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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone. Just before we get into the show, I just wanted to give a really big shout out to my founding sponsor, System One. As many of you know, I worked at System One, and before that, I was actually a client of theirs. Now, the thing I love about System One is when I need to make a big decision, they have been there to help me. Because what System One does is use the power of emotion to help predict the likely impact of my innovation or advertising. So when I've been stuck in the boardroom needing to justify why we're going to pick one creative route over another or. Or launch this innovation over that one, it has been indispensable. It's also really simple to use. Very actionable and incredibly good value, too. So if you want to find out more about System One's Test yout Add or Test yout Innovation, simply go over to systemonegroup.com and find out more. Okay, without further ado, let's go on with the show. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the uncensored cmo. Now we have a returning guest and multiple authorities and I believe, New York
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B
Times best sellers as of yesterday.
- [00:59]
A
As of yesterday, yes. To near iow. It's wonderful to have you back. Thank you, mate.
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B
Thank you so much. It's an honor to be back. Thank you.
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A
It's great to have you. I wanted to ask you maybe to start with who's topping the number of bulk orders on your list?
- [01:11]
B
Who is John? Let me think about that. And thank you. Thank you. It's you, and I am so grateful for that.
- [01:18]
A
Well, I'm only making the joke because we've got a big event coming up in April called the Calling. And when I heard you were doing a new book on belief, I was just like, I know it's gonna be good. I'm a big fan of yours. Anyway, thank you. You're writing about belief. I've got so much belief in it. We're gonna get everyone a book, so anyone who comes to the event is gonna get a copy. So I'm dead excited indeed.
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B
Thank you.
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A
Thank you for doing this. And this episode is gonna go out the day after as well, so we're gonna time it for that.
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B
Perfect.
- [01:43]
A
Maybe let's start with why write a book on Belief?
- [01:48]
B
Yeah, this is a great question. So after Indistractable came out, I started having these phone calls with readers. I do this, these office hours every week. Anybody who wants to talk to me about anything they've read and hooked or indistractable can call and we can talk about anything. And sometimes there'd be a bit of a wait. So people would have to wait a month or so. And I would get these phone calls. Not every call, but maybe like one out of 20 calls. Somebody would call me and it would sound like this. They would say, nir, I read indistractable. I really liked it. You know, it was very interesting. But just so you know, it didn't work. It didn't work. Tell me more. I spent five years writing this book. There's 30 pages of citations to peer reviewed journals. It changed my life. Hundreds of thousands of people. It's worked for them. Tell me what happened with you. Let's start with step one. How did step one go? You know, step one, I read it, I read it. I just didn't do it. Okay, no problem. Let's talk about step two. Maybe step one was a little too difficult. How did step two go for you? Maybe skip step one. You know, step two. Also very interesting. I just didn't. I just didn't do it. I didn't put it to use at first. I kind of was offended. Like, did I write a bad book? What happened? Like, should I have done something differently? And then I thought, you know what? I have books and books that I've read and haven't put into practice. I've paid gurus and experts to give me advice that I haven't heeded. So why is that? Isn't that an interesting question? That we know what to do? We have the information right in front of us. You know, distraction, right? It's a problem everyone talks about. We're all so distract. Technology's melting our brains. We're all desperate for a solution. Here you go. I give you this five years of research right here. Just do this. You can become indistractable. I'm telling you, it's gonna work. And people would wait for months to tell me on this conversation how the things that they didn't do didn't work. And so at first that was frustrating. But then I realized, well, I do this too. I do this all the time. That I also know exactly what to do, and I didn't put it into practice. So why, why is that? Why is it that some things we can be so good at putting into practice and putting to good use and other things, even though we know they're good for us, even though we want to do those things and we want the benefits that those behaviors yield, why don't we just do it? And at first you think it's. Well, it's Information, you know, people just don't know what to do. But that can't be right, because we are drowning in information. Who doesn't know these days, right? If you're working on a particular goal, you want to lose weight, you want to exercise more, you want to repair a relationship with your family, you want to build a business, it's all out there, right? The information is more than ever. It's at your fingertips. So it can't be information, can't be skill, because skill is learnable. You can find the information to acquire that skill. I don't think it's even resources, although that helps. I don't think it's resources because many people who have all the resources accomplish very little. And some people who have nothing go on to do great things. So what is it? What's missing? And that led me to belief that we tend to think, in economics, we tend to think that. That if I want a particular benefit, I need to do a specific behavior. Classic incentives, that I need to know what to do, the behavior, and if I want the benefit, I'll do it. But that's incomplete. There's something missing because motivation is not a straight line between behavior and benefit. Motivation is a triangle that not only do I need to know what I want the benefit, not only do I need the behavior, the thing I need to get what I want, but if I don't have that belief, then my motivation fails over the long term. For example, if I work for a boss, a manager, who I don't believe has my best interest at heart, if I don't believe they're going to give me that promotion or that raise, how motivated am I going to be to do my best work? Not very. Conversely, even if I know what to do, I know the behavior, but I don't believe in my own ability to sustain that behavior. I'm probably going to fall off the wagon on my diet, or why should I stop drinking, or why should I start my business? It's probably going to fail anyway. How likely am I going to be to persist? Not likely. I'm going to quit. So motivation is not a straight line, it's a triangle. You have to have the behavior, the benefit and the belief. That's what holds it all together.
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A
That does make a lot of sense, actually, now I think about it. I mean, there's so many times I've really wanted to do something, you know, like achieve a certain goal in business or fitness and then not achieved it. And I've thought maybe it's just my motivation's not high enough. So that does make a lot of sense. How, how powerful can belief be? What does the research tell us about the power of belief?
