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- [00:00]
A
Nir Eyal, welcome to the show.
- [00:02]
B
Thanks Chris. Great to be back, dude.
- [00:04]
A
2019 Episode 104 all the Way to
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B
Now I'm going to take credit for all your success since then.
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A
It was, it was built.
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B
Is that okay? Was I the lucky charm?
- [00:15]
A
It was built on a foundation of you and indistractable. That's exactly correct. New one, all about belief. Why is belief so important?
- [00:25]
B
Okay, so beliefs turns out to be the lens with which we see the world. And I had no idea how profound this research that's been coming out over the past several years has on our day to day lives. How beliefs shape what we see. Literally shape what we see. I can show the same exact image to two different people and they will see completely different things. It's called the Kafr illusion. You could look at this piece of paper and I can show you it to one person based on where they grew up and, and their priors, their beliefs, and they'll see circles. I can show it to somebody else based on where they grew up. They'll see rectangles. It's incredible. Beliefs not only shape what you see, not just figuratively, but they actually shape reality that you see. They shape what you feel, your internal state, and most importantly, they affect what you do. And so everything comes upstream from these beliefs. And so you better get these beliefs right if they're going to run your life.
- [01:18]
A
I think one of the challenges people have when they hear the word belief is it gets perilously close to Rhonda Byrne, the secret manifestation. You know, you've come from a productivity background, same as me, kind of hardcore, quite sterile almost in a way, very sort of frameworks, rigid structures. Belief sounds very, almost whimsical as a topic to get into.
- [01:42]
B
You know that, that is a great point because there is a lot of bullshit out there. And so part of what I wanted to do with this research that I've done over the past six years for beyond belief was to really separate what works and what doesn't. And a lot of it, frankly, I'll give that crowd some credit. A lot of it works, but not for the reasons they say it does that like, you know, I hate to burst anybody's bubble, but no, nothing is, is, is vibrating and quantum whatevering and like the universe really doesn't give a, it is not, you know, the, the, all the, the manifesting stuff. It, it can work kind of. And I do dive into some research around how turns out positive thinking can have a very negative effect if you don't do it properly. So I kind of wanted to dispel some of those myths. And yet I've changed my mind a lot about a lot of stuff that I didn't used to do. And I used to kind of, you know, I'm very science backed. You know, all my books have pages and pages of citations to peer reviewed studies. I have to see the study. Not just it worked for me, but I need to see the peer reviewed studies that show that it worked for others in a controlled study. And so there's, there's, there's a lot of mythology out there, even in the academic community, to be honest. There's a lot of studies that I look through that I thought were kind of, you know, gold standard studies. And you kind of dig into how they were done methodologic, methodologically, and you realize, oh, they're kind of crappy studies too. So it was a lot of sorting through the, the, the meat from the chaff to figure out what we can actually practically apply to our lives. The good news is there's a lot of unbelievable research that has come out over the past several years that just absolutely blew my mind. For example, one thing is that we now know that placebos work even when, you know, they're a placebo, which we didn't used to know before. Right? We used to think that placebos had to have some kind of deception effect. Right. That you had to do. You both people, the, the person prescribing the medication in a double blind control study had to not know who was receiving the placebo. And the person, of course receiving it couldn't know if it was a placebo. Turns out that's not true, that you can get amazing effects. Ted Kaptuk at Harvard showed this with IBS patients. He gave people a pill bottle that said placebos on it. By the way, you can go on Amazon today and buy placebo pills with five star reviews that say, amazing how fast acting this placebo was. It's incredible. He told people, hey, this is a placebo. It is a completely inert substance. However, it has been shown to show to help some people with symptoms of ibs. Turns out it performed just as well as the leading medication. No, not only that, wait, the story gets better. People called up Dr. Kaptchuk afterwards and said, hey, that placebo pill was amazing for my symptoms. Can I get some more of those? So, well, you gotta make sure it's
- [04:24]
A
the right brand of placebo pill because if you change the strain, the gut microbiome won't respond. But I well, dude, it is wild. I remember reading a study about branded ibuprofen being branded painkillers being more effective than own label painkillers. You don't want to get the CVS own brand, you want to get the Nurofen version of it. For the same reason that despite the fact that people know it's the precise same structure that's inside of there at the same dose, just the expectation effect that David Robson wrote about, which I'm sure you're familiar with, it's just across everything.
- [05:01]
B
It's crazy.
- [05:03]
A
That is wild.
- [05:05]
B
Yeah, yeah. And it just goes on and on. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. So not only does it affect our bodies and in fact how our, our biology becomes our beliefs. In many ways, it's, it's much more nuanced and much more practical than I used to think that. You know, I think a lot of people think that there's some kind of like magic to placebos and placebos can heal you. It turns out that's not really true, that there's a difference between sickness and illness. Sickness is in the body, some kind of physical malady, some kind of physical disease, some kind of something that's not working properly in the body. Illness is the psychological perception of symptoms. So placebos don't work at all when it comes to sickness. They're really effective when it comes to illness. And so you can actually practically use many of these tools, both, you know, things that look like pharmaceuticals, like pills and injections and treatments and potions, but also rituals. Right. So for the first time in my life, I started to pray. I, I didn't pray since I was a little kid. And now I started adopting prayer in my life because it's incredible. Like, if you look at the research, people who pray, they live longer, they are a lot healthier, they are happier, they have lower, lower incidence of depression, anxiety. Now what's really crazy is that turns out the studies show that you actually get a lot of the same benefits from prayer, even without faith. And that really blew my mind. And I think this is exactly what I'm trying to address here. This, this crisis, this epidemic that I think we're seeing of loneliness, disconnection, anxiety, you know, all kinds of maladies I think are coming from the, the fact that we become more secular. You know, in the states, 30% of Americans today identify as none. It's the largest religious group in America. N o n e, not N u n, not the Catholic none, but N o N e people who don't affiliate with any religion. And in fact, many of them call themselves spiritual but not religious. You probably heard this a ton, right? You're in Austin. You, you have a lot of people around you who call themselves spiritual, not religious. Well, those people are the worst off. They have the highest incidences of anxiety and depression disorder than other groups. So you're, you're more likely to suffer if you say you're spiritual and not religious than if you just say you're a free thinker or agnostic or of course, if you are religious. So it turns out you can get a lot of the same benefits. And this is what I discovered by using prayer with ritual almost as a placebo. Maybe you stop questioning, even as I did, whether I need it to be an absolute fact that everything I'm saying is actually true the way that the religious leader would say it and rather just go about the actual rituals that have been around for thousands and thousands of years. And so that's part of what I discovered on this journey as well.
- [07:43]
A
What do you think is the reason for spiritual but not religious having the worst outcomes?
- [07:49]
B
I think that it loses the fundamental tenets of, of what religion gives us. So, you know, in the, the, the story that I went on the Jordan, the journey that I went on, I should say, was that I, I went to. Well, let me back up a second. Let me, let me tell you about the study that inspired this. So I read this study that showed that they, they took, they, they called people into the lab and they had a group that was religious and spiritual people who had a faith practice that believed in some kind of higher power, some kind of supernatural. And they also had a group of people who were not spiritual at all, didn't have any faith tradition. And then they had a control group and they taught the, the people who didn't have a faith tradition how to pray. And the control group, they said, do whatever you want. They brought those people later on into a lab later on, and they asked all three groups to put their hand inside very cold water. Now this is kind of a standard assessment. It's a pain tolerance test. And we see how long you can last in that very, very, very cold, almost freezing water. And they also measure like facial grimaces and, you know, different expressions. And if you say anything about the pain, so they're measuring your pain tolerance and how long you can finally stay in the water. Well, no surprise, the people who prayed, who had a faith based prayer practice, they lasted much longer than the control group. But even the people who were taught how to pray, who were did not have a faith background. If they could substitute some other word, okay, the universe, the sum of all forces, Mother nature, something that was meaningful to them. They also had higher pain tolerance than the control group. And so this fascinated me. And so I went to five religious leaders. And this is going to sound like the setup of a. Of a joke, but this is exactly what happened. I went to a rabbi, an imam, a priest, a monk, and a swami, and I asked them all the same question. How do you pray even if you have doubts about God? And I took away from each of them practices that I think anyone can use, whether you have a belief in the supernatural or not. If you do have a faith in the supernatural, that's fantastic. Turns out that a lot of us, I was missing out because I wanted to have the fact that I'm not going to pray unless I absolutely believe exactly what the religion says. And now I've been able to release that, that now every time I go by a place of worship, whether it's a church or a mosque or a synagogue, if they'll have me inside, I go in and pray. And it doesn't cost me anything. And it helps me refocus, it helps me become grateful, and it sometimes engages me in a community. All these practices that religion teaches have kind of escaped us, by the way. And interesting for not you asked, you know, why is spiritual but not religious? Why does that have these negative outcomes? Not every country is the same when it comes to that regard. In fact, in Japan, I just got back from Japan a few weeks ago. In Japan, it's the exact opposite. They are religious but not spiritual. So the Japanese, they absolutely will go to the Shinto shrines, they'll go to the Buddhist temples, they do all the rituals. But when you actually ask them, do you actually, you know, do you really have faith in this supernatural animism? You know, not really. Not so much. But they do the ritual and they gain all these psychological benefits that come from it.
