If you’re ambitious but inconsistent, please watch this
AAli Abdaal
Mental HealthAdult EducationExercise
Transcript
00:00:00The most damaging words in the English language are I am.
00:00:04Because whatever comes after I am is what your psyche will expect you to become.
00:00:08All right, so this video is about why you know what to do, but you are still not doing it.
00:00:12And because this is a problem that we all struggle with,
00:00:14I was very keen to have a conversation with best-selling author Nir Eyal.
00:00:17We all basically know what to do.
00:00:19The problem is that we don't follow through because there's an element missing.
00:00:22Now Nir has previously written the wonderful book called Indistractable,
00:00:25which I personally found super helpful in overcoming my own tendencies to procrastinate.
00:00:29It's not good enough just to know what to do and why you want to do it.
00:00:32You also need to...
00:00:33But then a few months ago, I read his latest book, Beyond Belief, and I really enjoyed it.
00:00:37What about imposter syndrome?
00:00:38A lot of people feel like they have imposter syndrome.
00:00:40It has this word syndrome, which makes it sound like it's a real thing.
00:00:43Totally limiting belief.
00:00:44And so I invited him to come over to Hong Kong where he and I could have a conversation in person,
00:00:48basically exploring the research he's been doing for the last like five plus years of working on the book
00:00:51to try and answer this question, why do we know what to do, but then just not do it?
00:00:57Despite knowing what to do and why we want to do it, so many times in life, we don't actually carry it out, right?
00:01:03How many times do we have all the information we need?
00:01:05We know exactly the framework.
00:01:07We know exactly all the steps.
00:01:08We want the benefits of carrying out those steps, but we don't do it.
00:01:12Why?
00:01:13So the book is about how do we use our beliefs, which are upstream of our behavior, to change
00:01:18what we are able to see, what we feel, and ultimately what we do.
00:01:21Now, you and I have both done this a lot of times in our life.
00:01:23We start something with the best intention in the world, and then we just stop doing the thing.
00:01:26We might think it's a lack of discipline, or we're just lazy, or we're just unmotivated.
00:01:29But what Nir argues is that there's something deeper underlying this, and that is our belief.
00:01:33I spent the past 30 years being a professional dieter, and my diet went kind of this yo-yo
00:01:40roller coaster for literally 30 years of my life.
00:01:43And what I found was that every diet worked until it didn't.
00:01:48And when it stopped working, it was always because I stopped believing in it.
00:01:52So at first, I tried going low-fat, and then after that, I became a vegetarian.
00:01:57Then after that, it was keto, and then after that, it was intermittent fasting.
00:02:00And they all worked for a while, but then some bit of doubt would enter my mind.
00:02:04Somebody would say, oh, keto is bad for your kidneys, and vegetarians don't get enough
00:02:09nutrients, and whatever it was.
00:02:11And as soon as my faith in that diet faltered, then I fell off the wagon, and I would stop,
00:02:17and I'd say, ah, diets don't work.
00:02:19Well, it wasn't that diets don't work, it was that when I stopped believing in that plan,
00:02:23in that course of action, my behavior changed.
00:02:26I would succumb to what's called the what-the-hell effect, that, hey, you know, diets don't work
00:02:32anyway, so give me that piece of pizza, and I'll chase it with some French fries.
00:02:37And so what was missing was that conviction.
00:02:39And ultimately, what I learned was that to lose weight, to seek financial freedom, to have
00:02:46a better relationship with the people you love in your life, to accomplish
00:02:49any long-term goal, what's really required is not the one true method.
00:02:54That's what I kept searching for.
00:02:55Give me the next book, the next guru, the next method that's going to be the one and ultimate
00:02:58way to do it.
00:03:00When really, I think that the key is that we pretty much already know what to do, it's
00:03:05how do we stick with it over time.
00:03:07That's the number one trait that will define whether you will meet your goals.
00:03:11It's not how intelligent you are.
00:03:13It's not even what resources you have or what skills you've acquired.
00:03:17The number one determinant of whether you will reach your goal is whether or not you quit.
00:03:22It's pretty basic, right?
00:03:23So if quitting is the number one determinant of whether you will fail, how do you persist?
00:03:28Okay.
00:03:28At this point, I was like, okay, Nir, fair enough.
00:03:30I agree that quitting guarantees you're going to fail at doing the thing, but surely some
00:03:35problems are actually tactical or strategic in nature rather than just about quitting.
00:03:39And this is what he had to say.
00:03:40You know, I've met a lot of very successful people.
00:03:42I interviewed billionaires.
00:03:43I interviewed people who were broke.
00:03:45And it turns out that people who are successful at whatever venture they choose to accomplish,
00:03:52successful people are losers.
00:03:54Successful people lose more often.
00:03:56They have more failures on their rap sheet than people who aren't successful.
00:04:00Successful people try and try and try.
00:04:03They figure out a way.
00:04:04Whereas unsuccessful people, they try something once and they give up.
00:04:07I mean, you know this with your creator program, right?
00:04:09What's the defining trait of people who go on to succeed?
00:04:11It's not that they're smarter than the rest of us.
00:04:13I mean, a lot of very successful people, they're modestly smart.
00:04:16They're not necessarily the most smart people I know in the world.
00:04:19It's that they're the most tenacious, the most persistent.