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B
Well, I'll tell you about a study that blew my mind. This is a study that Curt Richter did in the 1950s. And Curt Richter was a biologist who had a very simple question. The question was, how long can a wild stress rat swim in water? Pretty simple question. You can't do these kind of experiments anymore, thank goodness. But the rats are already dead, so I can tell you about the results. So he puts a rat in the cylinder of water, and he stands there with a stopwatch and he waits until he sees the rat drowns. And that's the time he records. Now, what was interesting in this study, the rat didn't exhaust itself. It just kind of gave up for some reason. And it gave up at that 15 minute mark. Okay. Now, Richter wanted to figure out, could he extend how long that rat swam for? What interventions could he do? And one of the interventions was to get a group of wild rats, take those rats, put them in the same cylinders of water, and at the 15 minute mark, when he could see they were starting to struggle, starting to give up, he would reach in, pull out the rat, dry it off, let it catch its breath, and then plunk back into the water it went. And so now he observed that, in fact, he could, with this intervention, he did this a few times. With that intervention, he could increase the amount of time that the rats persisted. How much longer? And when I share this story with an audience, people will guess 30 minutes, which would be amazing, right? Double the time, 100% more persistent. That would be amazing. Then some brave person will say, no, no, no. How about an hour? Maybe they persisted four times longer, which would be absolutely bonkers, right? If you could study for an exam four times longer, if you could run a race four times longer, if you could persist making those sales calls or whatever, that difficult task, four times longer, that would be amazing. But the rats didn't swim for 60 minutes. They swam for 60 hours.
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A
Wow.
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B
60 hours of nonstop swimming, they became 240 times more persistent. Now, why is this so fascinating? What's the lesson for us? Because what changed? Their rat bodies didn't change. They didn't all of a sudden become super rats. Same physical capabilities. The environment hadn't changed as much as we talk about. Well, environments change our circumstances. You have to change the environment. You have to shape the environment in order to change behavior and motivation. Nothing changed in their environment. Same cylinder, same challenge. Same experiment. So the only variable left is that something changed their minds. We can't ask the rats, obviously, but we think that there was some kind of switch that was flipped in their minds that allowed them to persist longer. That knowing that salvation might be possible if I persist made them keep going and going and going. And so naturally, when we think about our limits, I thought about all the times that I had quit on something at 15 minutes when I really had 60 hours in me all along. And it turns out, John, that persistence is the most important trait. That it's not intelligence, it's not resources, it's not skills. It turns out it's just persistence. That's who succeeds. That successful people are actually the biggest losers. That successful people, you know, a lot of very, very successful people, they can list all their failures. They have way more failures than unsuccessful people, because unsuccessful people, they try once, didn't work for me, they stop, they quit. So it's not that persistence guarantees success, it's that quitting guarantees failure. So the most successful people are ones who just persist and persist and persist. So if we know that, and here we have this example of these wraths who unlock this tremendous amount of motivation and persistence, how do we learn from that? How can we adopt that in our own lives? How can we keep that motivation triangle solid so that we can finally accomplish our goals? And so that's, I think, the best demonstration of the amazing power of changing beliefs.
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A
It's funny, I was interviewing someone who works for Britain's youngest billionaire, which is a guy called Ben Francis. He's the founder of Gymshark. And I asked her, what's the number one trait of Ben, who you work for? And she said, his ability to bounce back from failure.
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B
Amazing. So true.
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A
Because he does not accept failure as the end. It is just an opportunity to learn and get straight back on, get back into the game.
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B
Not that failure says, I'm not anti quitting. Just to be clear. There is. Lord knows I've quit plenty of things. I've quit book projects, I've quit businesses, I've quit relationships. Quitting can be the right choice. It's just that we quit far too soon than is good for us. And that's a destruction of human potential.
- [10:17]
A
Totally. You have a lovely phrase in one of your chapters which got me thinking as well about the old phrase seeing is believing. And you flip it on its head, don't you? You know, believing is seeing.
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B
That's right.
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A
Explain that, because I think that's quite interesting.
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B
Sure. This is probably the biggest Myth that most people believe. The biggest trick the brain plays on us is that we see reality clearly. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the brain is incapable of. Of seeing reality clearly. That we know that people who are on a diet see food as physically larger. We know that people who are afraid of heights see distances as further away. That I can show you an image, the same image. It's called the coffer illusion. And based on where you're from, you will see either circles or rectangles. Same exact image. You don't see reality clearly. Why do we not see reality clearly? Because your brain simply can't process all that information and conscious attention. So right now, this very second, your brain is absorbing about 11 million bits of information. 11 million bits of information. That's the equivalent of reading War and Peace every second twice. Tremendous amount of information. The light entering your retinas, the sound of my voice in your ears, the ambient temperature of the room. Your brain is processing all that information. You're just not consciously aware of it because conscious awareness can only process 50 bits of information. So 11 million bits versus only 50 bits, that's the equivalent of one sentence per second. So War and Peace every second twice versus just one second at a time. So you are not seeing reality. You are seeing this tiny pinhole of reality that you think is the way the world is, and it's not.
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A
That's incredible.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I had a guy called Ian McGilchrist on the podcast a couple of years ago. He's written this incredible book called the Master and His Emissary about brain hemisphere theory. So left and right brain hemisphere theory. Incredible. Incredible. Deep thinker, philosopher, psychiatrist and neuroscientist. I said to Ian, well, of all the of you, of all your understanding of the world and how we think, what's the most profound single thing you've discovered? And he said, if people realize the power of what they pay attention to, it could change the world. And it's exactly your point is that he would say our reality is shaped by our, you know, by where we place attention. It's exactly the same thing. We cannot place our attention on all the things, can we? So right, what we choose to pay attention to, shapes. Shapes our experience.
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B
That's right. And I call this the three powers of belief. The first one is attention. And I totally agree. It's unbelievable how people can see the exact same thing, have the same exact experience, hear the same exact words, and come to completely different conclusions around what happened. If you've ever watched, like, a football match and the ref will make a call and the people on one side will say, that's a terrible call. Garbage. We should kill the umpire, kill the ref. The other side says, oh, that was a very good call. Yeah, completely correct. We're seeing the same exact instance and we will interpret it completely differently. So the brain will decide based on your beliefs. That's that filter of attention, that pinhole of attention that we see reality through. Where we focus, that attention is determined by our beliefs. So we see what we believe. Not that we'll believe it when we see it, but we literally will see what we believe. The second power of belief is anticipation that we will feel what we believe physically we will physically feel in our body. This is where we go into placebos and nocebos. I'll have to tell you at some point the story around Daniel Gisler. I'll tell you at some point around how when you take this to the logical extreme, it is absolutely mind blowing what's possible through the power of anticipation. And this, of course, directly reflects the power of marketing about why marketing is so powerful that I think most people don't understand what marketing is actually for. And then finally, the last power of belief is agency, the power of beliefs to shape what we actually do.