- [11:11]
A
That's so interesting. That is so cool. I can imagine a lot of people thinking, oh, this is perilously close to wishful thinking. You're asking people to delusion themselves into see it, believe it, wish it, achieve it, but don't actually have to do anything about it. Square the circle of being a pretty grounded, agentic guy who wants to make things happen and realizes that you need to row the boat with not wanting to rely too much on delusion and whimsy.
- [11:48]
B
Totally. So, okay, let's address those separately. So first of all, you are already gaslighting yourself. You're already delusional. In fact, none of us actually see reality as it is. How do we know this? The brain is absorbing about 11 million bits of information per second. So right now, listening to my voice, your brain is actually taking in 11 million bits of information. The sound of my voice in your ears, the light entering your eyeballs, the temperature of the room, your brain is actually absorbing all this 11 million bits of information. But conscious processing only has the capacity for about 50 bits of information. So 11 million bits of information, to put that in perspective, that's like reading War and Peace twice every second. Okay? Tremendous amount of information. 50 bits of information is about one sentence of information per second. So 50 bits versus 11 bits, that's 0.000045 of the information you're receiving are you able to absorb. The brain just can't deal with it. So what does it do? It has to use what we call predictive processing. It doesn't see reality as it is. It sees reality as it expects it to. Chris?
- [13:01]
A
Appear.
- [13:02]
B
There you go. Right? As you expect it to appear. As you expect it to be. How did you know that that was the next word? Because your brain predicted it based on what we call priors. Based on your prior experience, your prior beliefs. And so, based on those factors, you are seeing reality not as it actually is in a second. You're seeing it based on a prediction. So you're already living in a simulation. It's not the Matrix that we all live in. Not like. Not like the movie. We all live in our own simulation, inside our own heads at every single, single second. Now, what we don't realize is that our beliefs are already deluding us through what we call limiting beliefs. These are beliefs that SAP your motivation and delude you into doing things that oftentimes you later regret. Right? I'm not a morning person. I'm too old. I'm too young. I'm too fat. I'm too thin. It's too late. I have no time. Right. Like all these limiting beliefs that we tell ourselves all the time, they're already a delusion. You're already gaslighting yourself. What I'm advocating for, what I've discovered, is that you can actually choose your beliefs. Because beliefs are not facts, okay? Facts are something different. Facts are defined as objective truths, okay? It's something that's true whether you believe it or not. The world is more like a sphere than it is flat, sorry, flat Earth. There is a fact on the opposite End of the spectrum is what we call faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. What happens in the afterlife? God rewards the righteous. These are matters of faith. They do not require evidence.
- [14:31]
A
Do you see these as kind of two opposite ends of the same spectrum?
- [14:35]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:35]
A
Because of the evidence requires 100% evidence, and one that doesn't require any evidence at all. Okay, cool.
- [14:41]
B
That's right. Now in the middle is a belief. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on evidence. So you can choose your beliefs. And these beliefs shape what you see, what you feel, and what you do. And we carry them around as if they are ultimate truths, as if they are facts. I think the vast majority of our personal problems, our interpersonal problems, our political problems, come from the fact that we see these truths, these facts as immutable, when really most of them are beliefs. And those are the beliefs that guide our life. If you think about the decisions we have to make, should I move to this city? Should I take this job? Should I date this person? All of these questions are based on beliefs, not facts. We don't have perfect certainty about answering these questions. They're based on beliefs. And so if we take a step back, we can observe our beliefs for the first time for most of us, because you can't see your own limiting beliefs. It's like your face, right? You can't see see your face even though you have it all day long, unless you look at the mirror. So unless we sit down and observe, what are these limiting beliefs holding me back? You don't even know you have these limiting beliefs. Of course you can see everyone else's limiting beliefs. I bet you every single person you know, well, you could probably say, oh, I know that person's limiting beliefs. You just can't see your own limiting beliefs. And so that's why we have to pause, take them out, and figure out, are they serving me or are they hurting me? So the big aha for me and what's absolutely changed my life over the past, you know, the years that I've done this research is this is that I constantly remind myself that beliefs are tools, not truths. Beliefs are tools, not truths. You can use them, and once they don't serve you, you can put them down. Like a carpenter. Carpenter doesn't say, oh, a hammer. Hammer is the one and only true tool. No, a carpenter says, sometimes I use a hammer, sometimes you use a saw, sometimes I use a wrench, and you use the right tool for the job, just like you can put down those old Beliefs pick up new ones.
- [16:34]
A
What comes first, Evidence or belief
- [16:39]
B
evidence? Because all of our beliefs are based on past experiences. So if you're defining evidence as past experiences, as priors, then yeah, they come from. From our past experiences in some way.
- [16:51]
A
Okay, in that case, how. How do we get escape velocity from just. This is a pattern from my past. I want a belief that isn't necessarily associated with that. I have struggled to maintain going to the gym in the past. Therefore, I am the sort of person who doesn't really go to the gym consistently. That seems to be a dead end. Right. If our beliefs are based on past patterns, and that is the evidence, and that's. Well, until we change the pattern, the belief can't change. Is that right?
- [17:25]
B
Well, we can recognize that none of these things are laws of nature, that they're up here. Right. That we are making these up. So when we say, I'm the kind of person who. You should have a big red flag, by the way. Also, with other people, we don't see other people. Just like we don't see reality as it really is. We don't see other people as they really are. We see our beliefs about people. And it's interesting, the more you know somebody, the more you see their beliefs, which is why many. I don't know if you've had this experience. I had this all the time where I'll meet somebody and they'll be so nice to me, and then their family member will come around and they're absolutely schmucks to their family member. They treat them like garbage. I see that all the time. Because it tends to be the people we know best that we say, oh, she always does that. Or, that's so like him. Right? And we start building these. These effigies of people because of how we see them and of course, how we see ourselves. So how do we. What do we do about this? What's the practical tip here? We look for the areas of our life where we consistently get stuck. The New Year's resolution that has been there for ages. The pain and suffering in our life that we can't seem to escape. And I'm talking even the most extreme types of pain. I did this amazing research on hypnosidation. Like people who literally have scalpels opening their bodies and they can do it without any anesthesia whatsoever. Chronic pain. People who have overcome chronic pain, fibromyalgia, all through the power of beliefs. So. So where we look for. We look for these. These. These reoccurring problems that we seem to get stuck on. And that's where we look for underneath. What we find are typically these limiting beliefs and then we have a process to what what do we do next with them?
- [19:05]
A
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- [20:38]
B
Because the way we think of motivation I think is is incomplete that we think of motivation in the traditional economic sense. That it's all about incentives, that it's kind of a straight line, that if I want the benefit of a behavior, then I'll do the behavior to get the benefit. Right? Classic. Like that's how we pay salaries, right? If you, if you do the job description, you get the salary. But there's something clearly missing. Motivation is not a straight line. Motivation is a triangle. You have behavior on one side. Here's what I need to do, then you have the benefit. Here's why I want to do it. But the thing Missing holding the whole thing together, the triangle together is belief. And if I don't believe in the outcome. So for example, if I'm working for a boss who I don't think has my best interests at heart, I don't believe I'm going to get that promotion. I don't believe I'm going to get that raise because I don't trust my boss. I don't believe in them, I'm not gonna get the benefit. And so I lose trust in that benefit. Much more likely. And what I see is quite often the case for all, for everyone, is a lack of belief in myself to do the behavior right, that for whatever reason I don't trust myself to do that thing. And if I lose faith, if I lose the belief in myself, then I also won't do the behavior. So for, for, for motivation to persist over the long term. And we know that persistence is this defining trait. Persistence and adaptability, two most important traits in achieving your goals. You will quit unless you have not only the, the, the belief in what you are doing and the belief in the benefit, that's what holds it all together. And I think that that's the piece that's oftentimes missing, I guess as well.
- [22:15]
A
The set point that we're coming into this with, around belief is it doesn't feel quite as in our hands, it doesn't feel like the sort of thing that we can engineer because again, it is further away from the discipline, the productivity system, the five steps to get you there. Can you engineer belief is a question that probably a lot of people have. I wish I could believe in it, but they've struggled with it. So yeah, I think we've got a bit of conceptual inertia coming in from where we were previously.