00:04:22But there's never been a formula, I think, for understanding how do I stay persistent.
00:04:26And it turns out that if you persist, you will overcome these challenges.
00:04:30You'll find a way.
00:04:30If there is a way, you'll find one.
00:04:31It's not that persistence guarantees success.
00:04:33It's that quitting guarantees failure.
00:04:35So if you can do everything you can to inoculate yourself from quitting too soon,
00:04:40not that there isn't a time to quit.
00:04:41There is definitely a time to quit.
00:04:43And we can talk about one of the criterias for that.
00:04:45But what we find in the research is that too many of us quit far too soon.
00:04:50That is good for us.
00:04:51Okay.
00:04:51But just don't quit, bro, is to me not a particularly satisfying answer.
00:04:55Because that sounds like telling a depressed person to just cheer up or telling someone
00:04:58who's struggling to build a habit to just do it.
00:05:00So I think the real question is, what does it actually take for one person to persist with
00:05:06doing the thing, but then for a different person with the same kind of general circumstances
00:05:12to not persist, to decide the thing is pointless and to quit doing the thing.
00:05:16And this is where we get to the motivation triangle.
00:05:18Okay, so the motivation triangle is a new explanation of how motivation works that I think most people,
00:05:25including myself, I used to think that motivation was about the reward, right?
00:05:30The incentive, the benefit that if you want this thing, you know, you want more money,
00:05:34you want better health and longevity.
00:05:37You want to find a mate, whatever it is that you want, that motivates you to do certain
00:05:42behaviors.
00:05:43So it's a straight line between knowing what to do and just doing it for the benefit.
00:05:47But that's obviously not true.
00:05:49Because if it was that easy, we would all have six-pack abs and be multimillionaires.
00:05:53Because we all basically know what to do, right?
00:05:56I don't think that's the problem anymore.
00:05:57We all have bookshelves full of advice.
00:06:01We can watch, you know, YouTube videos that tell us what to do.
00:06:04We can ask ChatGPT or Google the answer to our questions when we don't know what to do.
00:06:07We all know what to do.
00:06:09The information's out there.
00:06:09We're drowning in information.
00:06:11The problem is that we don't follow through because there's an element missing, that it's
00:06:15not good enough just to know what to do and why you want to do it.
00:06:19You also need the belief.
00:06:20So the benefit is why you're doing the thing.
00:06:23The behavior is what you're doing.
00:06:25But if you don't have the belief holding this triangle together, you won't sustain your
00:06:29motivation.
00:06:30So for example, if I'm working for a boss who I don't believe has my long-term interest
00:06:34at heart, right?
00:06:36So if I don't believe I'm going to get the benefit of that promotion or that raise because
00:06:39I don't think my boss has my best interests at heart, well, then I'm not going to work
00:06:44very hard.
00:06:45Eventually, I'm going to quit.
00:06:46And on the other side, if I don't believe in my own ability to do a behavior, I also won't
00:06:50persist, right?
00:06:51If I don't believe in the kind of person who exercises regularly or who can start a business
00:06:55or who can start a YouTube channel, if I don't believe I can sustain that behavior,
00:06:58I'm also going to quit over the long term.
00:07:00So even if I know what to do, the behavior, even if I know why I want to do it, I have
00:07:04to have that belief that holds it all together.
00:07:06Now, this is the core model of this entire episode.
00:07:09The benefit is why you want the thing.
00:07:11The behavior is what you do to achieve the thing.
00:07:13But if the underlying belief collapses, then so does the entire motivation triangle.
00:07:17Now, speaking of stuff that we know we should do, but probably don't do.
00:07:20So I have a massive long list of Slack messages and emails that I should probably get around
00:07:25to replying to at some point.
00:07:26Now, this would be probably multiple hours of typing, but I can save a lot of that time
00:07:30by using the people who are very kindly sponsoring this video, and that is Whisperflow.
00:07:33Whisperflow is an incredible voice to text tool that I've been using literally nonstop for
00:07:37the last several months.
00:07:38It has saved me dozens of hours of time.
00:07:40I use it on my computer.
00:07:41I use it on my phone.
00:07:42And you can use it literally within any app.
00:07:44And so even though I type quite fast, I speak a lot faster than I type.
00:07:47And so it's just a way more efficient at getting text out onto a computer.
00:07:50So for example, this is something I could write to Owen, one of my team members.
00:07:53Hey, Owen, I've got three quick things before Thursday.
00:07:55Firstly, can you send Angus the updated numbers from last quarter?
00:07:57Secondly, we need to move the onboarding call to Wednesday.
00:07:59Oh no, wait, Thursday afternoon.
00:08:00And then thirdly, can you find somewhere for the team lunch next week?
00:08:03Ideally near West Kowloon, so it's easy for everyone to get to.
00:08:05Boom.
00:08:05So that took about 20 seconds.
00:08:07And what it does is that it's already formatted it as a numbered list.
00:08:10It took into account the fact that I made a mistake of Wednesday, um, no, Thursday.
00:08:13All of my ums and ahs are gone.
00:08:15The punctuation is reasonable.
00:08:16And if you're thinking that, wait, why do I need a separate tool for this?
00:08:18Like surely my phone or computer already has Siri built in as dictation.
00:08:21I mean, I would say when was the last time you tried to actually use your phone's built
00:08:24in dictation and like, was it any good?