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A
One of the most profound parts of your book as well is how that influences relationships. I wasn't expecting that. It surprised me. And I thought, that's so true. You know, you have like an argument with somebody and you're trying to understand why are we arguing about this. And it comes down to how you see the world differently or your preconceived ideas every time it's why. And you've got some amazing advice on how to sort of undo all that as well.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because, I mean, you could solve a lot of arguments, I think, in the world if they.
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B
It's so true.
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A
Understood this. So explain a little bit about why that can affect relationships and what you can do about it.
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B
Sure. So let's. Let's define some terms. I think it's important. So here's what beliefs are not. Beliefs are not facts. When we argue with people and we don't understand why they don't see our point of view, it's because we think we're arguing about facts. Now, what are facts? Facts are objective truths. They are things that are true whether or not you believe in them. The world is round. It's not flat. It doesn't care what you believe. It's more like a sphere than it is flat. On the other end of the spectrum is faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. God rewards the righteous. There is no amount of evidence that I can convince somebody who has faith in that statement to change their mind. No evidence is required. Between fact and faith is a belief. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. It's not made up. It's not out of whole cloth. It's based on. You can revise it based on new evidence. And what makes belief so special is that they can change, unlike facts and faith, which almost never change. Well, facts never change. You can change your beliefs and you can use them differently. You can use them not to replace facts. I think that most of our problems in the world today, our personal problems, our interpersonal relationship problems, even our geopolitical problems occur because, unfortunately, far too many people think that their faith is a fact and don't realize that the things that they think are facts are nothing more than beliefs. And so let's make this practical. I know you're going to make me tell this story about my mom, so I'll go ahead and tell it, even though it's difficult to tell. A few years ago, my mom had her 74th birthday, and I wanted to do something nice for her, so I wanted to buy her some flowers. The problem was that I was in Singapore and she was in central Florida, where I grew up. And that presented this challenge of trying to find the right florist and calling them and making sure they would send just the right flowers and at the right time and they would arrive so I. I could make her happy. And I did it. I found the right florist. I got them out the door. I went to bed that night and I patted myself on the back and said, nir, you're a good son. You did a good deed. Your mom's gonna call you tomorrow and say what a good son you are. Well, John, that didn't happen. Here's what happened. I called my mom. I said, mom, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers I sent? To which she says, yes, I got your flowers. Thank you. But just so you know, the flowers you sent, they were half dead, and so don't order from that florist again. To which I said something like, well, that's the last time I buy you flowers. And that went over about as well as you'd expect. Not so good. And my wife Julie was on the call as well, wishing my mom a happy birthday. And after the call, the call concluded, and my wife turns to me and says, would you like to Do a turnaround on this. To which I said, no, I do not want to do your touchy feely mumbo jumbo, hocus pocus. I need to vent. Because what we're supposed to do is we're supposed to speak our truth. We're supposed to tell people how we were aggrieved. We're supposed to get things off our chest. Turns out that the research shows that that's exactly not what you should do. And I knew enough at that point that as much as I wanted to vent, that venting, just as we said, we don't see reality as it is, venting perpetuates the fact that we don't see people as they are. We don't see people as they are. We see people as we believe them to be. So every time we say, she always does that, that's so like her. There she goes again, right? All these. That reinforcement of my beliefs literally shapes how I see my mom. So instead of doing that, I did what's called a turnaround. And a turnaround is a technique that's called inquiry based stress reduction. It comes from. It was developed by Byron, Katie, but it actually has its roots all the way back to Aristotle. And what this technique asks us to do is something that our brain hates. It asks us to consider other potential beliefs. Now, why does the brain hate this? Because the brain hates changing its mind. The brain hates changing its mind. Why? Because whatever we have done in the past has kept us safe. Evolution doesn't care if we get along with our mothers. Evolution doesn't care if we flourish. Evolution doesn't care if we're happy. Happiness is not evolutionarily advantageous. What's evolutionarily advantageous is that you survive and you procreate. That's all evolution cares about. And so constantly, and we have to remember this, that our brains are pulling us to passivity. Our brains are pulling us to continue to do whatever we have done in the past. Because, hey, we were alive in the past. So keep doing what you did, because it worked back then. So you keep constantly hearing these limiting beliefs in our minds. You're not ready for this. This is too hard. This is painful. This hurts. This stinks. I don't want to do this. Those limiting beliefs, there's no time. That's probably the most common limiting belief. I hear there's no time. Well, I had this limiting belief that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. Because clearly that's what happened, right? That's a fact. She was too judgmental and Hard to please. Well, inquiry based stress reduction asks us four questions. The first question is, is this belief true? And you can do this about any limiting belief. Any limiting belief. There's no time. I'm not ready for this. I'm no good at this. This is hard, runs a gamut. It doesn't just have to be about your mom, any personal interpersonal conflict. So the first question that I ask myself is, is this true? Simple question, is this true? Obviously, John, you heard the conversation. My mother was very clearly being way too judgmental and hard to please. Right.
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A
Just say right, of course. Thank you. Of course, Nate. Yes, thank you very much.