- [22:45]
B
To me, that's the fun part is that you can try on the craziest beliefs and they always sound crazy. Whatever that liberating belief is, it always sounds ridiculous because we love our limiting beliefs. They served us at one point. They're comforting. We don't have to change and we don't want to see any other potential way. And I'll share what happened to me doing a similar exercise. And this has to do with a very personal relationship with my mom. She had her birthday not that long ago, her 74th. And I called her. I, I, and I wanted to do something nice for her, so I wanted to get her some flowers. Problem was I was in Singapore at the time. She was in central Florida where I grew up. And I wanted to, to do something special. So I, I, I, I stayed up till one in the morning calling up florists, making sure that I found the right one, that had good reviews, that they could get there in time, that despite the Florida heat, they wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't shrivel, that they would get there. I went to sleep 1am I patted myself on the shoulder. I said, okay, good job. Near you. You, you did it. You're a good son. And I called my mom up the next morning, and I said, hey, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers? And she says, yes, thank you very much. I got the flowers. But you should know that they were half dead and you really shouldn't order from them anymore. To which I blurted out something that I would have said when I was 13. I said something to the effect of, well, that's the last time I ever buy you flowers. And, Chris, that went over about as well as you think. It didn't go over very well at all. Now, after the call, my wife turned to me and she said, hey, do you want to do a turnaround on this? And I said, like, I definitely did not want to do the turnaround. This mumbo jumbo, you know, hocus pocus, touchy feely crap, I didn't need that. I wanted to vent. I wanted to tell her why my mom was being way too judgmental, and I wanted her to let me vent. Well, it turns out the research shows that venting does not work. That venting does nothing but cement the vision that you have of people, the beliefs that you have about people. It just makes them more, more vivid. So venting, we know, does not work. Even though that's kind of the conventional advice that you have to blow off steam. You have to say how you really feel. Don't hold things back. Turns out it's not so great. I knew that at the time. And so I did one of these turnarounds. So I took out these four questions, and I started with, you know, what, what is the belief? The belief was very clearly. I wrote it down. My mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Okay, now the first question, like we just did with you, is it true? Obviously, Chris, you're on my side here, right? Right. My mother. What. What mother doesn't thank their son for, for their flowers? Who says that? Clearly, she was too judgmental and hard to please. Absolutely, it was true. Second question, is it absolutely true? Meaning, is there no other possible explanation other than my belief? Well, if I'm honest, maybe. Okay, whatever. Maybe there's another explanation. Okay, I Don't want to think about what that explanation could be. But perhaps then the third question, who am I when I hold this belief? Well, when I believe my mother's true judgment on hard to please, I'm kind of a jerk. I'm judgmental. I'm short tempered, I'm not myself. I'm embarrassed about what I do. And then the fourth question is, who would I be without that belief? And if I'm honest, I would be much happier if there was a magic wand and I could erase that belief from my head. That'd be great. I wouldn't be so judgmental. I'd be me. And then I did this turnaround. So I took that belief, my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. And I, I turned it around. I asked myself, could the exact opposite be true? As, as ridiculous as that sounds? I mean, to your question, how do we possibly believe something if we just don't believe something? We're confusing facts with belief. It doesn't matter if it's true. That's how we do it. To answer your question. So is there any possible truth in it? Could it, could there possibly be a way that my mother was not being too judgmental and hard to please? Thought about it for a few minutes and I had to admit, maybe she was just trying to save me some money. Maybe she just didn't want me to be scammed from this florist. So, okay, that could be true. There might be another explanation. Then I did another turnaround. I am too judgmental and hard to please. Could that be true? I am too judgmental and hard to please? Well, kind of did demand in my head, in the script of when I called her and said, hey, happy birthday, how are the flowers? I had already scripted out exactly the way I wanted her to respond. I wanted her to say effusive thanks. And when she didn't do that, I lost it. So who was being judgmental and hard to please? Me. And then the third turnaround, I was being not my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. I am being too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. That really what was happening, this actually turned out to be the most true, even though I did not want to accept it at all, was that when the flowers didn't arrive exactly the way I wanted them to, I took that as a statement on my competency that I had done something wrong, that I messed up. So really I was being too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. Now, when you take out those four beliefs, the Original belief in these three new ones. Those three new ones sounded absolutely ridiculous. I did not want to accept them at first. But that first belief of my mother's true, judgmental and hard to please only left me with one option to get through it. She had to change in order for me to be happy. Right. And you know, like, with your example around life having to change, that's pretty tough, right? For, for her to change was not a possibility. Now at least I had other options. So what did I, what did I start doing? I started trying on those beliefs for size, you know, for a week. Okay, I, I'm not, I'm going to take that perspective of that I was being too judgmental and hard to please. And all of a sudden this weight was lifted. Like I didn't have to believe that anymore. I didn't have to have these standards because I didn't even see I was holding myself to those standards. And all of a sudden I did become more patient. I did become nicer to my mom. I, I was a better. I was more of the person that I wanted to be. And so the way you change these beliefs is you try on a different belief as an experiment, just try it on for size. You see what happens. And as ridiculous as it, as it feels at first, when you start building more agency, when you start proving to yourself in small steps that, hey, that could also be true, you can choose at some later point to keep that belief or chuck it for yet a new one.
- [29:00]
A
Why, why does rumination feel productive when it's actually destructive? Then like, what is it that's happening inside of our minds that causes us to want to do that?
- [29:11]
B
Yeah, it's. It's a few things. So one, rumination feels like problem solving, but it's rumination about the past. Right? Rumination comes from what cows do to their cud, right? They, they ruminate, they chew, chew, chew on a problem endlessly. And oftentimes that can feel productive because it feels like we're putting time and attention towards something. But when it becomes rumination, when we were talking about the same thing again and again and people, we see this all the time when people think about their past, right? Rumination is always about something that has happened in the past. It moves from constructive problem solving into some, many times an escape from reality, that if I'm constantly thinking of a problem, I don't have to do what's currently in front of me, right? That it's something that almost becomes a pacifier in a way. So a very practical solution. What I've started to do, which also sounds nuts at first, is I've actually started planning time to worry. So now my brain doesn't have to ruminate about the problem. It doesn't have to ruminate just as much about when will I have time to think about and solve this problem? Because now I have time in my calendar for worry. Now here's what happens nine times out of 10, you know, I'll write down. Here's what I need to worry about. Very, very important thing. I keep ruminating in my head about this thing that I definitely, definitely need to. Need to think about. Very, very important, this thing that I messed up on in the past. And I need to think about how do I fix it. And then when that worry time comes, nine times out of ten, what the heck was I worrying about? Why did I keep ruminating on it? I didn't need to. In fact, it's something that got crushed under the weight of some other priority.
- [30:39]
A
Yeah, the addiction to venting and rumination feels so satisfying. It's the same as stretching that torn or strained muscle. You just keep on checking, checking, checking. We'll go back to it. We'll go back to it. We'll go back to it. So I have to imagine that rejection and failure when it comes to belief is somewhat of a challenge. Right. How, how do people rebuild belief after repeated failures?
- [31:12]
B
Yeah. So if you are failing, that's not necessarily a bad thing. That what I want to change in my life and what I hope I can help with others is to give them more persistence, because we know that persistence is the defining factor. You've met lots and lots of successful people in your life. I've interviewed billionaires for this book. I've interviewed people who are broke for this book. And what I discovered was, is that unsuccessful people are not those that fail more. Unsuccessful people are those who fail less. Successful people fail more. It's the billionaire who tried again and again and again and again until they hit it big. They do more of these experiments, they have more shots on goal. And so that's turns out to be a defining trait, that persistence. There's a. There's a wonderful study that really blew my mind, this Kurt Richter study back in the 1950s where he took these rats and he put these rats into cylinders of water and they were filled about halfway full. And he took these, these rats, he put them in the cylinder of water, and he stood there with a time, a timer, to see how long the rats would swim for. It turns out, in case you were Curious. A wild rat can swim in a cylinder of water for about 15 minutes before it gives up and dies. Very nice. Then he wanted to do another study. He did a follow up study, by the way. You can't do these kind of unethical studies anymore. But we, they did it so we can learn from it. Then he took these, a new batch of wild rats and he put them in the cylinder of water and he watched them swim, swim, swim for, for about 15 minutes. And right before he knew they would give up and sink under the water, he reached in, pulled out the rat, dried it off, let it catch, catch its breath for a minute and plunk back into the cylinder it went. And now he wanted to see if he did that a few times. And he conditioned the wild rat to know that salvation might be possible, what would happen? Could the rat swim for longer? Now you've read the book, I know you know the answer. But when I ask people how much longer did the rat swim for? People say maybe double. Okay, maybe triple, right? Maybe four times longer. Wouldn't that be amazing if the rat went from 15 minutes to 60 minutes an hour. Think about that, right? If, if you're running a marathon and now you have four times the endurance, if you're on working on that hard task, if you're whatever that challenge is, you can sustain four times longer that blow your mind, that'd be amazing. What kind of crazy intervention would that be? Well, the rats didn't swim for 60 minutes. They ended up swimming for 60 hours. They swam for 240 times longer. And that ability was in them the whole time because their bodies didn't change, the experiment didn't change. What changed was. We think we can't ask these rats what they believed. We think that something must have changed in their minds. The fact that they saw that hope and salvation were possible kept them persisting, persisting, persisting. And so it all of a sudden became unlocked because of a belief they believe that salvation maybe might be possible. And so the goal here is to realize the practical application of this is not to quit at the 15 minute mark. That for the vast majority of us, myself included, when it gets uncomfortable, when it gets difficult, when it gets painful, that's our limit. But your limit is so much further than you actually think. So the most important thing is to quit when it's the right time. That, not that quitting is not wrong. There's nothing wrong with quitting. Quitting too soon is a destruction of human capital. That's what we have to prevent, right Quitting too soon. I've quit many things. I've quit relationships, I've quit businesses. I've quit all kinds of things. It's not that quitting is wrong. It's quitting when it's too soon. That's the problem. So, and one of those criteria for when not to quit is when it. When it hurts, right? That pain is just a signal. Remember we talked about 11 million bits versus 50 bits of information that those pain signals. That's just information. That's not necessarily a bad thing. So if we can disconnect the pain from the suffering, the interpretation of that pain, and only quit when it's time. So, for example, one of the criteria for when is it a good time to quit? Is not when you're failing. That is a bad reason to quit a task. The failing is not the right reason. It's when you stop learning that if the failures are teaching you something, keep going. Right? That's not necessarily. There's two other criteria about when. When is the proper time to quit. But failure itself, in and of itself, is not necessarily the right criteria for when to quit.
