe from 15 minutes, maybe the rat doubled its persistence. Maybe tripled, maybe quadrupled. My goodness. Wouldn't it be amazing if you could go from 15 minutes of persistence to an hour studying on that hard for that hard test your writing practice, sustaining that four times longer, running that marathon four times longer. That would be incredible if you could go from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. But that's not what happened. Not even close. The rats went from 15 minutes to 60 hours. Yeah, they became 240 times more persistent. Now, what changed? Their bodies hadn't changed. Nothing physically had changed in them. The experiment, their environment was exactly the same. Same cylinder, same amount of water. We can't ask the rats what happened, but we think the only variable left was that something switched in their minds. Yeah, There was something about their situation where something was unlocked. The 60 hours were always there within them. They just needed to know that salvation might be possible, that something might save them if they persisted. And so this demonstrates the amazing power of belief because we all have those 60 hours with us, within us. But we quit at the 50 minute

B (11:28)

mark on so many things, on so many things. And for all of us, we're looking for the ways to unlock our ability to understand that we have the 60 hours within and to understand what is possible. You visit the work of one of my favorite self help gurus of all time. Self help guru is my term. Probably not the term she would use, but Byron Katie was one of the first people in my early adulthood. His work actually shifted the way that I thought about beliefs. And you reference it. Byron Katie actually asks us not to change our mind about a belief, but to open up a peephole into the possibility that that belief might be a little bit dubious.

A (12:12)

Right.

B (12:13)

And there is great opportunity in just understanding that. I wonder if you might talk through the way that one does that.

A (12:21)

So this is called inquiry based stress reduction. And so what inquiry based stress reduction asks us to do is to collect a portfolio of perspect. We don't have to change our minds. You know, the brain hates changing its mind. That's why this book is going to be kind of controversial because I'm asking people to reconsider their perspectives. And your default state hates that.

B (12:39)

We hate changing our mind because it interferes with your sense of identity. I mean, this is core, right?

A (12:44)

That's right. Well, because our default state is passivity. We used to think there was a kind of gospel in the psychology literature that everybody believed called learned helplessness, that you learn to be helpless. And this explained all kinds of socioeconomic phenomenon. Turns out the authors of that study, Seligman and Meier a few years ago, decided that they were completely wrong, that the conclusion was 180 degrees from what they thought it was, that we do not learn helplessness. Helplessness is our default state. We learn hope. Just like those rats had to learn hope. They had to learn what was possible, that salvation might be possible if they might be taken out of those cylinders. We are born helpless. Think about how a baby comes into the the world completely helpless. We have to learn agency. So this should completely change our mind. And that when we hear those limiting beliefs, those beliefs that decrease our motivation, that increase our suffering, when we hear that whisper of, you can't do this, it's too late, you don't have time, you're no good at this. This is hard. That is your brain's safe place. Your brain knows that it can retreat you into what happened before, into what the decisions you've always made, into the mindsets you've always had. Because that's safe. You survived back then, and so you'll survive in the future. And that's what evolution maximizes for. Right? Survival, not necessarily flourishing. So what that means is, and what this process of inquiry based stress reduction asks us to do is to say, okay, I have one perspective, I have one belief. What are other potential options? Not necessarily to change our mind because our brain hates changing our mind because of that default state, but in order to give us other opportunities to see things that are just as true. Now, this can feel like deception. And when people do this process, the first go around, they typically hate it. It's very hard for them. Right, because it asks them to question whether the exact opposite of what they believe may also be true. And of course, it is possible.

B (14:38)

I wanna bring up an example and I wanna work through it. My wife. I have a belief about my wife, who is awesome. She's so awesome that she lets me talk about her on the show. I have a perception that Frances, she's just so critical. Frances had just been traveling and while she was away, we ran out of coffee. And so to surprise her while she was gone and to be a good partner, I went to the store and I got three new cans of it and I had it ground. And I asked for ground pour over. And we got home, she made the coffee this morning. And then she said, did you get this ground medium or did you get this ground pour over? And I inside was suddenly so mad. Right. My brain just said, this is how she is. Yeah, she's gonna use this opportunity. She's too critical to focus on that one thing. So let's start there. Because I started there this morning.