00:08:26Actually, let's try this right now.
00:08:28Hey Angus, uh, can we do the team lunch on Thursday?
00:08:30Uh, no wait, Friday.
00:08:31And, um, can we do it somewhere near West Kowloon this time?
00:08:34As you can see here that it just doesn't understand what I'm trying to say.
00:08:37It's kept in the mistake.
00:08:38It doesn't know what Kowloon is because I mean, it's a weird kind of word.
00:08:40And the nice thing about Whisperflow is that it's just sorted all of that stuff
00:08:43out without me having to think about it.
00:08:44Whisperflow is free to use, but if you use the link down below, you get a one month trial
00:08:48completely free of Whisperflow Pro, which is what I personally signed up for and pay for.
00:08:51So thank you so much, Whisperflow for sponsoring this video and let's get back to it.
00:08:54But okay, we're talking about belief.
00:08:55And at this point, things can start to sound a little bit mystical, a little bit woo, a
00:08:59little bit like manifestation-y.
00:09:00And so what's actually going on here?
00:09:01Like how does the underlying belief actually change our behavior?
00:09:04We see this a lot when someone is told in school that you're bad at math, right?
00:09:10That you flunked out on an exam, so you're bad at math.
00:09:13And people start internalizing that.
00:09:14You know, they have one bad experience and they think, I'm not a math person.
00:09:17Well, what happens the next time they have that challenge?
00:09:19Well, you know, I'm not a math person.
00:09:21So am I going to really study as hard as a person who thinks I'm great at math?
00:09:24No, I'm going to give up early.
00:09:25I'm not going to try very hard.
00:09:26And then actually that belief becomes the reality.
00:09:30This is actually so fascinatingly demonstrated.
00:09:34You know, how much time do we spend on longevity and health?
00:09:38We talk about eating right and exercise and don't smoke, don't drink, all these things.
00:09:43Do you know that we have found that beliefs will affect your longevity more than stopping
00:09:53smoking or eating right or even exercise that in a study at Yale, they found that having
00:09:58positive views of aging increased lifespan by seven and a half years.
00:10:04That's shocking.
00:10:05Seven and a half years.
00:10:06That is more than the effect size of exercise, diet, or stopping smoking.
00:10:10Now, that doesn't mean that having positive views of aging magically changes your mitochondria
00:10:15because of the vibrations of the air.
00:10:17Nothing to do with that at all, right?
00:10:18It has nothing to do with that.
00:10:19It's that your beliefs become your biology via behavior.
00:10:24So if you have the kind of person who says to themselves that I'm having a senior moment
00:10:30or I'm getting too old for this, what type of behavior will they do in their day-to-day
00:10:36of life versus someone who has a positive view of aging?
00:10:39What does that sound like?
00:10:40Something like growth is possible at any age.
00:10:43If you believe growth is possible at any age versus I'm having a senior moment, I'm too old
00:10:48for this, how does your behavior change?
00:10:52Your behavior, your beliefs become your biology because you behave differently.
00:10:56You're more likely to take care of your body, to exercise, to not smoke, to do these behaviors
00:11:00that will increase your lifespan much more than just telling people don't do this, don't do that.
00:11:05If you change your beliefs, you're much more likely to do those behaviors and stuff because
00:11:09again, these beliefs are upstream of the behavior.
00:11:11So I think we should, you know, we should constantly be preaching to not reinforce these limiting
00:11:18beliefs, right?
00:11:19Why do we tell ourselves I'm having a senior moment or I'm too old for this?
00:11:22Why do we tell ourselves?
00:11:23Because which is true?
00:11:25Which is true?
00:11:25I'm too old for this.
00:11:26I'm having a senior moment versus growth is possible at any age.
00:11:30They're both true, right?
00:11:32They're both potentially true.
00:11:33But the person who defaults to this belief, the negative belief versus the positive belief
00:11:36is going to behave differently.
00:11:38There's another amazing study where they took a group of men and they told them that they
00:11:45were enrolling in a steroid study.
00:11:48There was a new steroid pill that they would be a part of.
00:11:52And these were guys who exercised regularly in the gym.
00:11:55And that group of people who, who were told they were in this, this steroid study, they
00:12:01were actually given a placebo pill.
00:12:02So no steroid, but they were told this is a steroid.
00:12:07Now, those men who were told that they were taking a steroid gained more muscle mass and
00:12:13became stronger than the guys who didn't get the placebo steroid, even though both of them
00:12:18were taking nothing, right?
00:12:20Both groups had, it was a completely inert substance.
00:12:23Why did the group get stronger when they were taking a placebo steroid?
00:12:27Well, because when they went to the gym, they pushed out another rep.
00:12:30They, they, they worked a little bit harder.
00:12:33And so that's not a trick.
00:12:34That's not magic.
00:12:35It shows you how our beliefs become our biology via behavior.
00:12:39I really like this.
00:12:40I found myself taking notes on it while we were doing the podcast.
00:12:42Your beliefs become your biology via your behavior.
00:12:45Now, there is a really cool scientific study that backs this up from the 1950s.
00:12:48Let's just say it would not pass through an ethics board of approval if someone were to
00:12:53try to do it today.
00:12:54But because it's from the 1950s, we can talk about it.
00:12:56And so I'm going to give you a trigger warning here.