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B
Because it's a fact, John, I'm gonna present you all the evidence. She always does this, and this one time she did this and then she did that. And that's very clearly stupid question. Let's move on to the second question. The second question was, is it absolutely true? Sounds like the same question, but it has a very important difference. Is it absolutely true? Well, I guess you could say, okay, maybe there could possibly be a 1% chance that there's a different interpretation. 99% sure that's not the case. But maybe. Which instantly means that it's not a fact. A fact is always true. The earth isn't sometimes round and sometimes flat. No, it's 100% time. It's always a sphere. So now it proves that it's not a fact. It's just a belief. It's not objective truth. The third question, who am I when I hold on to this belief? Well, when I believe that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, I'm short tempered, I'm not very nice. I become this 13 year old version of myself that I don't really like. Fourth question. Who would I be without this belief? If I had a magic wand and poof, I could tap my brain and that belief disappeared, how would I feel? I felt instantly lighter. I felt better. I didn't suffer as much if I thought, wow, if I could never think that my mother is judgmental, I'd be more myself. So in four questions, I determined one, that that thing that I thought was a fact maybe wasn't a fact, maybe it was just a belief. Two, that that belief wasn't really serving me. And finally, that I might be better off without that belief. And now comes the hard part. Remember, your brain hates changing its mind. So what inquiry based stress reduction asks you to do is to ask yourself, could the exact opposite be true? Could the exact opposite be true? And your brain hates Doing this. By the way, every time you do this, your brain is going to say, no, no, no, no, no. Don't change your mind. Things were fine the way they were. Keep doing what you're doing. So you have to fight that impulse, because you're not trying to change your mind. You're just creating a portfolio of perspectives. Just like you Colle cards or Pokemon cards or stock portfolio. Just options. We just want just to collect options. You don't have to change your mind. So let's do that real quick. Okay, so what's the opposite of My mother is too judgmental and hard to please. My mother is not too judgmental and hard to please. Could that possibly be true in any universe? How could that be true? Well, she did thank me for the flowers. She was saying a statement of fact, right? That doesn't necessarily mean it's a judgment. She was saying the flowers were half dead. And so maybe she was actually trying to protect me so I wouldn't get scammed by this florist. Maybe she was trying to be helpful, not hurtful. Okay, so now we have two beliefs. Here's a third one. I am judgmental and hard to please. How could that be true? Well, I had rehearsed in my brain that when I was going to call her, she was supposed to tell me effusive praise of what a great son I was. And when that didn't happen, I lost it. So who's being judgmental? I was finally the fourth turnaround. I am being too judgmental of myself. That when I put all this time and effort into doing something important and it didn't work out, I felt incompetent. I felt like I'd messed up. And this is called a misattribution of emotion. When I feel crummy, I'm going to find someone else to feel crummy to. I'm going to attribute my bad feeling, my suffering, to them. That's exactly what I did. So now I have four beliefs. So which one, John? Which one of those four is true?
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A
Well, I say they're all true, right?
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B
Yeah. All of them. None of them. Who cares?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Beliefs are tools, not truths. That first tool, that first belief. There was only one way out. For me to not suffer anymore. She had to change so I could stop suffering. You don't know my mom. But I'm telling you, she's not gonna do that. Right? If you hold your breath waiting for other people to change so you can stop suffering, you're gonna suffocate. Doesn't work that way. So that only gave me one way out. It was a pretty crappy tool. The other three tools, the other three beliefs, huh? Now there's another way out. I don't have to suffer. So what defines a limiting belief is a belief that creates suffering and decreases motivation. A liberating belief increases motivation and decreases suffering. So with these other three beliefs, these liberating beliefs, I didn't have to suffer anymore. Does it mean my mom has to be my best friend? No. Do I have to forgive her for everything she's ever done?
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A
No.
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B
It doesn't mean any of that. It just means I don't have to suffer anymore. And I became more motivated to work on that relationship with her. So that technique, which I can't take credit for, it's not mine. It's been heavily researched, but I think underutilized. We can actually use that in all kinds of circumstances in business applications, when we feel stuck, when we feel like something that we should be able to do is not getting done in interpersonal conflicts, in areas of our life that we feel we're not accomplishing what we're capable of. I'm not good with public speaking. I don't like sales calls, whatever the case might be. Anything that you know you can do, but there's something keeping you from doing it. That New Year's resolution that you have year after year, that relationship that you can't seem to fix, that aspiration, that goal, that dream that's not getting done, at the center of that is some type of limiting belief.
- [25:02]
A
That's what I found so powerful about it. Because I think most people blame the other person, don't they? They sit in that victimhood of like, well, obviously it's not me, it must be them. But in four simple steps. And they're incremental steps, aren't they? They kind of. They open the door and then it becomes wide open, doesn't it? But you realize that you've got much more control over your reality than you thought you did. And suddenly, in that situation, you've freed yourself of all that you know. The anguish and pain. I love. By the way, your. You sum up in this chapter as well. The quality of my relationship depends far more on my beliefs than on the other person's behavior.
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B
Damn it, I love that.
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A
Well, if we all took ownership for how we feel about the relationship and how it affects us, everything changes, doesn't it?
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B
Yeah. And not only. We were talking earlier, before we started recording about who's at fault for distraction from social media.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Another Example, if you believe that social media and technology is hijacking your brain, there's nothing you can do. You know what? You're 100% right.
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A
Yeah.
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B
It's their fault. So I'm not gonna do anything about it. And we love that. We love that. Again, the brain wants us to be passive. The brain wants us to adopt limiting beliefs. The brain doesn't want us to do anything different from what we've done in the past. So trying to think differently, you know, maybe social media isn't addictive. If it's true or not doesn't matter. Does it serve you to believe that? Does it serve you to have. I see this all the time. Labels, you know, especially at our age, we hear people saying all the time, I'm having a senior moment. Why do we say that? Yeah, you know, we know that people who have positive views of aging. This study blew my mind. Study out of Yale. People who have a positive view of aging at age 30 live seven and a half years longer, John. That's more than the effect of diet, exercise, or stopping smoking. Seven and a half years longer. And we always hear about, you know, you have to change your diet, you have to eat right, you have to stop smoking, you have to exercise. Turns out the biggest impact you could possibly have is to have a positive view of aging. Now, what does that sound like? A negative view of aging. You hear all the time. You almost never hear the positive. You hear the negative side. I'm having a senior moment. This is what it means to get older. I can't do that. My back aches. This basically, it's something around this theme that aging involves inevitable decline. A positive view of aging is something that sounds like growth is possible at any age. That's what this study found. Growth is possible at any age versus aging involves inevitable decline. Which one is true? Both are true factually, right? What is a fact? They're both true. But which one comes top of mind? Which colors your world, which changes your behavior? And so this is what's so important about realizing how our beliefs can literally become our biology. Do we live seven and a half years longer because of our beliefs? Because we're vibrating at the cosmic quantum level of the universe? No, the universe doesn't give a shit. That's not what's happening here. It's not that your beliefs are changing your mitochondria and making you live longer? No, that's not at all what's happening as far as the research shows. What's happening is that people who have positive views about aging, change their behavior and that becomes their biology. So someone who has a positive view of aging, someone who says, oh, growth is possible at any age, they go on walks with their spouse, they go contribute to their community and volunteer, they work in the garden, they do things because they say, hey, I can grow at any age no matter what. Growth is always possible. And so their beliefs do in fact become their biology, but via behavior.