- [35:24]
A
What are the other criteria?
- [35:26]
B
The other two criteria, Number one is you have to meet a checkpoint. So it. So most people don't set checkpoints, they set deadlines. And that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about a deadline, we're talking about a checkpoint is when I say I will endure this suffering for a fixed period of time. Now, why do we do that? Because if we don't do that, as soon as it gets uncomfortable, we're going to interpret the pain as suffering and we're going to want to quit instead. When we say, I'm going to try this perspective, right? I'm going to try this crazy view of my mom like I was describing earlier, or this crazy view of my life. That life is not for ticking off tasks, okay? Doesn't sound right. I don't agree. Maybe it's not true, but I'm going to try it for one week, 30 days, whatever you make up the number. And I'm not gonna stop until I hit that checkpoint. Then at that checkpoint, I can say, okay, let me, let me take a step back. Would I continue this experiment past that checkpoint if I were to start today? But don't quit until the checkpoint, right? Whatever that that hard task might be. 30 days of exercise, 30 days of posting YouTube videos, 30 days of writing your book, whatever it is, make sure you have that checkpoint. That's criteria number one. Criteria number Two is, are you still learning through failure? We talked about that earlier. And then the third and the most important criteria is, does persistence make a difference? Many things in life, persistence does not make a difference. If you're in a crappy work culture and it's awful and the people are sucking out your energy and you on Sunday evening, you are dreading waking up on Monday morning because you know you have to go to work, persistence ain't gonna help. Those people are not gonna suddenly leave just because you stuck around longer, right? You're gonna die by the time those people leave. So persistence is not gonna make a difference. However, when it comes to fitness, for example, you're. You're a jack guy. You know this. You hit plateaus and then if you persist, hey, you'll bust out of that plateau. You'll make progress eventually, right? So there are certain things in life where persistence really does make a difference, even if you're not seeing progress. But if you meet those three criteria, that's fine. The most important thing is that you're not quitting too soon. You're not quitting at the 15 minute mark like those rats, even when you have the 60 hours of potential.
- [37:31]
A
Before we continue, I am a massive fan of reducing your alcohol intake. But. But historically, non alcoholic brews taste like ass. You don't need to be doing some big reset. Maybe you just want to crack a cold one without feeling like garbage the next morning. Which is why I am such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Company. They've got 50 types of NAS, including IPAs, goldens, and even limited releases like a cocktail inspired Paloma and Moscow Mule. And here's the thing, you can drink them anytime. Late nights, early mornings, or watching sports. Playing sports doesn't matter. No hangover, no compromise. And that is why I partnered with them. You can find Athletic Brewing Co's best selling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you, or best option, get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped right to your door. Right now, you can get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com modernwisdom that's athleticbrewing.com Modern Wisdom. It feels to me like there's a relationship between luck and the rejection thing here, that people are always trying to engineer it. And some people in life seem to be a little bit more lucky. What did you find out about luck?
- [38:40]
B
Yeah, that luck is not chance. That luck, in fact, can absolutely be engineered the most. Like let's, let's be Honest here, the most lucky thing is your birthday, right? That if you are lucky enough to be born in an industrialized democratic country, you won the genetic lottery, right? As Warren Buffett used to say. Other than that, after you're born, it turns out there's no such thing as like particularly lucky people. We see, we, we see successful people, we say, oh, they just got lucky. And of course lucky things happen to all kinds of people. But it turns out what's much more important is how they manufacture their luck. That, that we know that entrepreneurs, they have this phenomenon called entrepreneurial alertness, where we know that, that successful entrepreneurs literally see the world differently. They metaphorically see hundred dollars bills all over the floor. And there's, there's actually a wonderful study that, that showed this. They took two groups of people. One was self identified pessimists and one were self identified optimists. And in this study, they asked people to look at a newspaper. And this newspaper was, was specially designed for this experiment. And the goal of the experiment, they asked them, we want you to count for us how many photos there are in this newspaper. Okay? How many photos do you see in this newspaper? Count as quickly as you can and then tell the, the proctor and you'll get a monetary prize. Now, people who are self identified optimists took about 11 seconds to finish this experiment. People who were self identified pessimists took two and a half minutes. Why? Why the difference? Right? That's a huge advantage. What happened? Turns out that on page two of this newspaper was a photo that said, there are 48 photos in this newspaper. That's all it said. Then halfway through the paper, it said, there are 48 photos in this paper. Collect your prize. Okay? Optimistic people saw that. They saw this thing staring them in the face. They got up, they said, there's 48 pictures in the, in the newspaper. And they collected their, their prize. They walked off in 11 seconds on average. The pessimistic people sat there and said, 1, 2, 3, 4. They didn't even see the opportunity staring them in the face. They were completely oblivious to it. And so this is a wonderful example of how we don't see what we believe. That's kind of what, what we think is common knowledge. We see what we, we have to see something in order to believe it. Turns out the exact opposite is just as true. That in order to see something, we have to believe it.
- [41:13]
A
That's wild. That is so crazy. What?
- [41:17]
B
Tip of the iceberg. There's so many of these.
- [41:20]
A
What are the ways does this show
- [41:21]
B
up in people's lives all over the place. I mean, we know that people who are on a diet physically see food as larger. They see that people who are afraid of heights see distances as farther away, right? So back to this keyhole of attention that when we are forced to see reality through this itsy bitsy hole, a keyhole of reality, we can't help it, right? That cough illusion that I talked about earlier, it's crazy. I'll show it to people and they will absolutely swear there is nothing here but squares, right? Whereas you show it to other people and they'll say there's nothing there but circles. And it's completely determined. We think. We don't exactly know why this is happening. We think it's because of where you grow up, that people who grow up in urban environments see sharp edges, right? Buildings and streets, they see sharp edges. These are not natural. But people who grow up, for example, where they did this study, that they showed the coffer illusion to people in sub Saharan Africa and they see circles because that's what they have been conditioned to see. They see organic shapes, they don't see hard edges. And so it absolutely affects time and time again what you are able to see based on your past experience. And of course, we make up for problems for many of us where they don't exist, right? That, that it's no coincidence that this is. I mean, people are going to think I'm crazy. And when I say this, know that the crazier you think an alternative belief is, the more you should actually explore it, right? Because that's your brain with your, with your belief. Immune system is trying to keep out foreign antibodies. It's trying to keep out these, these beliefs you don't like. The fact is the world is getting better and it's in fact better than it's ever been, right? But the average person, if you say, is this the best time in history? The average person will say, no, it's terrible. We have wars, we have crime, we have this, we have that. Things are terrible and they're getting worse. Well, that's not true. And if you don't believe me, read this wonderful book by Hans Rosling, Factfulness, where he interviewed university professors and he gave them an exam about the state of the world, the state of all the things we care about, the state of education, the state of the environment, the state of female empowerment, the state of democracy. These professors on this exam did worse than if monkeys would have taken this test. They did worse than chance. On a realistic portrayal of how the world is because of this negativity bias that we all have because of these existing beliefs that we seek to confirm time and time again. So if you are looking for negativity, if you believe that the world is getting worse, you're going to see all the ways the world is getting worse. You're going to tune into the media that does nothing but reinforce that fact because you know, if it bleeds, it leads. You're going to see all the crime stories, the hatred, the animosity, the wars, because that's what you're turning into, that's what you're paying attention to. I'll give you one more quick study that I love is the Dartmouth scar study where they took women and they said, we're going to do a study on how people treat those with facial disfigurements. We want to see how people are treated differently, how they are discriminated against. So we're going to put this fake scar on your face and we're going to put you in a room with, with somebody else, the, the, the, the person we're doing the study on. And we want you to report how you're treated with this facial scar. And they made this very realistic, you know, like one of the ones that you would see in a, in a horror film, this huge gash on their face. And they said, okay, now you're going to walk into this room and we want you to take careful notes on how people treated you when you had a conversation. Except. Wait, wait, wait, come back here for a quick second before you go into the room. Let me just do a quick touch up. And what these women didn't know in the study is that they completely removed the scar. Now, the women didn't know that they saw the scar in the mirror, but then when they did the touch up and removed the scar, they didn't know that the scar didn't exist. It wasn't there. And yet these women in the study reported that they were stared at, that they were discriminated against, that the people they were talking to seemed disgusted and averted their eyes many times and they felt very uncomfortable. All for a scar that didn't even exist. It wasn't even there because they expected a response. And when you expect something to occur, you will see it.