00:12:57If you do not like animal cruelty, then please feel free to skip to this next section.
00:13:01One of my favorite studies that demonstrates this is a study that was done in the 1950s by
00:13:05a biologist by the name of Kurt Richter.
00:13:07And Richter was, had this very simple experiment.
00:13:10What he wanted to do was determine how long rats could swim in water.
00:13:14This was in the 1950s.
00:13:15He did kind of a ethically dubious study, but here's what he did.
00:13:18He took some rats and he put them in a cylinder of water and he stood there with a stopwatch
00:13:23and he measured how long they could swim.
00:13:25It turns out a wild rat can swim for about 15 minutes before it gives up and dies.
00:13:29It's interesting.
00:13:30It didn't exhaust itself.
00:13:32It just kind of gave up.
00:13:33So what Richter observed was, if the baseline was 15 minutes, he was looking for how he could
00:13:39make that rat persist for longer.
00:13:40How could he change how long the rat could swim for?
00:13:43So he had a second experiment.
00:13:44The second experiment, he took a new group of rats.
00:13:46He put them in the same exact cylinders of water.
00:13:49He waited until they swam for 15 minutes.
00:13:52And at the 15-minute mark, he reached in, pulled out the wild rat, dried it off, let it catch
00:13:57its breath, and then plunked back in the water it went.
00:14:01And this time, he wanted to see would there be any difference in how long the rat swam for.
00:14:06And when he did this intervention a few times, when the rat saw that if it persisted, that
00:14:10it might be saved, that salvation might be possible, the rat didn't swim for 15 minutes anymore.
00:14:15Do you want to take a guess how much longer it swam for?
00:14:17Do you know already?
00:14:19One hour?
00:14:19Two hours?
00:14:20That's what most people say.
00:14:21They say maybe it swam for twice as long, for 30 minutes, for maybe an hour, which would
00:14:24be crazy.
00:14:25Think about that, right?
00:14:26If I could make you four times more persistent, imagine if everybody who takes one of your courses,
00:14:30if you could make them four times more persistent, if you could run a marathon for four times
00:14:34longer, that'd be crazy, right?
00:14:36That'd be an unbelievable intervention.
00:14:37But the rats didn't swim for 60 minutes or two hours, 120 minutes.
00:14:42They swam, Ali, for 60 hours.
00:14:4660.
00:14:4760 hours.
00:14:4760 hours.
00:14:49Not 60 minutes.
00:14:4960 hours of nonstop swimming.
00:14:53So what can we learn from this?
00:14:54Nothing changed in the rat's body.
00:14:56Same exact rat body.
00:14:57They didn't suddenly become super rats.
00:14:58Nothing changed in the environment.
00:15:00As much as we talk about, well, you know, the environment shapes behavior, nothing changed
00:15:04in the experiment.
00:15:04Same cylinders, same rats.
00:15:07What changed was, we can't ask the rats, obviously, but we think the only variable left was
00:15:10that something changed in their minds.
00:15:12That some switch was flipped all of a sudden in this experiment when the rats saw, hey,
00:15:16if I persist, then I might survive.
00:15:20They swam way longer, 240 times longer.
00:15:24So the lesson here for us is where are we quitting at the 15-minute mark where we believe
00:15:30we're done versus when we are actually at our limit and that we quit way, way, way too soon
00:15:35that is good for us.
00:15:37So that's really what this research reveals is that our beliefs that shaping how we see
00:15:41a challenge will dramatically affect how long we will persist and persistence dramatically
00:15:46shapes whether we will succeed.
00:15:48The useful question here is not could I work 240 times harder.
00:15:52The question is where am I stopping because I believe that I've hit my limits, whereas my
00:15:56actual limits might be way further ahead than what I think I can achieve.
00:16:00And so as Nir was telling me about this stuff, I was like, objection, your honor.
00:16:03What about burnout?
00:16:04Are you just saying that you should just keep going?
00:16:06Like surely burnout is a thing, right?
00:16:08We know that there is a formula for burnout.
00:16:10This is what most people don't understand.
00:16:11They think that burnout is having to do too much.
00:16:13And that's not necessarily the case, that there's something more to it.
00:16:15Or, you know, when I thought about burnout, you think, oh, it's about doing a difficult
00:16:20job.
00:16:21That's why people burn out.
00:16:22It's not necessarily the case.
00:16:24Did you know that there's actually a formula for burnout?
00:16:26It's a two-part equation for burnout.
00:16:28This is the work of Stansfield and Candy.
00:16:29They did this at Oxford University a few years ago.
00:16:31And they determined that the formula for burnout is a confluence of two things.
00:16:36It's not whether you're working a sad job.
00:16:38Like when I first saw this research and I guessed, hey, why would a job cause burnout?
00:16:42Why does it lead to more anxiety and depression disorders?
00:16:45Turns out it's not what you do.
00:16:47It's the environment you do it in.
00:16:49That the recipe for burnout is a confluence of two factors.
00:16:53High expectations coupled with low control.
00:16:57That is the recipe for burnout.
00:16:58High expectations and low control.
00:17:00Interestingly, if you have high expectations and high control, no problem.
00:17:04We rise to the occasion.
00:17:06It's when we have low control, despite having high expectations, that's when we get into trouble.
00:17:11So what does that mean?
00:17:11It doesn't mean we lower expectations.