- [28:34]
A
That is so fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. Seven and a half years.
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B
Seven and a half years.
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A
That is material, isn't it?
- [28:40]
B
Wow. It's amazing. Actually, there's another study that I love where this one has been replicated many times. There's a lot of misinformation out there as well about what placebos can and can't do. I would say half the time I spent on this book was getting really excited about a study and then digging into it and realizing, oh, man, it's low sample size, it hasn't replicated, low effect size. But there's some that really, there's some famous ones that, that are terrible that I talk about in the book about why you shouldn't believe they fit into this common category of the ones that are too good to be true, the ones that aren't explainable through behavior, those are the ones that don't replicate, I think are false. And it's a shame because the placebo effect is so incredibly powerful. But if you expect it to do things it can't, you're going to be disappointed because there's a difference between sickness and illness. Those are two different things. Just like we have pain and suffering, those are two separate things. Sickness is not illness. Sickness is in the body. It's a physical malady. Illness is in the mind. So placebos are amazing at fixing illness. They do nothing for sickness. Placebos don't cure cancer. They don't heal a broken bone. That's not how placebos work. They're amazingly effective at the symptoms, the illness associated with those sickness. What's interesting is that 80% of our healthcare spending, at least in the United States, I don't know. In the UK, 80% of healthcare spending is spent on illness, not sickness, the symptoms. So there's another study that demonstrates this, where they took male athletes and they told them, we have an amazing new steroid and you're lucky enough, you're going to get to try this steroid. No side effects. It's amazing. Please go exercise. We're going to track your progress, how much you lift, how much muscle mass you gain. Another group, they didn't give them any steroid, they just said, go exercise. We're going to compare you to. That was the control condition. Turns out that the steroid was a placebo. Incredibly enough, the men who took the placebo pill gained significantly more muscle mass. And this study has been replicated now several times. They gained more muscle mass, they became stronger because they had taken this steroid, which could not have affected their physiology in any way. And yet it had. How? Well, when they believed that they were taking a steroid, they behaved differently. They pushed a little bit harder, they put on a little bit more weight. Because I'm taking this steroid, it's gonna look how strong I'm getting. And so that's another example of what placebos can and can't do. The studies where you can't find an intermediary step of behavior are probably crappy studies. Those are not the ones to look at. However, it's incredibly powerful. Like, I started taking placebos on my own. Did you?
- [31:09]
A
Even knowing there were placebos.
- [31:10]
B
Well, here's the thing. We used to think that placebos only work if you were deceived.
- [31:13]
A
Yeah.
- [31:13]
B
You had to have a double blind control study because both the patient had to be blinded to the placebo, the doctor had to be blinded to the place. Nobody could know which condition you were in. The placebo or the actual substance, the active ingredient. Well, then Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard decides to test that theory and he brings in patients who have irritable bowel syndrome and he tells them, this is a placebo. He holds up this bottle. This is a placebo. It says, see placebo right on the jar. Right? Placebo. And he says, this is a completely inert substance. However, some people have found that their symptoms are alleviated when they take a placebo for ibs. Turns out that people who took the placebo knowing it was a placebo showed just as much improvement as the leading pain medication for ibs.
- [31:58]
A
Just based on that little bit of information suggesting that some people.
- [32:01]
B
And today you can go on Amazon and search placebo pills and you will see pill bottles that say placebo on the side that are sold as placebos as completely inert. And you'll see five star reviews about fast acting relief. Isn't that amazing?
- [32:17]
A
That is insane that people in the
- [32:19]
B
study actually called up Dr. Kaptchuk afterwards and said, Dr. Kaptrup, where can we get some more of those placebo effects? Give me those guys. Yeah. And did you know as well that the placebo effect is getting stronger? Is it? It is. That over the past 50 years, the placebo effect is getting stronger and stronger.
- [32:32]
A
Why would that be?
- [32:33]
B
Well, and this is a big problem, because pharmaceutical companies, in order to get medication approved, they have to show that it's more efficient.
- [32:40]
A
They've got to beat the placebo.
- [32:41]
B
Exactly. It can't be as good as a placebo. It has to be better than a placebo. But this is a huge problem because the placebo effect keeps getting stronger and stronger. Why? Because more people are hearing that placebo effects are effective, and so they expect it to be so. So the power of belief, the power of anticipation is that you will feel how you expect to feel.
- [33:02]
A
Now, talking of anticipation, I had Mike Cesareo on the podcast a couple of years ago. One of the best conversations I've ever had. And if ever there was an example of the power of anticipation, taking water and calling it liquid death and putting it in some punk rock packaging is just, I think, the ultimate expression. Isn't it, though, of the power of anticipation and managing how people feel about it.
- [33:23]
B
Right. It's a stunning story, and I was very cautious about including that story because, you know, there are many business books where they talk about a case study, and then that company goes bankrupt, and then it discredits. But, you know, look, a product is not a company make, so it doesn't matter what happens to liquid death. What happened to liquid death is absolutely fascinating. The fact that they could sell water with a skull on it, this burning skull, and call it liquid death, and everybody said this was ridiculous. A mother is not going to buy liquid death for their child when the child is thirsty. You're not going to pick that up at a convenience store. Well, they couldn't be more wrong. The company is killing it. They're doing incredibly well. And so part of you is like, well, are people just stupid? Why would they buy expensive water that isn't even artisanal spring water? It's just tap water. It does come from a. I think it's. Is it Austria or Austria?
- [34:13]
A
Austria. Yeah.
- [34:13]
B
Austria.