- [45:13]
A
It's like living in a simulation. It's like we create a simulation of the world and kind of disregard what the actual world is showing to us.
- [45:23]
B
That's right. Now we don't have to. Right? So that through this consistent practice of making ourselves see the world differently, we hopefully can see truth. I mean, how. Isn't it crazy how at least in many cultures, not all cultures, disagreement is seen as rude. Right. That, like, when someone disagrees with you, they're kind of. You don't like that person.
- [45:44]
A
Right.
- [45:44]
B
When someone challenges your feelings, that's. That creates a little icky feeling. Or if someone does change their. Their perspective, they're called a flip flopper. Is that not the stupidest thing ever? I mean, now that's become my love language. Like, if you can change my mind about something, can you think of a better gift? Like, I. I was lying to myself about reality, about myself, about my relationships, and now you've helped me see the world more clearly. Can you? Like, what better gift could there possibly be?
- [46:12]
A
Yeah, it's a strange one that we're so attached to our points of view that losing them or letting go of them is kind of tantamount to destruction, at least to the ego. I know. I'm thinking about beliefs that people have now which might be useful or that create success or whatever, but in the future quietly limit you later on. Or beliefs that people hold now that previously were effective or helpful in some sort of a way, but now are holding us back, that kind of blind spot with regards to belief and the tool. Where it was then, where we are now. How do you come to think about updating beliefs over time, that sort of a way?
- [46:58]
B
Yeah. Where do we begin? I. I think one of the challenges that I think is, is becoming more and more prevalent is that we have these cultural nocebos. So placebos come from the. The Latin I will heal. Nocebos come from I will hurt. And it turns out these nocebo effects are contagious, that when we tell people that they might be suffering from some kind of malady, it spreads. I'll give you a great example. There was this case in, I think it was Portugal, if I'm not mistaken, where on one particular night there was this epidemic. The hospital rooms were filling up with young girls with intense intestinal discomfort. They were filling up the ERs, and people thought it was some kind of virus. People thought there was something in the water, like what had happened. It was really weird that it only affected girls of a certain age and nobody knew what it was. Turns out there was a very popular TV show, I think it was called Strawberries and Cream. And on that show, the main character, the protagonist, had some kind of similar intestinal malady where she was very sick. And that actually caught on and Created this. This kind of mass nocebo effect. And this goes. We see this repeated again and again every few years. Somewhere in the world. There'll be some kind of outbreak of some kind of psychosomatic disorder. In the literature. 1. One case that really blew my mind. There was this guy. They call him Mr. A. He became. He was anonymized. And Mr. A had a very difficult breakup with his girlfriend. And he decides that he wants to end his life. So he takes a bottle of pills, opens it up. He takes the entire bottle of pills, swallows everything, and a few minutes later, he changes his mind. He decides he wants to live. So he rushes over to his next door neighbor. He. He tells him he took all his pills. Neighbor rushes him to the ER Mr. A barges through the emergency room. Crash. You know, crashes on the floor. He's almost unconscious. And he says, I took all my pills. I took all my pills. Help me. They rush him into the operating room. His blood pressure is dangerously low. His heart rate is plummeting. And they're trying to figure out what did he overdose on. Well, they. They look at the. The. The jar of pills, and all there is on the jar of pills is a number to call. It turns out that Mr. A had been part of a clinical trial for depression. And he took all these pills that he was. He was given in the study. They call up the number and they say, what is this drug? What did he just overdose on so that we can try and resuscitate him? And again, all the physiological symptoms of overdose, the heart rate, the plunging blood pressure, all the things that you would expect with an overdose are happening to Mr. A on the other line. The doctor says, this person took placebos. He did not get the active ingredient. They tell Mr. A this. That he took nothing but placebos. Within 15 minutes. Chris. Mr. A is completely revived. His heart rate is back to normal, his blood pressure is back to normal, and he's fine. He's ready to walk out of the E.R. now, if we can have these incredible physiological effects solely based on our beliefs, solely based on our expectations of what we think will happen in this crazy simulation that's running in our heads, if that can be done to this extent, what does that mean for all the other nocebos in our life? What happens when we assign ourselves all kinds of labels that we keep tossing around? If you open up social media, people are prescribing the hell out of each other with all kinds of maladies that, let alone have no, you know, actual psychological basis. Imposter Syndrome. Imposter syndrome is not a thing. It's not in the dsm. There's nothing that makes the imposter say, you can't get diagnosed for imposter syndrome. But it sounds so official. People think it's a diagnosis. Well, when you think you have imposter syndrome, guess what? Now you have imposter syndrome. You've manufactured it. Whether it's true or not. That's not what I'm arguing about. What I'm arguing about is, does it serve you? I'm a morning, I'm not a morning person. I'm. I'm having a senior moment. I'm no good at public speaking. I'm whatever. I. When we create this identity, that's the problem out of a label, that label becomes our limit.
- [51:15]
A
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- [52:46]
B
new group of rats.
- [52:47]
A
Yes. It lifted the ceiling on when the rat went, was. Was going to be able to swim for.
- [52:54]
B
Right.
- [52:55]
A
So you can spiral belief up toward a version of you that you want, one that broadly gets better outcomes in life. But you can also spiral it down, which is, I took sugar pills and now I think I'm having a heart attack and my. My brain's going to explode.
- [53:12]
B
Right.
- [53:14]
A
In both situations, the interpretation and the belief is causing an effect within the person.
- [53:22]
B
Right.
- [53:23]
A
And both are very powerful, I think when it comes to something like imposter syndrome or concerns about public speak, sexual performance. Right. Some guy that gets real nervous before he gets into. I think that's like psychosomatic. Psychosomatic mental impact on guys struggling to get it up is a vicious spiral that happens to dudes and then they can't get out of it. They're worried about it and this thing's going to happen. It goes all the way down.
- [53:50]
B
Yeah. Insomnia, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, ibs. Many of these things are highly responsive to both nocebo and placebo effects. But. Sorry, I interrupted you. Continue.
- [54:00]
A
Just. Someone is on the spiral going in the wrong direction. How do they intervene? How do they intervene and reverse that direction to go back in the other? Because one of the things that I imagine a lot of people think is, oh, God.
- [54:14]
B
Well, you.
- [54:15]
A
Yeah. There's some contributing elements that are grounded in reality, but much of this is filtered through my perception, my expectations, my own simulation, my beliefs. What a piece of shit am I that I can't fix. It's all on me. I'm causing this problem. This means I'm even worse than I thought I was. So I think getting practical about. Okay. Someone feels that they have one of these beliefs and it is spiraling in the wrong direction. It's their erectile dysfunction or inability to wake up on a morning, or it's their mood or it's their whatever.
- [54:48]
B
Yeah.
- [54:50]
A
Take me through the steps that someone goes through to halt the downward spiral and turn it into one that works for them.