00:17:13No, that doesn't solve the problem.
00:17:14It means we raise control.
00:17:16We raise our sense of agency.
00:17:17Well, it turns out that our beliefs shape what we believe we can do, where we have control.
00:17:23There's a concept in psychology called locus of control.
00:17:26Locus of control says that people have two types of views of the world.
00:17:30There are people who have what's called an external locus of control.
00:17:33An external locus of control means things happen to me.
00:17:35It's the economy.
00:17:37It's AI is taking over the jobs.
00:17:39It's this war going on thousands of miles away from me that has nothing to do with me.
00:17:43That's what's controlling my life.
00:17:45Then on the other end, there are people who have what's called an internal locus of control.
00:17:49An internal locus of control is someone who says, no, I control my circumstances.
00:17:53I control what happens to me.
00:17:54Now, no big surprise here, but the people who have an internal locus of control seem to have
00:17:59everything good happen to them.
00:18:00Turns out that people who have an internal locus of control, they make more money.
00:18:04They have more friends.
00:18:05They contribute more to their community.
00:18:07They live longer, fewer instances of mental health.
00:18:09All this good stuff happens to people who have an internal locus of control.
00:18:11That's interesting, not that surprising.
00:18:13What is surprising is that even when you have every reason to factually say, I'm downtrodden,
00:18:20I'm discriminated against, I'm at the bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole, even when factually
00:18:26you have every reason to say, hey, external circumstances do control what's happening to me,
00:18:31especially in those situations, people who believe they have an internal locus of control,
00:18:35even when factually they're fighting against circumstances they can't control, they still do better.
00:18:41So even if that is factually correct, you would do better in life to believe you have an internal
00:18:47locus of control.
00:18:48This is the important point here.
00:18:49If we want to avoid burnout while we are persisting with all these things, often by just increasing
00:18:54our agency or even our perceived agency, we are likely to reduce the risks of burnout.
00:18:58But even with all this internal locus of control stuff, it is just a fact, right?
00:19:02That like there are circumstances in life that are just plain outside of your control.
00:19:06So I pose the question to Nir, and this is where we come to the facts versus faith spectrum.
00:19:10And so this is the big aha that I think most people don't understand, that beliefs serve
00:19:15you even if they're not true.
00:19:18That beliefs are not the same thing as facts.
00:19:20I think this is, for me, was a major breakthrough.
00:19:23That facts, the definition of a fact is an objective truth.
00:19:28It is something that is true whether or not you believe it.
00:19:31The world is more like a sphere than it is flat.
00:19:33Sorry, flat earthers.
00:19:34It's a fact.
00:19:35It doesn't care what you believe.
00:19:36On the other end of the spectrum is faith.
00:19:38Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence.
00:19:42God rewards the righteous.
00:19:43There's no amount of evidence that would change someone to then say that that's not true, right?
00:19:48Because it's a matter of faith and they shouldn't change that conviction.
00:19:51But beliefs are something different.
00:19:53Beliefs are not facts.
00:19:54They're not faith.
00:19:55A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence.
00:19:59So it's not pie in the sky.
00:20:01It's not pulled out of thin air.
00:20:02It's a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence, which means that beliefs
00:20:08are tools, not truths.
00:20:11That's a big unlock.
00:20:12That when you understand that beliefs have this very almost magical power, it's not magic,
00:20:18it's science.
00:20:19There's no woo-woo here at all.
00:20:20But beliefs can literally change what you're able to see, what you're able to feel, and
00:20:24ultimately what you're able to do, that sense of agency.
00:20:26And so when you adopt the right beliefs, you can literally see things differently, feel
00:20:30things differently, and ultimately do things differently because of that underlying conviction,
00:20:35because of those beliefs.
00:20:36So you don't necessarily have to ground those beliefs and hold them to the burden of proof
00:20:41of fact.
00:20:42You can use them as tools that serve you rather than hurt you.
00:20:45So far, we've learned that beliefs are convictions that are open to revision and that beliefs
00:20:49are tools.
00:20:50And often, you don't even need new facts to adopt a belief.
00:20:53You can simply choose to adopt that belief.
00:20:55Now, later on in the episode, we're going to talk about the idea of, isn't this just you
00:20:57gaslighting yourself, which Nir has a very good response to.
00:21:00But before we go there, so far, we've talked a lot about how you should just not quit the
00:21:03thing, right?
00:21:04But obviously, quitting is the strategically useful decision some of the time.
00:21:08So let me give you a very simple but very practical framework on when do you quit?
00:21:14Because I'm not anti-quitting.
00:21:16Sometimes, Lord knows, I've quit all kinds of things in life.
00:21:18I've quit book projects.
00:21:19I've quit relationships.
00:21:19I've quit businesses.
00:21:21I've done a lot of quitting.
00:21:22And it's not that I'm anti-quitting.
00:21:23I'm anti-quitting too soon.
00:21:25Why?
00:21:25Because that's what leads to regret in life.
00:21:27When you say, oh, if I had just persisted a little longer, look, that person did what
00:21:31I wanted to do.
00:21:32You know how many businesses I've quit where and then I see someone else succeed at?
00:21:36It's maddening.
00:21:37That's the worst, right?
00:21:38You only want to make sure that you quit under three criteria.
00:21:41The first is that you quit when you've met your mile marker.
00:21:46This is super important.