- [34:14]
A
Spring water from Austria.
- [34:15]
B
But why did Mike choose that particular spring in Austria?
- [34:18]
A
Well, the only place in the world you can put it in a can.
- [34:20]
B
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's the only reason. It's not because it's better water. It's just the only place that would can it for him. And so what's fascinating, though, is that even though it's just water in a can, I would argue it actually tastes better. Not because it's special, but because of this What I call the experience loop. That when you believe something, you anticipate that it will create some kind of reaction. You feel that reaction because of what you anticipated based on what you believe, and then you confirm that response and that creates this loop. And every time you go through that loop, you're confirming that experience. You're reinforcing the belief and you're going through it again and again. This is the hidden role of advertising. That advertising isn't just about increasing awareness. It's not just about brand recall. It's about incepting what the product should feel like. Like literally how you will experience it when you consume it. So I would argue that people who consume liquid death, to them, if you've bought into the brand and you're excited about it, and it's this little bit of edgy, naughty, weird thing that you're a member of this club around, it does actually taste better. Is it any stranger? We've known for a long time. I'm sure you know that study where they gave people wine. They said one was a cheap bottle of wine, one was an expensive bottle of wine. Turns out it was the same wine. And even though the people didn't know it, they experienced the expensive wine as better, not just based on what they said, but in their brains. This was a Baba Schiff study at Stanford where he could actually see that the reward center of the brain that was associated with pleasure became more active when people thought the wine was expensive. So if you can do that with wine that's the same wine, you can do it with the brand when people expect it to be something special, something different, something new.
- [36:02]
A
I don't know if you saw the soup, the Pepsi soup bowl ad. Which one? They were doing a parody of Coke. They had the polar bear and they were doing a taste challenge because obviously Pepsi is famous for, you know, more people prefer the taste of Pepsi to Coke, but Coke outsells Pepsi three or four times to one. So why would that be, you know, very similar products? Pepsi has a slight edge on a taste test, but it is the anticipation. It's the brand they've created over many years. Same kind of thing at play.
- [36:28]
B
That's exactly right. We discount that as it's just marketing, it's just advertising. It's not real. No, that's the entire point. That's the whole enchilada, is that if you can incept this is what the product should feel like when you experience it. It reminds me of. One of my favorite case studies is at the Nummi Toyota lab where they had identical cars. You know this case study where the identical cars rolled off the factory same as that car. One was a Geo Prism made by gm, the other was a Toyota. I think it was Camry. I think it was same exact car. The only difference was that one said GM and one said Toyota. Same car made in the same factory. It was a joint venture and wouldn't you know it, the GM car had much higher complaints of customer problems with the transmission is clanking. And it was rated at, I think, 67 or something in terms of the ratings of best cars. And the Toyota Camry was rated in the top 10. Same exact car, only the logo was different. Why? Because of what people expected. So that little rattling that you couldn't hear if you're driving, if you're a proud Toyota driver and Toyota makes great cars, versus if you were a GM driver and you're driving this cheap Geo, these cheap Geos, you're looking out for it. Exactly. You see what you expect.
- [37:43]
A
Now, talking about looking out for problems, there's also looking out for opportunities, which you talk about in the book as well. It's like, you know, what creates luck. And that I thought was quite interesting, isn't it, that some people are good at identifying opportunities.
- [37:56]
B
Right? This is a beautiful example of how our beliefs literally shape what we are able to see. So there's a study done where they gave people very simple tasks. The task was to look through a newspaper and simply count how many images, how many photos do you see in this newspaper? One group of people were people who believed they were lucky. Another group of people were people who believed they were unlucky. Now, this doesn't have anything to do with the truth, a fact. It wasn't that they assessed their life and said, oh, you are objectively lucky. No, it was just people who believed they were lucky or people who believed they were unlucky. The unlucky people to do this simple task took two and a half minutes. They count one, two, three. They counted all the images, two and a half minutes. The lucky people, the people who believe they were lucky took 11 seconds. Why the difference? Because on page two of this newspaper, when you opened up this newspaper, on page two, one of those images said, There are 43 images in this newspaper. Collect your reward. The lucky people could see it. They immediately observed it. The unlucky people, it didn't even cross their awareness, right, that 11 million bits of information they had collected, that 11 million bits of information, it had entered their brain, but their conscious attention didn't make sense of it. It never became the 50 bits that they were actually able to process. So this is an amazing example of how what we believe, if you believe you're lucky versus unlucky, you will literally see opportunities that other people don't see.
- [39:18]
A
So believing that you're lucky will make you luckier, right?
- [39:21]
B
That's exactly right. And it sounds silly, but having these simple reminders to replace these limiting beliefs like I'm unlucky or whatever. By the way, this is what makes entrepreneurs so special. You know, in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, he talks about how he had a reality distortion field, how he could see opportunities that other people just couldn't imagine.
- [39:45]
A
Now you talk as well in that chapter as well about actually success can also be a problem because you almost reinforce your own perceptions, don't you? And actually, the ability to keep your beliefs open and to adapt your beliefs to new information, circumstances is really important, isn't it?
- [40:02]
B
That's right. And I think this is why smart people are not that successful.
- [40:05]
A
Oh, really?
- [40:06]
B
Yeah. I think that being smart can actually be a real liability if you're too intelligent. You know, look at professors. Professors, they're the most intelligent. They score the best in all the IQ tests, but they're not necessarily the most successful. They don't necessarily contribute to society the most. They don't make the most money, they don't have the most friends. They're not necessarily the most successful people in the world. And I think part of it is because they're almost too smart. They judge things based on the strata of facts, what is objective truth. And if you've ever talked to very, very smart people, they can't kind of get to the point, you can't really make sense of what they're talking about because they want to tell you everything they're not able to filter down. Whereas I know a lot of very successful people, people who are have hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. They're modestly intelligent. Right, because that's not the defining trait. I think it's partially because if you're too smart, you just have too high of a bar for how you view reality. Everything needs to be fact. Whereas if you're a little bit less smart, if you're a little bit less intelligent, you're able to put those things into the realm of belief and you realize that you can alter your beliefs to shape what you do rather than just being right. It's okay not to be right, that beliefs are tools. Not true. So if it benefits you to say, I'm going to succeed no matter what. If that serves you. It's a belief you can adopt. Is it factually true? No. Because, look, most of our decisions in life, they're not based on fact. Should I marry this person? Should I move to this town? Should I take this job? Those aren't facts. Those aren't laws of nature. They're based on beliefs because they're predictions about the future.