- [54:57]
B
Absolutely. So this comes a lot from the research around chronic pain. And there's. The medical community is really in the middle of doing a 180 on how to approach pain. And there's this new technique that's been quite validated called pain reprocessing therapy. And the reason I like to talk about this Extreme version is because if we can do it in the most extreme versions, right, when people are suffering through chronic pain, like the kind of debilitating pain that comes from. From these type of conditions, then we can also do it for more minor maladies like erectile dysfunction or insomnia or anxiety. Right? So, so I. That's why I like to talk about those more extreme cases. But the way pain reprocessing therapy works starts by understanding that pain is not the same as suffering. Okay? Pain is always real. Even though all pain is in the brain, all pain is in the brain. Where else could pain live? Pain is not in your arm, it's not in your back, it's not pain. All pain receptors lead to an interpretation in your brain, okay? But pain is nothing more than signal. Pain does not necessarily mean that anything is broken, because there's a difference between a sickness and an illness. Sickness is in the body. Illness is in the mind. So for many conditions, there is some. Something broken, some kind of malady that has to do with sickness, something in the body. But you can be sick without being ill, and you can also be ill without being sick. How can that happen if you have cancer? You know, we all have tiny cancer cells, but let's say you have some kind of malignant tumor, but you haven't. No, you don't know you have it yet. God forbid that this should happen anyway, but it does. You can be sick, but not realize that you have any symptoms, so you're not ill. Conversely, and what is very, very common, in fact, it accounts for about 80% of our healthcare expenses, is the symptoms, the illness which is in the mind, okay? This, the perception of those symptoms. And many times, for example, in the case of chronic pain, which is defined as pain that persists for more than six months with no known physical causes. So the most important thing is to eliminate those possible physical causes. But if you continue.
- [56:58]
A
Okay, so you, you wouldn't have. Oh, you wouldn't be diagnosed with chronic pain if you had a. A big bit of wood sticking out of your leg.
- [57:06]
B
Exactly, exactly. We. We know. Okay? That's the cause. Exactly. Although as a little tangent here, I mean, there's cases, you know, where did placebo science first come from? It came from after World War I when there was reported cases of soldiers dragging their buddy on the battlefield to the medic and saying, medic, medic, you need to help my friend. My, my friend just got shot. Help my friend. Help my friend. And the medic turns to this guy pulling his buddy and says, soldier you're missing an arm. And the, the soldier was completely unaware that they were, that half their arm had been blown off because of the power of attention. They'd been so focused on their buddy that they didn't pay attention. They turned off that information that was coming to their brain from their conscious mind. Right? Because again, 11 million bits versus 50 bits. Well, so, so, so back to this, this, this question around chronic pain and how that teaches us, what that teaches all of us about, about how do we manage changing our beliefs. Per your question, what pain reprocessing therapy tells us is that neuroplastic pain is the kind of pain that persists even with no physical causes. And the key is shutting off what is called the fear pain, fear loop that at the heart of these chronic conditions, which are real. I'm not saying pain is fake. I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm not saying it's in your head. All pain is real. There's no such thing as fake pain. All pain is real. And it is also true that all pain is in your mind. Turns out that the brain has this amazing ability to turn down the pain or turn up the pain dial based on what it thinks is important based on what it pays attention to. So for example, in the case of hypnosidation people and I, I've seen the tapes, I and tens of thousands of people have done this, this, this, this guy that I interviewed by the name of Daniel Gisler, the most analytical, no woo, woo, no nonsense type of guy, used to be a commodities trader. This guy went under surgery and I've seen the video of operation I wouldn't believe unless I've seen it. This guy had metal bolts wrenched from his bone, scalpel cutting into his skin with no anesthesia, no general anesthesia, no local anesthesia for 55 minutes. His heart rate didn't, didn't increase, his blood pressure stayed level. He did not experience these physical symptoms of pain or the suffering that causes that comes from pain. He didn't experience it because he had learned this amazing ability to focus his mind through the power of beliefs. And so he trained himself to not feel this intense discomfort. Now if we can do that with surgery without requiring anesthesia, we can do that for all kinds of things. On the flip side, by the way,
- [59:46]
A
it makes, having, having surgery without anesthetic makes your erectile dysfunction feel like limp actually.
- [59:55]
B
But, but it's, it's because the ED question around, like, can it, can it cause this negative spiral? Well, when you think about these Chronic conditions, like, you know, fibromyalgia, that's a, that's an exclusionary diagnosis or chronic pain or ED or insomnia, anxiety. I mean, the list goes on and on of these, of these maladies. It turns out that, that what's at the center of these are these, this fear, pain, fear loop. That what the conversation sounds like. And by the way, I used to have terrible back pain as well. And the first thing that happened in my mind was every time I would feel back pain, the conventional wisdom is pain means damage, pain means harm. Well, if it's damaged, if it's broken, how long is it going to last? Is this always going to be this way? What if it never gets better? What does that mean for my future? And I start spiraling and ruminating, spiraling. And it would drive me crazy. And guess what? It would turn up the pain dial. Because that experience of feeling that fear is incredibly uncomfortable. It creates physiological responses, right? You start sweating, your mouth gets dry, you start. Your heart starts palpitating. All these physical sensations feel shittier and shittier. And so your body pays more and more attention, thinking it's under threat. So what you have to do, step one, is to realize that your body is not broken. And this is after you've excluded everything, okay, after you've done the tests and looked at and make sure there is nothing physically wrong, where the problem is this neuroplastic pain. Now you have to convince yourself that you're assuming that the body is not broken, that this is just information. That's all it is, just information. The next thing we do is we stop trying to fix the pain. Part of our problem is that we, we have this urgency that I must fix this problem because that, because we live in a time where we expect this to happen. By the way, this has never happened before in 200,000 years of human history. You know, like the, the French kings used to have all kinds of tooth decay and, and syphilis and all kinds. They were constantly. And severe, what we would think is today, severe pain. But people for 200,000 years had this ability to tune out discomfort because it was just information. They didn't walk around constantly moaning and groaning. I'm sure they were in a lot of pain and suffering. But because they, that that was always part of the human condition. It didn't. It was something that they carried on with, we think. Whereas today, because we live in an age where we have so much modern medicine, we have the ability to turn off a lot of our suffering like a switch when it comes to sickness rather than illness, we become hyper fixated when we think that there's a problem that can't be solved and we expect it to be urgently addressed and to go away immediately. So the step, step two is to stop trying to fix that pain. And then what you want to do is to prove that you're safe. Prove that you're safe and con. So to constantly remind yourself, this isn't danger, this is a pain signal. It's not danger. One of the things that pain reprocessing therapy does is advise people to add lightness, to add some kind of humor. So telling yourself, ah, I see what you're doing there. Pain response, not gonna get me this time. I know this is nothing to be worried about. What I used to do when I felt my back pain and this was pretty bad back pain, I mean, I have to lay on the floor and I followed all the conventional advice of, you know, I have to. You, you have to ice. No, you have to warm. No, you have to immobilize. You can't do anything. What I started doing was every time I felt that twinge in my back, I would intentionally do whatever caused that pain ten times. Okay, and again, disclaimer. After I'd known that there was nothing actually physically wrong, it came from an injury originally that I had in the gym.
- [63:16]
A
If you get a splinter in your foot, putting 10 splinters in your foot isn't going to take the splinter out. Yep, yep, yep.
- [63:21]
B
Right, exactly, exactly. But after the splinter's out, it's healed. We can't detect any kind of, of actual physical damage. It was just neuroplastic pain. I had to teach my brain over and over and over again, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe. Pain is just a signal I'm not in danger. And then over time, lo and behold, it went away.
- [63:40]
A
And the same, I imagine would be true for people with chronic fatigue. Me cfs. Again, assuming that you've not got underlying whatever that's going on, I feel like we need to do this throat clearing so it doesn' sound like fucking victim blaming all of the people who.
- [63:53]
B
Right, right.
- [63:54]
A
Let's say that you've good example. Me and half of Austin apparently live in houses that have got toxic molds. Toxic mold is particularly brutal for certain people with a genetic susceptibility to it and it causes them to be really tired. You get out of the houses, you follow a shoemaker protocol. You detox all of the mold, or most of the mold from you and now, oh, hey. The system is more functional, but my expected work capacity hasn't caught up to where my real gas tank is. And that re patterning of the pain, of the fatigue, of the lack of fatigue, the inability to sleep. I'm not a good sleeper. I wake up lots of times throughout the night. I need to go to the bathroom all of the time. That's kind of a real common one for people who just think I need to wake up and go to the bathroom two or three times throughout the night. Even if I haven't had that much to drink, even if I know that when I go to the bathroom, oh, it's a problem. It's the prostate. It's a. Whatever. It's like, well, you know, if you've had all of the things checked, it's not.