00:21:47Not when you've reached the goal per se.
00:21:49That's too long.
00:21:51What you want to do is to persist when you've met that mile marker.
00:21:54A mile marker is when you say in advance, I'm going to try this new behavior, this new
00:21:59belief for X number of days.
00:22:01And I'm not going to quit until I hit that days.
00:22:04Why is that so important?
00:22:05Because the reason we don't persist, the reason we quit is because nine times out of
00:22:1010 doesn't feel good anymore.
00:22:12It's hard, right?
00:22:14It's difficult.
00:22:14I don't want to do that.
00:22:15I don't feel like going to the gym today.
00:22:16I don't really want to post that YouTube video.
00:22:18I don't really want to work on that project right now.
00:22:20It's hard.
00:22:22But if you have that mile marker that you say, I will keep doing this for X number of days,
00:22:26no matter what, you've protected yourself from quitting too soon.
00:22:30Because you've said in advance, this is how many days I'm going to try this belief or this
00:22:34behavior.
00:22:35That's number one.
00:22:35The second criteria is, are you still learning?
00:22:38So failure doesn't necessarily mean you should quit.
00:22:43That if you're failing, but you're learning, that's a good thing, right?
00:22:46So if I were to tell you, hey, I know that in the future, you're going to have five more
00:22:51failures before the sixth success.
00:22:54You make five more sales calls.
00:22:56The sixth one is going to, you're going to close the deal.
00:22:58You're going to post five more videos and the sixth one's going to be a banger and go
00:23:01viral.
00:23:01You're going to go on five more dates and then you're going to find the love of your life
00:23:04on that sixth date.
00:23:05How much more excited would you be to get through failure?
00:23:08Yeah.
00:23:08Let's get through those failures quickly so I can get to that sixth success.
00:23:11So if you're still learning about why you're failing, don't quit.
00:23:15The third criteria is, does persistence matter?
00:23:20In many ventures in life, persistence doesn't matter.
00:23:23So for example, if you're working at a company that has toxic culture, okay, people aren't
00:23:28happy to be there.
00:23:29They're bringing you down.
00:23:30It's a place that on Sunday nights, you've got the, you're dreading going to work on Monday
00:23:36morning.
00:23:37Well, that company culture is not something you're going to change right now.
00:23:41It's going to, that company culture is going to outlive you.
00:23:44So that might be a condition where persistence doesn't matter.
00:23:46But in other areas of your life, exercise, right?
00:23:50When I was losing weight, I used to be chronically obese.
00:23:52And many times there were months, even years where I would plateau, where I wasn't losing
00:23:57weight, where nothing was happening.
00:23:59But it turns out in physical fitness, that persistence pays off.
00:24:02That if you just continue, you're going to break out of that plateau.
00:24:04I mean, you know this, you know, when you're creating content, it doesn't work, it doesn't
00:24:07work, it doesn't work.
00:24:08Oh my God.
00:24:08And then suddenly you've got something that, that goes viral or, or reaches a ton of people.
00:24:13Persistence pays in some areas, but in other areas, it doesn't pay.
00:24:16So for example, trying to change a toxic work environment that you might be working in a
00:24:20workplace that, that people are down and, and, and has a, a, a work environment that doesn't
00:24:25suit you.
00:24:26That's not an environment where persistence might pay.
00:24:28So if you meet that three criteria of I met my mile marker, I'm not learning anymore.
00:24:33And persistence doesn't pay.
00:24:35Now you can quit, but short of those three criteria don't quit too soon.
00:24:39And are we saying all three need to be true or just one of them needs to be true?
00:24:41I think all three need to be true.
00:24:44So that's a very reasonable framework for deciding when to quit.
00:24:46And if I'm honest with myself, and maybe if you're honest with, with yourself, uh, we
00:24:50often quit things, even when all three of these things are not true, but let's go back to
00:24:53the belief thing now.
00:24:54Right?
00:24:54So we talked about how beliefs are tools and we've talked about how your beliefs end up
00:24:57shaping your behavior, which changes your biology.
00:24:59And it seems like nearest point here is that you can simply choose to change the beliefs
00:25:03that you hold about the world or about yourself, which then begs the question of how the hell
00:25:07do you actually do this?
00:25:08You can take out those beliefs that don't serve you and choose better beliefs that are also
00:25:15just as true.
00:25:16So you can't make up facts, but you can make up beliefs based on whether they serve you
00:25:21or not, especially in the domain of relationships.
00:25:25That's where I think in my life, what's most changed is, is how I view interactions with
00:25:30other people.
00:25:31I'll give you, I'll demonstrate here.
00:25:32So, um, a few years ago, my mom had her 74th birthday and, uh, I wanted to do something
00:25:38nice for her.
00:25:40So I wanted to buy her some flowers.
00:25:41The problem was that I was in Singapore and she was in central Florida and I had to stay
00:25:46up late at night to call the florists on the other side of the planet to make sure that
00:25:50the flowers would get there on time, that they'd be the right arrangement and all that.
00:25:54And, uh, I, I, I did that and I went to bed that night and I patted myself on the back
00:25:58and said, you're a good son.
00:26:00You know, mom's going to tell you tomorrow what a, what a good boy you are.
00:26:03And, uh, that didn't happen.
00:26:05Here's what did happen.
00:26:07I called her up the next morning.