- [41:35]
A
And also, I interview a lot of entrepreneurs and founders on the podcast, and they're constantly experimenting, trying, getting feedback and pivoting all the time. Whereas in a big, successful kind of corporations will go, this is how we manage our brand. This is how we launch a product. We've got a roadmap for 20 years, and we always adopt the same kind of processes. Founders will go, well, we tried. This didn't work. We're going to do something else. And then they'll discover the reality.
- [42:03]
B
And this leads to company culture, I think is very, very practical application of this. What is company culture but codified beliefs? That's all it is, right? Just codified beliefs. So having that company culture where you're repeating these liberating beliefs, like take Amazon for examp, one of Amazon's liberating beliefs, and they have these company mantras that constantly repeated. And I know people who work at Amazon, it's true, they really do repeat this all the time, sometimes to an annoying extent. One of them is, it's always day one. It's always day one. They want to remind people at the company that no matter how big we get, we're still a startup. We still need to be scrappy. Now, beliefs are tools, not truths. And they have found that that belief serves them. It is objectively false. It is not day one. It has not been day one for a very long time. It is not the truth, but it serves them. And so they've adopted it. And I think that's incredibly powerful. We can do that for ourselves, we can do that for our families, and we can do that for our companies.
- [42:58]
A
That's brilliant. I love that a lot. We talked earlier, didn't we, about persistence and consistency, and I've learned that a lot. You know, you know, success compounds over time, isn't it? And it's repeating the habits, it's doing the things, it's learning. But the other side of that is, surely there is a moment that you should quit, right? And the idea of just mind over matter, I'll just power through. I'll just keep on bashing through It. Right. How do you know the difference between when to double down on the belief because it's good and it's working versus actually it's time to quit?
- [43:30]
B
Yeah. This is a terrific question. I think it's very important because the book is very anti quitting because by and large we quit far too soon. That is good for us and that's what destroys human potential. So we have to be cognizant of that. Is that most of the time we quit at the 15 minutes when we have the 60 hours in us. But there is definitely a time to quit. Lord knows I've quit book projects, I've quit relationships. I've quit business ventures. Quitting is a good thing. But when should we quit? I think there are three criteria. The first is that you need a mile marker. Okay? Not a goal per se, but a mile marker. And the difference is that a mile marker says, I am going to do this uncomfortable thing because a new thing will always take you outside of your comfort zone. I'm going to do this risky, this slightly uncomfortable thing for a fixed number of days. Whether It's a week, 30 days doesn't matter. Some kind of predetermined number of days that I will try this. I'm gonna try this ad campaign for 30 days. I'm gonna try this new hire for X number of days. I'm gonna try posting on social media for whatever days. So you need a mile marker. Why is that so important? Because if you don't do that at the first sign of discomfort, you're gonna quit. You're saying, I'm sick of this, it's not working. Maybe it'll quietly be something you start procrastinating on. So you need that mile marker to say, I'm not going to stop until I hit that mile marker. That's criteria one. Criteria number two is, are you still learning? You see many people conflate failure with a reason to quit. I don't think that's true. If you're failing, that can be great. If I looked in the future and I said, look, I took a time machine and I saw that on your sixth time, after five failures, you're gonna succeed. After five sales calls, the sixth one you're gonna close. After five dates, you're gonna find the love of your life, you would want those failures. You say, okay, great, let's go through those failures quickly so I can get to the success. So even if you're failing, if you're still learning, then don't quit. And then finally, does persistence matter? There are many ventures where persistence does matter if you're trying to get in shape. I used to be clinically obese, but when I started exercising, there were many months and months where I was plateauing. I was working, working, working, and nothing was changing but physical fitness, like business, like relationships, sometimes you hit a plateau that. But then eventually, if you persist, boom. Now you've got progress, you bust through that plateau. But that's not with everything. For example, let's say you work at a company with really crappy company culture. You're not going to outlast that company culture. If you're working with toxic people, your persistence is not going to pay off. You're just banging your head against the wall. So I think those are the three criteria. Did you meet your mile marker? Are you no longer learning? And does persistence matter or not? And only after you've checked those three boxes. Then it's a good time to quit.
- [46:07]
A
And it links as well to what is in your control and what is not in your control. It's like master the things you're in your control and learn to let go of the things that are outside.
- [46:16]
B
Oh, this is huge. So do you know there's a formula for burnout? There's literally a recipe for burnout, and this comes from Oxford. There's a study done by Stansfield and Candy where they found. When you think about what type of jobs do people burn out, what type of jobs are more likely to create anxiety and depression disorder in people? It's not a sad job. You know, when I first saw this research and I saw the heading around what kind of jobs create depression anxiety, you think maybe a sad job, right? A mortician or somebody who has to put puppies to sleep, you know, a sad job. That's not true. It's not the job you do, it's the environment you do it in. The formula for burnout is two things. High expectations coupled with low control, that is literally the formula for burnout. Now, what's interesting, high expectations with high control, no problem. We love it. That's when we rise to the occasion. So that's fantastic. It's when we have high expectations, but we don't control the outcome. That's what literally drives us crazy.
- [47:12]
A
What about the stories we tell ourselves? Stories we tell about ourselves as well. I mean, people often laugh at me because I very often refer to the fact I got fired twice, right? And part of the reason I tell it is to take away any power it has on how I think about myself or what I'M going to do. But I meet so many people that have this narrative about themselves. I'm not good at this. I got fired. This happened. And it shapes how they. It shapes what they do next.