- [64:57]
B
It could just. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, one of the things that I've adopted is these mantras, these prayers that they're not. Maybe they're not prayers because they don't have a religious connotation, but I have many mantras that I repeat throughout the day. And I used to have terrible insomnia. And I tried everything. I tried the pills, I tried the. I tried all kinds of things. And then as I was. As I was doing this research around the power of the mind and beliefs to change our bodies, that your beliefs really do become your biology. And I'm sorry it took me so long. I'm 48 now, but it took me a long time to realize this. I tried to eliminate the fear. And when you eliminate the fear, you also eliminate the suffering. So my mantra when I wake up at 2am and I start ruminating about, oh, my gosh, if I don't get to sleep soon, I'm gonna have an awful day tomorrow. And I've got this big interview with Chris and what if I don't do well and I better get to sleep? And I can't get to sleep. Well, it turns out the number one cause of insomnia is worrying about insomnia. That is the number one cause of insomnia. And so we take medication to knock us out so we stop worrying. But really, I found the most effective thing I ever did was to replace the fear with a new belief. That new belief is. And this is what I literally say to myself every time I wake up at 2am, I close my eyes and I repeat to myself. And I take a deep breath on the way in, I say it, and then I say it again on the way out. I say as I take a deep breath. I say, the body gets what the body needs if you let it. The body gets what the body needs if you let it. So that's a deep breath in, a deep breath out. And what I'm doing is reminding myself that, you know what, if I don't get a good night's sleep tonight, my body will, will make up for it the next night, right? That, that if I let it. Now, the biggest problem is why do I say if you let it? Because if you went to bed at 1am and you need to get up at 6, that's on you, right? You didn't plan properly. But if you let it, if you give your body the time it needs to rest, it's going to rest or it doesn't need it. And if I stay up for an hour or so and I read my Kindle in bed, that's okay too. That's fine. That there's nothing that's wrong with it, because it means the next night I probably will get to sleep. So repeating those simple mantras. And I read the Kindle after I've tried that mantra, and if it doesn't work, then I read the kindle that works 99% of the time. I always have a boring book on my Kindle, by the way, which is amazing because it scrambles that rumination cycle and then you can finally get back to sleep.
- [67:16]
A
We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy focus and performance, but most people have no idea what theirs are or what to do if something's off. Which is why I partnered with Function, because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. Seeing your testosterone levels and dozens of other biomarkers charted across the course of a year with actionable insights to genuinely improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands and be a nightmare. But with function, it's just 499 bucks. And now you can get an additional $100 off, bringing it down to $399. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save a hundred bucks by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com modernwisdom that's at functionhealth.com modernmystom Talk to me about the neuroscience of agency, because we're talking about an interesting balance here. One element is almost a letting go. It's my body will give me what it needs if I let it. So that's a relinquishing of the need to be the person that's pushing specifically around something like sleep. Right. Or I don't need to check on the pain. But at the same time, we know that agency is the thing that most people desire. It's one of the top three. Even if nobody knows what it means. I think it's what they want. They want independence, action, the ability to happen to life as opposed to life happen to them. Talk to me about neuroscience of agency.
- [69:06]
B
Yeah, so agency is what I call the third power of belief, that beliefs can change not only what you see. We talked about how beliefs shape your vision of reality. They shape how you feel internally, if it's whether it's chronic pain, whether it's going through surgery without anesthesia. And most importantly, beliefs change what you do now. It changes what you do based on what you think is possible for you to do. And so not only can you have these nocebo effects that we talked about earlier, just as. As a quick recap of how your labels can become your limits and make you more. Sorry, make you less agentic, because you think, well, that's impossible. I can't do it. Certain beliefs allow you to be more agentic. So, for example, one of the. I interviewed this guy by the name of David Feigenbaum who had this incurable disease. And he was. I mean, he tells me how the. A nurse came in and told him, hey, guess what? You had this disease. I've never, ever heard of it, but at least it's not cancer. And then he does a Google search and he figures out actually the mortality rate is even worse than cancer for this disease.
- [70:09]
A
That, oh God, you've got super cancer.
- [70:12]
B
You've got super cancer. Exactly. And so he finds the one expert in the world who knows this disease backwards and forwards. And he told me that he. Yeah, exactly. He. Well, kind of. He. He tells me about how he had this Santa Claus theory that his whole life he thought, well, if I just find the right person to send my wish into just like Santa Claus, well, surely they'll have a solution. So this doctor recommends a medication, does not work. And, and, and then he asked the doctor, well, okay, what's the next course of treatment? Nothing. Well, but what's the research that's being done about this? There is no more research, says, well, what are next steps? There are more. No more next steps. And so his whole Santa Claus theory that someone's going to save him never materialized. And he decides that night that he has to do something. And he spends the next several years combing through all the research he can possibly find. Throws away this. This theory that someone's going to come and save me. And he does everything he possibly can. He turns out he finds a medication that has been already approved for years, that's sitting on the shelf, that nobody tried for his condition, and it saves his life. Now, he actually has a foundation that does this through AI and has saved countless thousands of people through a similar methodology. Now, what David demonstrated was understanding that there you have a lot more agency that you think than most of us kind of accept. Well, a good patient should just take lessons from the doctor. They should do what the doctor says. You shouldn't do your own research because we're the experts. Well, David said BS and he tried to do his own research and he tried his own experimentations even when he wasn't sure if they would work. So big picture, we have a lot more agency than we think. And so there's two kinds of agency. We call this an internal locus of control versus an external locus of control. And so we. This is this, you know, people kind of know this research already that external locus of control is about thinking that your. Your life is controlled by things outside of you. Internal locus of control means you think you can affect change in the world. Now, what's interesting about this is that even when the cards are stacked against you, even when you have all the right in the world to say that things aren't going well and you know, external factors are controlling you, you still are better off than having an internal locus of control. People with an internal locus of control live longer. They have more friends, they contribute more to the community, they're happier, they have fewer mental health issues. Internal locus of control seems to be protective in so many different ways, even when the cards are stacked against you. The only case where it's not helpful to have an internal locus of control is when you judge other people. So for yourself, you want to have an internal locus of control. For others, you want to try and give them the grace of thinking, well, they must be operating under circumstances that they can't control. That turns out to be a much, much healthier point of view.
- [73:05]
A
Why does the brain default to helplessness then? If helpfulness and agency is so great, why is that not a set point?
- [73:16]
B
Yeah, well, this is. What you just said is actually the exact opposite of what Everybody thought for 50 years in psychology, because we. We thought that helplessness was learned. We called it learned helplessness. Seligman and Meyer did these studies with dogs, and they could show that you could train dogs to give up, that they would learn helplessness, that we were born hopeful and then life beats us down and we give up. Just a couple years ago, these same researchers completely changed their mind.
- [73:43]
A
I saw that. Right?
- [73:46]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oops, sorry.
- [73:49]
A
Just half a century of learned helplessness being in the lexicon. Who was it? It was Scott Barry Kaufman on his pod that first talked about this. And learned hopefulness. Yes, exactly. Dude. Fucking wild.
- [74:04]
B
Wild, wild. Because we built entire philosophies about, you know, why the poor are poor and why, you know, these conditions lead to. Built out of this research that everybody thought was true. Well, it turns out that we don't learn helplessness. That's our default state. I mean, if you think about it, that's how we come out of the womb for human beings. We are absolutely defenseless. We require our parents to take care of us. A baby doesn't have claws, doesn't have teeth, can't run away. We need someone to take care of us. So maybe we think perhaps the evolutionary adaptation is that you want. When a baby is in danger, you want a baby to be passive and helpless so that they can be taken care of, perhaps, and that there is safety in passivity, because safety is what, you know, right. So there is this fight flight, or freeze response. And so that freeze response, is that passivity response. What that means, however, is that we have to learn hope. We have to learn hope. I mean, it would kind of make sense that in a tribal environment, you almost don't want people to be too radical. Like, if you think, you know, if you don't want too many people to challenge the. The. The tribe chief and to, you know, think that they're. That they can change things up, you kind of want stability in a society. So maybe that's where that comes from. I don't really know. I'm not an evolutionary psychologist. But what we do know is that there is a circuit in the brain that Seliman called the hope circuit. That is. Is how we learn our agency, that we have to learn through tiny steps what is possible, what we can do, but that must be, in fact, taught.
- [75:37]
A
George, my housemate, is Currently writing his book, which is all about agency and the idea that. The idea that you don't always. You're not always in control, but you can believe that you are to me, like. Cause I'm just hearing him unload these stories over and over again. There's another one from Johan Hari. Did you look at that study of the pain wand? Was it in the 1800s? So there was a special wand where it was wood wrapped in metal with wires around it and an electric. Special electricity box.
- [76:17]
B
Oh, the mesmerism stuff.
- [76:19]
A
Is that what this is? And they'd wave it over people and then they slowly, they slowly took away one element of the wand and they took away. They unplugged the electricity, then they took away the box, then they took away the wires and they took away the metal, then they took away the wood. And it was just a guy waving his hand over patients. And it had the same effect.
- [76:37]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I used to poo poo this stuff. And they go, this is crazy. These are stupid people. They're gullible. I don't say that stuff anymore. Because if it works and it's cheap and it's not hurting anybody, maybe it's okay. Maybe those placebo pills that are on sale on Amazon are not such a bad idea. I'll give you. I'll give you another one about a non pharmaceutical one that blew my mind. You know the story of, of Serena Williams at Wimbledon and her, her coach, Patrick, have you heard about this one?
- [77:02]
A
No. No.