00:26:08I said, Hey mom, happy birthday.
00:26:09How, how were the flowers I sent?
00:26:11And she says, um, thank you for the flowers.
00:26:14But just so you know, the flowers that you sent, not so nice.
00:26:18They were kind of half dead.
00:26:18So don't order from that florist again, to which I said in response, well, that's the
00:26:23last time I buy you flowers.
00:26:25And, uh, that went over about as well as you'd expect.
00:26:28Not so good.
00:26:28And my wife, Julie was sitting next to me during this conversation.
00:26:32And afterwards she turns to me and she says, near, would you like to do a turnaround on
00:26:37this?
00:26:38To which I said, no, I don't want to do your hocus pocus touchy feely mumbo jumbo.
00:26:44I need to vent, right?
00:26:45Because that's what we're taught to do that when someone hurts you, you're supposed to
00:26:50tell them how you feel.
00:26:51You're not supposed to keep your feelings inside.
00:26:52You're supposed to let it out.
00:26:54Right?
00:26:55Well, it turns out the research shows that that's exactly the opposite.
00:26:58That what most people don't realize is that when we vent about others, you are reinforcing
00:27:02your existing beliefs about them.
00:27:04You're building this effigy of them because we don't see people as they are.
00:27:07We see people as we believe them to be.
00:27:10First thing I did was write down that belief, the belief that was causing me suffering.
00:27:13And this is something anybody can do.
00:27:15Whatever is causing you suffering in your life, whether it's that relationship with a
00:27:19coworker or colleague or your boss or your mom, it doesn't matter.
00:27:23Or maybe it's a reason that you're not doing something that you know you're capable of doing.
00:27:28Starting a YouTube channel, starting that business, finishing that book you've been meaning to
00:27:32write, why aren't you exercising?
00:27:33Whatever it is that you know you can do, but for some reason you're not doing.
00:27:37So you write down the belief that's keeping you from being happy, the belief that's causing
00:27:42you suffering.
00:27:43The belief that was causing me suffering was that my mother was being too judgmental and
00:27:48hard to please.
00:27:50And so now inquiry-based stress reduction gives us four questions to answer.
00:27:54The first question is, is it true?
00:27:56Okay, second question.
00:27:57Is it absolutely true?
00:27:59Sounds like the first question, right?
00:28:00A little bit different.
00:28:01Not just is it true, is it absolutely true?
00:28:04That means it has to be 100%.
00:28:06There's no other possible reason why things happen as they were other than the reason I
00:28:11believe to be a fact.
00:28:13I had to admit that actually, you know, maybe there might be another reason.
00:28:17I can't be 100% certain.
00:28:19It can't be absolutely true.
00:28:20Now the third question, who am I or how do I feel when I hold on to that belief?
00:28:26When I believe that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, I'm kind of impatient.
00:28:31I'm a little bit of a jerk.
00:28:33I'm kind of my 13-year-old version of myself.
00:28:36I'm not actually who I am proud of.
00:28:38And now the fourth question, who would I be without that belief?
00:28:42So how would I feel if I had a magic wand and poof, that belief disappeared from my mind?
00:28:46And even when I just asked myself that, what would reality feel like if I didn't hold on
00:28:51to that belief?
00:28:52Now the tricky part is that your brain hates this because your brain hates changing its
00:28:58mind.
00:28:59Your brain hates changing its mind.
00:29:00So when people hear about these four questions, they say, well, okay, that might work for you,
00:29:05but it's not going to work for me because you don't understand my mom.
00:29:07You don't understand what I'm dealing with.
00:29:09You don't understand my circumstances.
00:29:10Here's what I've got in my life.
00:29:11And that's why what I think is a fact is a fact.
00:29:15And this is what's so dangerous about these limiting beliefs is that you can't see your
00:29:19own limiting beliefs.
00:29:20It's like your face, right?
00:29:22We all have a face.
00:29:23And if I said, Ali, look at your face, you can't look at your face.
00:29:27You can look at your hands.
00:29:27You can look at your feet.
00:29:28You can't look at your own face.
00:29:29And yet we all have one.
00:29:31The only way you can look at your face is to reflect.
00:29:34You need a tool to look at your own face.
00:29:37And the same goes with our limiting beliefs, that we all have these limiting beliefs.
00:29:40It doesn't matter how successful you are.
00:29:42I've talked to billionaires.
00:29:43I've talked to people who are broke.
00:29:43We all have limiting beliefs.
00:29:45We just can't see them in ourselves.
00:29:46So with these four questions, what I determined in about 30 seconds is that what I thought was a
00:29:52fact, wasn't a fact, right?
00:29:53It's not one of Newton's laws that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please.
00:29:57It's just a belief.
00:29:57It's just here.
00:29:58And so now you do what's called a turnaround.
00:30:00Here's what a turnaround looks like.
00:30:02You're going to ask yourself, could the exact opposite also be true?
00:30:07Just for exercise, right?
00:30:08You're not changing your mind.
00:30:10You're not convincing yourself of something that's not true.
00:30:13You're just asking yourself to collect what I call a portfolio of perspectives.
00:30:17What's the opposite of my mom is too judgmental and hard to please?
00:30:21My mother is not too judgmental and hard to please.
00:30:23How could that be true?
00:30:26Well, she did thank me for the flowers and she was just saying a statement of fact that
00:30:31the flowers weren't so nice.