A (15:29)

Yeah, that was just this morning. Amazing. Okay. So perfect. This is such. And even I love these personal examples because they're so relatable. And I talk about a situation I had with my mother in the book as well, but you can apply this to anything, to a workplace relationship, to yourself as well. About why you have these not only beliefs about people. Because not only do we not see reality as it is, we don't. We definitely don't see people as they are. We see our beliefs about people.

B (15:53)

Right.

A (15:54)

So let's see what would be the best way to work through this. The first thing is to look for the situation that is causing you suffering. So you found it here's this thing that happened, and now we want to write down that belief. So Frances is too judgmental. Was that the belief?

B (16:08)

Yeah, she's too judgmental.

A (16:08)

Frances is too judgmental. Okay. So the first question of inquiry based stress reduction is to ask ourselves, is it true?

B (16:16)

Well, on first pass, it feels real true. But the truth is that I'm a pain in the butt to live with. I really, really, truly am. And she lets most things go, and she spends a lot more time in the kitchen with the coffee than I do, because she's responsible for a lot of what happens in the kitchen. I sure can think of a lot of things that I have done in the kitchen and with our food preparation that she could have commented on and didn't.

A (16:44)

Okay, okay. So that leads us to the second question, which you've already jumped ahead a little bit. But the second question is, is it absolutely true? And you've already. So typically, for example, with the situation with my mother where I thought she was being too critical and hard to please, I immediately jumped to, of course it's true. I just told you what happened, dummy. What a dumb question.

B (17:01)

This is what happened.

A (17:02)

This is what happened. This is a fact. I'm gonna prove to you why. And she always does this. And this is so typical.

B (17:06)

Right, Right.

A (17:06)

Proving to you why my beliefs about her are correct. And now she's reinforced it yet again.

B (17:10)

Sure.

A (17:11)

So then the second question is, is it absolutely true? And the absolutely true part is, even though it sounds very similar to the first question, forces us to consider, is there even the slightest option? Could there be any other universe where there's a different interpretation of what happened? That it's not. It could be that she was not being too critical.

B (17:28)

I mean, let's take it on face value. My wife always buys a coffee. I did this time. She wants to make sure that if I do it next time, I know the difference.

A (17:36)

It was a statement of fact.

B (17:37)

Yeah. So it was.

A (17:38)

She was observing what had happened.

B (17:40)

Yeah.

A (17:40)

Okay, fantastic. So the third question is, how do I react when I hold onto that belief? When I have this belief, who am I? How do I behave? How do I feel?

B (17:50)

I'm a little spiteful. I don't like how I feel. I feel close. I feel, like, not terribly open to her. I feel a little petty.

A (17:58)

Crummy.

B (17:58)

Crummy.

A (17:59)

Yeah.

B (17:59)

Not a good feeling.

A (18:00)

Okay, now the fourth question. If I had a magic wand and I tapped you on the head, if you have that belief anymore, suddenly, poof, it disappeared. It was never there. That this belief that Frances is too critical. How would you feel?

B (18:12)

Great. I'd welcome the feedback and keep on going and say what I actually think, which is, you have been gone for 10 days, and I'm so happy you're home again. Right. That would be the focus.

A (18:24)

Amazing.

B (18:25)

Yeah. Yeah.

A (18:26)

So what do we do? I'm getting goosebumps, by the way. What do we do? In just 30 seconds, we determined one, that this thing we thought was a fact, it was just a belief, could maybe not be 100% true. There's a crack of. There's a shred of evidence. Maybe there's a different interpretation, that it doesn't really serve us. We don't really feel very good with that belief. And that four, we would be much better off without it.

B (18:45)

Yeah.

A (18:46)

Okay. So now we've opened up the possibility that there might be beliefs that serve us better. So now we collect different beliefs. So the first belief we've got, we've got that one belief, Francis, is too judgmental. Okay. We've got that one. That's the only way we could see reality through. Now we want to collect other perspectives. By the way, what's interesting about that first perspective is that believing it, that Frances is too judgmental, gives you only one way out of suffering.

B (19:07)

Yeah.

A (19:08)

The only way out of suffering with that belief, with that lens that you see her through, is that she has to change so you can be happy.

B (19:15)

Right.

A (19:16)

She has to stop being judgmental. And that's what we try and do. I'm gonna prove to you why you're wrong and I'm right. And until you change, I'm not satisfied. I'm gonna continue to suffer.

B (19:23)

And she can't stop being judgmental because I believe that she's judgmental. And that's coming from me. That's my head.