- [47:41]
B
So true. And unfortunately, this is a bit controversial, but I think it's important. I think there's a bit of an industry around labeling us these days, and I think it's very dangerous. There's a chapter in the book called your labels are your limits. This came to mind because I don't think there's much of a check and balance when it comes to these labels. We love labels. We love to label ourselves. We certainly love to label other people, but we love to label ourselves because there's this phenomenon called the Rumpelstiltskin effect. The Rumpelstiltsin effect says that there's comfort in naming a diagnosis a problem we're having. Oh, that's why that's happening. I'm a Sagittarius. Oh, you know, I'm not a morning person. Oh, I have ADHD or whatever. And I have adhd. But here's what happened when I was diagnosed with adhd. At first it was very comforting. That explains so much. That's so comforting. But then after a few months, every time I would get distracted, I would focus on the diagnosis. Ah, there's my ADHD again. I can't focus. And if I can't focus, what if I don't meet my deadline? If I don't meet my deadline, the book's not going to be any good. And what if it's crap and nobody likes it? And I would get into this rumination cycle, all these limiting beliefs talking inside my head, trying to keep me passive. Don't try, don't push. You're not good enough. This won't work. And I became so fixated on my diagnosis that it stopped helping me. Because what I forgot was that a diagnosis is a map. A label is a map. It tells you, okay, you're here and you want to get there. So here's how you could do it. And maybe you're starting from a different place. Maybe you're here and other people are a step ahead. For example, okay, but you're not the map. The diagnosis is not your identity. So we have to hold these identities very lightly and be very careful of them because our labels can become our limits. Whereas now my liberating belief is, my limiting belief was I have a chronic diagnosis, which is not true. You know, when I took my ADHD test, you get a Likert scale. How Often do you feel these symptoms? How often do you get distracted? How often? Well, compared to who? I only have my own subjective experience. To me, I feel like I get distracted a lot. Do you know anybody who doesn't get distracted a lot? Everybody does. But go walk into a doctor and ask for a diagnosis and see if you won't get one. You're gonna get one, right? What's the check and balance? There's no check and balance. In fact, today in the UK, there are more neurodivergent people than not.
- [49:57]
A
Really?
- [49:58]
B
Yes.
- [49:58]
A
I didn't know that. Wow.
- [49:59]
B
I talked to a doctor for the book who told me, one day medical science will advance to the point where we're all sick. That is exactly what's happening, my friend. That's exactly what's happening. And we think, well, what's the problem? We need to accept these diagnosis. These are conditions. These are. And I'm not disputing that. What I'm disputing is, is it serving us? Is it always serving us? Because when you foreclose on your identity, when you become your diagnosis, you create a cage of your own device. I think that's really dangerous. And there's nobody warning us about those troubles. And I think this will be one of those things in a few years that we'll say, ugh, that was a big mistake. We needed more checks and balances. We needed more than just psychiatrists telling us that we should have labels and we should have more warnings around how sometimes our labels can become our limits.
- [50:47]
A
I totally agree. I mean, that's what I found so powerful about your book, is how much of it is in our control, how much agency we actually have to control this. So maybe to wrap up, what would be your big advice or recommendation for developing good. Building good beliefs that are enhancing rather than limiting?
- [51:06]
B
So I would start with what I call the muck. The muck is that area of your life where you feel stuck. Is it that resolution that you've made year after year? Is it that relationship that's causing you suffering? Is it that business venture that just not working? Is it the sales calls you know, you need to make but you don't want to? Is it, you know, I'm no good at presenting in front of others? Whatever it is the thing that. That is causing you suffering in your life in one way or the other? And I would sit with that for a minute and write down why you believe you're not able to do it. And it's not easy to do. You know, it's interesting Our limiting beliefs are like faces. We all have a face. We all have a face. But you can't look at your face. If I said, john, look at your face, you can't look at your face. You can look at your hands, you can look at your feet, you can't look at your face. Same with limiting beliefs. You can't see your own limiting beliefs because to you, they feel like facts. You can see other people's limiting beliefs. I can see my mom's limiting beliefs. I can see my kids limiting. I can see everybody else's limiting beliefs. I can't see my own limiting beliefs. Beliefs. And so what we have to do is to have a process. We have to take steps in order to see these hidden, limiting beliefs, because they're always hidden. They feel like facts, but they're not. They're just beliefs. So if you can identify that area of your life where you're struggling in one way or the other, whatever goals, just you're stuck on your health, your wellness, your business, doesn't matter. Follow this process to uncover that limiting belief and then see if you can turn it around to find a belief, a liberating belief that could be as true. And then try it on for size. You don't have to change your mind. Just try and experiment for one week. I'm going to adopt this liberating belief, see how my life changes. And if it doesn't work, if my life doesn't get better, if I don't decrease my suffering and increase my motivation to work on this problem, I'll try a different belief. You can always go back to the default. It's free. There's really no side effects. I think it's something we can all do.
- [52:51]
A
Nia, thank you. I know everyone's going to get a huge amount out of this, and I was so keen to include your book and this conversation at the Calling, which is, funny enough, it's the first big event that uncensored CMO has put on. So what I loved about this was I'm reading this book while putting on my first ever big event and having to kind of put it all into practice, literally now. So thank you. I love it because honestly, it was so good because I realize, I mean, I've been doing a podcast for seven years. I know how to do it. I know I'm good at it. I know how it works, right? I've never put a big event on and I suddenly found myself lacking belief. I found myself with all those questions in my mind and started thinking, oh, am I going to be any good at this or what's going to happen and this sort of thing. So it was amazing timing, I have to say. Thank you so much and I know it's going to be an awesome contribution to the day.
- [53:43]
B
My pleasure.
- [53:43]
A
So listen, thank you for writing the book. It is genuinely amazing and recommend everyone go out and grab a copy.
- [53:48]
B
Thank you so much. It was great being here and I wish you a fantastic event.
- [53:51]
A
Thank you. So I hope you enjoyed that episode of Uncensored CMO as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, by the way, I've got a new newsletter, so if you'd like to get my thoughts on the One Thing that I take out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the One Thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast just launched, Uncensored Renegades with the fabulous Corey Marchisoto. She is one of the world's best CMOs. She's an absolute rock star. Every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that it's in your feed. Uncensored Renegades. And finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast, it would not happen without them. So big thanks and lots of love to System One. I'll see you next time.