- [77:03]
B
So Serena Williams was not doing well at Wimbledon. She was going to lose. And her coach comes up to her and he says, I have some amazing news for you. When you rush the net, you make 80% of your. Of the points. She says, what are you talking about? I suck at the net. He's like, wait, look, hey, I don't. You know, the stats don't lie. The stats said that when you rush the net, you make 80% of the points. Now what he had noticed is that she was lying to herself. She was already delusional. She. Her confidence was broken because she wasn't doing well and she wasn't doing what she had to do. And so she was telling a story in her head. She had a limiting belief that I shouldn't rush the net. Okay? So he, he knows this. He can see it in his player. And he tells her what turns out to be 100% fabrication. It's not true. She is not scoring 80% of the points when she rushes the net. He tells her this, says can't lie with the stats. She then goes on to start rushing the net and turns out, wins Wimbledon. So he likes to say he has this quote where he says, you see, sometimes the lies can become reality. And so that's the real takeaway here. Beliefs are tools, not truth. Is it true that she wasn't good at rushing the net? Kind of, sort of. Not really. Is it a fact? No, it's a belief. Is it true that she's good at rushing the net and scoring points? Kind of, sort of. It's a belief, right? Neither are facts, neither are laws of physics. So based on what you believe, you can turn that belief into reality. Not in a metaphysical way. There's no quantum whatever. It's all about motivation. It's all about what those behaviors get us to actually do.
- [78:43]
A
It feels like a lot of what. One of the big mechanisms for humans here is potential and understanding how much of our total capacity we're currently tapping into or not. I am not a morning person. My potential for getting up on a morning is limited. Well, yeah, there's circadian rhythms and there tend to be set points. Some people are morning larks and some people are night owls and so on and so forth. But your potential to do this is largely determined. So let's. This is a good way to think about it. There is a window. This window is determined by physical reality. It's determined by how much training you've done. It's determined by how fit you are. It's determined by your reaction time or your height or your genetics or whatever it might be. Right. This is the window. This is not within your beliefs. Control within this window is almost exclusively within your beliefs control. And that two step model I think of potential and how it works really explains. People get it confused. They think that their window is way narrower than it actually is and way lower than it actually is. What they don't realize is they're just looking at a little microcosm sliver of what is a much wider window. And there is probably a lot more upside than that's available to them. What was that story about the, the dude with the snake? What was that one? Was he in Australia or New Zealand?
- [80:12]
B
Oh, the Mortimer. The. The. Yeah.
- [80:16]
A
Yeah.
- [80:17]
B
That's a good one. Did I, I don't. Did I put that in the book? I don't think that made it into.
- [80:21]
A
No, no, no, no. But I've heard you talk about it and I think that it makes a lot of sense here too.
- [80:24]
B
Yeah. Oh, it's a good one actually. Now That I think about it back to the talk around about nocebos. That's a good one. Yeah. So this guy is a pain researcher. Mortimer. I think his last name is Gosley, I can't remember. Australian guy. He. He goes to the outback, he's on a camping trip, and he gets bitten by one of the most deadly snakes in the outback. You know, there's all kinds of venomous snakes. He gets bit by one of them, rushed to the hospital, barely survives. He's in days and days of excruciating pain. He. I think they had to put him in a coma. It was incredibly traumatic. Months, months later, I think it was like six months until he got the courage to go back to the outback and go camping again. He's on a hiking trail and he decides to go by the river, and he wants to go in the water or something. And all of a sudden he feels something nip at his heel where he got bitten. The time six months before he collapses onto the ground, he passes out. It turns out it was nothing more than a twig that scratched him. But he had this expectation again, his body had this belief about what that means. And then he produced this nocebo response. Not because of choice. He wasn't a bad person. He didn't lack willpower. He didn't will it on himself. But he had been trained, based on priors, to have this hypervigilant response. And so that's exactly what's going on with many of these other conditions as well.
- [81:47]
A
What is your guide for secular rational prayer? Placebo prep. Take me through the protocol for placebo prep.
- [81:59]
B
Yeah, so I think you have to find what works for you. And what worked for me was engaging in some kind of regular practice. And what I was particularly curious about is what to pray for, because I didn't think that. I didn't want to ask for stuff. I don't believe in some kind of cosmic slot machine that Santa Claus is going to give me, you know, give me this, give me money, give me health, give me wisdom, give me all that stuff. What I was asking for was not even for life to get easier. I was looking for ways to get stronger, to reinforce the. The tenants, the attributes that I want to cultivate myself. So patience, tolerance, gratitude, that's what I pray for. You know, I pray to be cognizant of how incredibly lucky I am to live on this tiny marble dot in the universe that's swimming around in a vacuum of space that we live in this time and place, to even have this conversation with conscious awareness. You're in Austin, I'm in. I'm in Spain, and we're talking over the Internet right now. Like, how amazing is this future that. Or is this what I would have thought would have been the science fiction future? And today we're actually living it. So to be consciously gracious and humble about that, that's something I try and remind myself through a practice of prayer. And it turns out that doing that on your own has benefits. Of course, it's a form of. It's also a form of problem solving. So many times when I pray, it's a little bit different from meditation. So when I. When I used to meditate, I met. I used to meditate quite a bit. And I don't really meditate as much as anymore. It's not that I'm anti. I think it has all kinds of benefits. But the role of meditation, at least the kind of meditation I would practice was being aware of your thoughts and then letting your thoughts go. That's not what I do anymore. Again, not that it's bad. I think it helps lots of people. There's a lot of great research about how wonderful it is. I've kind of moved on to a point now where now prayer almost becomes a form of problem solving, where by just thinking, by just letting my mind think about the problem in a specific time and place, not in between tasks, not, you know, for a minute here, a minute there, but just to contemplate. Sometimes I even do it through writing. You know, that can be a form of prayer for me, that problem solving of. And even, you know, religious people who have a faith tradition, when they have that conversation with God many times, it can open up those. Those opportunities for them to make change in their life, that if they had not made that time to have that conversation with their maker, that they wouldn't have found those opportunities. Now, when you layer on top of that a community, that's amazing. This is. This is what the Catholic priest said to me. He said, you know, people come to. To mass and they come with all kinds of requests. They say, you know, God, please help my. Help my daughter, help my business, help me heal, help me this. What they don't realize is that many times the way God answers these prayers is with the people next to you. That when you're in church with people in the pew who could help you with the business, could help you with your health, could help you with that relationship you're seeking to. To mend or build or find. And so there is A place for that community that I think many times secular people, free thinkers like, like I am, we miss out on. And so what. What I now do is to take part in those communities. Whereas before I was so wedded to the fact that it had to be true that I had to believe everything. And frankly, I think congregations also demanded that, like I, I kind of felt that if I don't, you know, I don't belong unless I believe everything you tell me, I'm an imposter. But now I've. I've kind of relaxed that. Right. Like it's don't ask, don't tell. Nobody asks the Pope exactly what he believes. Right. Nobody questions him.
- [85:45]
A
There's no, there's no faith test on the way out to ensure that you.
- [85:50]
B
Yeah, some places do that, but I don't want to be part of those places.
- [85:53]
A
It's a very utilitarian view of this. Look, it seems to make people live longer and be healthier and enjoy life more. Why would I not try this particular tactic? Okay, so you're doing it on a nighttime. Are you doing it in the morning? Are you saying it out loud? Are you doing it with a partner? Are you doing it on your own? What have you found?
- [86:15]
B
I do it whenever I pass a religious institution. So if the door's open, I walk in. I didn't know you could do that, but you can, you can just walk in even if you're not a member of that congregation, even if it's not your background and you can go in and you can pray.
- [86:35]
A
Unreal, dude. I think this is a much needed book. I think it's a. And I appreciate that you managed to balance the. You have got control of this with the way that you feel is not unreal and not fake. And I think that walking that line is a really difficult one because it switches people off immediately if they feel like they're being victim blamed for something that they feel and being able to empower somebody to. You can make changes to this. And also everything that you're going through is completely 100% real. That is a. It's not an easy one. So congratulations, man. Where should people go to check out everything you got going on?
- [87:12]
B
I appreciate it. Thank you. So my blog is near and far.com near spelled like my first name. That's n I r n far.com and. And we actually have a special bonus. We put together a five minute belief change plan which you don't have to buy anything, you don't have to sign up for anything. It's completely free. We just couldn't fit it in the book. And that is at near. Com belief change. That's near far.com belief sorry, near. Com belief change.
- [87:38]
A
Heck yeah. NIA until the next time get writing. We'll talk again.
- [87:43]
B
Appreciate it. Thanks Chris
- [87:47]
A
if you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom Reading list. It is 100 books that you should read before you die. The most interesting, life changing and impactful books I've ever read with descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And you can get it right now for free by going to ChrisWillX.com books that's ChrisWillX.com books.