A (19:28)

That's right. And that leads us actually to one of the worst pieces of relationship advice, is that we're supposed to venture. We're supposed to get things off our chest. We're supposed to tell people how we really feel. Turns out what the studies find is that when we do that, we're doing nothing but reinforcing this effigy of a person that is not even real. That the more we know someone, the more we see them as we are and we believe that they are rather than actually how they are. And so we start to judge people based on those beliefs. So, okay, the first belief we've got, that's solidified. Second belief could be to do this turnaround. We ask ourselves, could the exact opposite be True. So the opposite of Frances is too judgmental is. Frances is not too judgmental. You said a little bit, but how could that also be true?

B (20:14)

You would not believe the things she let slide. She does a lot more of the work in the home, and I do a lot more of the work outside of the home to make our collective work thrive. I spend a lot of time in the home, and I mess things up constantly that she does not comment on. You don't even want to see the laundry after I've attempted to do it. And for the most part, she thanks me.

A (20:37)

Yeah. What's interesting about that is that it sounds like those are the same things that she would say if she was having an argument with you and you were back to a traditional way of arguing, of you were being judgmental. No, I wasn't. Look at all the things that I do that I don't. Yes. I'm not judgment. That's probably what she would say. So that's the beauty of this technique. It helps you get into the mind of the other party to see that there's another way to look at things without them having to tell you to do that. Because nobody likes to say, well, you need to see it from my perspective.

B (21:01)

Sure.

A (21:01)

So you're doing it yourself.

B (21:02)

Right.

A (21:03)

There's another potential turnaround we could do here is a turnaround to the self.

B (21:08)

Yeah.

A (21:08)

As opposed to Frances too judgmental. I am too judgmental. Could that. Is there any. Now it's gonna hit different. It's gonna hit a little funny. Right. But could there be any possible way that might also be true?

B (21:22)

Completely. What am I looking for perfect from her? Do I need her to be perfect? And if she's not perfect, then here I am in a studio telling you what's wrong with my wife. Like, I'm very judgmental when it comes right down to it.

A (21:35)

Interesting that you were kind of expecting how she should behave. I went out and ground the coffee for you, and here you're saying this versus that. So there's some judgment there as well.

B (21:45)

Yeah, hugely.

A (21:46)

Yeah.

B (21:46)

Hugely.

A (21:47)

Amazing. So now we've got three potential beliefs.

B (21:49)

Right. What I loved about this is you're not telling me I need to therefore go and choose the one. That's right.

A (21:56)

Nope.

B (21:56)

You're just. Let's just put them all on the table. Let's see how many things could be true in this situation.

A (22:00)

Exactly.

B (22:01)

And stepping away from it, I feel better and lighter.

A (22:04)

That's exactly right. There's one more belief that maybe we should dig into a little bit if it's useful again, we're not changing anybody's minds. We're not saying what's true, what's false. Nope, that's not what we're doing. We're just like Pokemon cards or baseball cards. We're just collecting perspectives. I kind of heard that there was another perspective, which is that I am too judgmental towards myself.

B (22:24)

Oof.

A (22:27)

Anything there?

B (22:28)

Everything there? Yeah, of course, in my relationship, but outside of my relationship, I feel like that's a very human attribute. But yes, I am too judgmental toward myself.

A (22:45)

When the thing that you did, grounding the coffee didn't work out the way it was supposed to have worked out in your made up reality of how things are supposed to be expectations didn't meet reality.

B (22:56)

Yeah, there I am over there being like, darn me. Honestly, my wife had moved on, she was making the lunches for the day, and I'm still sitting over here in my ruling belief being very hard on myself.

A (23:09)

Right. That there's this emotional residue that you messed up over something super trivial. In retrospect, that's the core of this whole process. And we can do here we're showing how it's done in interpersonal relationships, but let me tell you, it can be done in multi billion dollar business deals as well. That you can see things from a different perspective and uncover things that are just as true. That's what this process is all about. So now you can judge for yourself and say, okay, I have four potential beliefs. One I know is not gonna lead me down reducing a path of my suffering.

B (23:40)

Sure.

A (23:41)

These other three beliefs I can try on. Just like you walk into a clothing store, you don't try on the first shirt you see or the shirt you came in with. You try on, see if it fits and then walk around with it for a bit to see how it goes. So trying on one of those different beliefs and saying, how does my life change? Do I increase my motivation to repair this relationship? To get closest with Frances versus trying to avoid her and avoid the discomfort of that relationship.

B (24:05)

Sure.

A (24:05)

So one belief is going to demotivate you, is going to say, well, unless she changes, I'm not going to make any effort. The other beliefs actually make you more motivated to repair the relationship, to grow together. What does it do about your suffering? For me, when I take on this perspective that that person is causing my suffering because they're doing something wrong, I continue to suffer because they haven't changed. Whereas these other perspectives, immediately my suffering is gone because of what I choose to believe again. Does it matter if it's true? No, it doesn't matter. It's true because it's not a fact. It's a belief. And beliefs are tools, not truths.

B (24:43)

You know, there's a metaphor that I keep coming back to in thinking about this work, which is that if one's brain, one's mind is an orchestra, too often I am the loudest brass instrument in the orchestra, trying to play with everyone else, but louder than everyone else. But your book offers me the opportunity to step back and be the conductor, which actually puts everything into harmony.

A (25:07)

It's a beautiful metaphor.

B (25:10)

I want to just spend a couple of minutes talking about how your book is very different than some of the gobbledygook around the secret that I came up with years ago. You know, the secret said, if you believe it, it will happen. That's not what you're saying, right?

A (25:25)

The exact opposite.

B (25:27)

So help me to understand. You get to it at the very end of the book, but help me to understand the difference between this and

A (25:31)

positive thinking, because it will upset people. That's why I put it at the back of the book. Yeah, I wanted to bring them far enough. So, first of all, so my writing is always very based on research. I don't write about the metaphysical. That's somebody else's book. And so I wanted to look at it from a scientific perspective of what does the research literature say about manifesting and vision boarding and positive thinking? And the research is not so good on this stuff that it turns out that it's actively harmful when you visualize outcomes. So when we manifest, when we think that if I sit here and I vibrate and whatever, and then the universe will just. Just bring me good things, it turns out that the research studies have found Gabrielle Otogen did this work where she connected people to blood pressure monitors as they were visualizing what they wanted. The outcomes. I want a beach body. I want that big house in a Lamborghini. I want love in my life. So they visualized the outcomes, and it turns out that their blood pressure dropped. And when she followed up with these people, they became less likely to do the things they had to do to get those outcomes. It was as if their brain was telling them, you already got it, you already made it, so relax. And so when she followed up, for example, with students who were visualizing that they'd get an A on the test, they studied less and then did worse on that actual test. And so the right way to use this type of research is not to visualize the outcome. It's called mental contrasting, where what we're doing is visualizing the things in our way. So if you think about, you know, the self help industry took visualizing which athletes do, for example, visualizing is a thing that works.

B (27:09)

Yeah.

A (27:10)

They twisted it into something that doesn't work. So the visualizing the outcomes, the vision boards, the end results, doesn't bring us what we want. What athletes actually do is that they visualize the things in their way. I'm on offense and defense is coming at me, I'm skiing down the mountain and here's what's in my way on the path. That's what we have to do. And so the way mental contrasting works is that we prepare ourselves for the invariable difficulties along the way. What am I gonna say? What am I gonna do? Most importantly, how am I going to deal with how I feel? And this is, I think, one of the biggest lessons I've Learned in the 6 years of research is that pain and suffering are not the same thing. We see this again and again and again, from chronic pain to struggles at work to relationship difficulties. We assume that if we feel pain, we are suffering. We have to do something about it right away. And that's not true. That when we can separate those two things and prepare ourselves mentally for this obstacle is coming and I know what to do. I have a practice in place, then we can actually do the right behaviors to eventually get the outcomes.

B (28:15)

That was bestselling author Nir Eyal. You can find his latest book, Beyond Belief, wherever books are sold. I'm Jessi Hempel and this is hello Monday. Thanks for joining us. I'll be right back here in the studio next week. Hello Monday is a production of LinkedIn News. The show is produced by Rachel Karp, Ava Ahmad Begi and Adam Yates. Sarah Storm is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Assaf Gidron. The show is mixed by Tim Boland. Our theme music was composed just for us by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Michaela Greer is a friend of the show forever, as is Victoria Taylor. Kyle Ranson Walsh is editor at large of Editorial Graphics. Dave Pond is head of production and creative operations. Courtney Koop is head of original programming. Dan Roth is the editor in chief of LinkedIn. I'm Jesse Hempel. This is hello Monday. See you next week.