00:30:33So maybe she was trying to help me, not hurt me.
00:30:35Maybe she was just trying to make sure I didn't get scammed from this florist.
00:30:38A third belief might be the opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please.
00:30:43I am too judgmental and hard to please.
00:30:46How could that be true?
00:30:48Well, I had rehearsed in my brain that if I was going to do something nice for somebody,
00:30:53I deserved effusive praise.
00:30:56And when that didn't come from my mom, I lost it, right?
00:31:00And so who was being judgmental there?
00:31:04I was.
00:31:05Now, there's a fourth potential belief.
00:31:09I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself.
00:31:12How could that be true?
00:31:13And this one actually turned out to be the most true.
00:31:15That when I had done something nice and spent a lot of time and effort and money on doing
00:31:19something nice and it didn't work out the way I had planned, I thought that meant that I was
00:31:25inferior, that I did something wrong.
00:31:26So now I have four potential beliefs.
00:31:28Okay, back to your question of, well, are we just picking things out of thin air, right?
00:31:32Like, are we just making stuff up?
00:31:33Well, now I've got four beliefs.
00:31:35Which one of those is true?
00:31:37Which one is false?
00:31:38They're not facts.
00:31:39They're beliefs.
00:31:40And so one of those beliefs, that first one, only allowed me one way out to feel happy,
00:31:46to stop suffering, that she had to change so I could stop suffering.
00:31:51Now, I know you haven't met my mom.
00:31:53That's not going to happen, right?
00:31:55And that doesn't happen in general with people, that sitting here and expecting them to change
00:31:59so I can finally be happy, that's not the way it works, okay?
00:32:02If you hold your breath, you're going to suffocate.
00:32:05So now I had different options.
00:32:07I didn't have to wait for her to change.
00:32:08I had three other beliefs that had the signature of liberating beliefs.
00:32:14What's a liberating belief as opposed to a limiting belief?
00:32:16A liberating belief is a belief that increases your motivation and decreases your suffering.
00:32:21Unlike a limiting belief, a limiting belief decreases your motivation and increases your suffering.
00:32:26You still feel the signal.
00:32:28You still feel the pain, but you can separate the pain from the suffering.
00:32:32And that's a huge concept in psychology that I think most people don't realize,
00:32:35that pain and suffering are not the same thing.
00:32:37So by picking those beliefs that serve you rather than hurt you, it unlocks everything.
00:32:42It unlocks your relationships.
00:32:43It unlocks your potential.
00:32:44It unlocks how you view the world.
00:32:47Not because outside circumstances have to change, but because you've changed.
00:32:51I really like this turnaround method.
00:32:53I came across this when I read Byron Katie's The Work a few years ago and have experimented
00:32:58with it on and off throughout my own life.
00:33:00And I do find it genuinely very helpful.
00:33:01But the whole idea here is that you're not trying to force out one correct interpretation.
00:33:05I think this is just one of those rules, laws of life that different people seem to realize
00:33:09at different ages, which is that there is no ground truth.
00:33:12There are no true facts, especially as it relates to the behavior of other people.
00:33:17And a lot of the interpretations and judgments and stories that we tell, in particular about
00:33:21the behavior of ourselves and about other people, they're not actually facts.
00:33:25Like, it's not a binary zero or one type situation.
00:33:27It's that there's a bunch of different perspectives that you could choose to take.
00:33:30And you simply happen to be choosing a particular perspective, often subconsciously, right?
00:33:34Because, you know, the perspectives we have are basically a sum of the environment and the
00:33:38society we were brought up in.
00:33:39And you see this if you kind of visit other countries, like, for example, in the West,
00:33:41it's a very sort of individualistic type culture.
00:33:44And so the idea of the agency of an individual and you doing what you feel is best internally
00:33:50is like the ultimate hallowed truth kind of thing.
00:33:53But if you look at more Eastern, more collectivist type cultures, it's actually not about individual
00:33:58liberty at all.
00:33:58It's actually more about what is good for the collective interest.
00:34:00And so depending on what society you've grown up in, the same kind of behavior can have
00:34:04drastically different interpretations.
00:34:05And if you're someone who's like experienced both types of cultures, you know firsthand,
00:34:08like the clash that can happen, the clash of values that can happen when both parties
00:34:13feel very righteous about a particular belief, a particular interpretation, thinking that that is the
00:34:18truth, when really it's just an interpretation based on the society that they were brought up in.
00:34:22So anyway, the whole idea here is that we are collecting a portfolio of evidence that supports
00:34:26beliefs that we can choose that increase our agency and decrease our suffering.
00:34:30But then what about situations where the deck is truly stacked against you?
00:34:33Surely there is a limit to how much of a belief you can choose to have.
00:34:38Let's say there are like structural issues that are, shall I say, sort of preventing or maybe not preventing,
00:34:45but just like drastically reducing the odds of me being able to do something.
00:34:49For example, right now I am 31 years old and it would be very unlikely for me to be able to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming.
00:34:58Absolutely.
00:34:58And remember, a belief is not making up facts.
00:35:02Facts you cannot make up.
00:35:04Facts are facts.
00:35:05A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence.
00:35:10So you are considering evidence in a belief.
00:35:12It's not that it's, you know, cut from whole cloth.
00:35:14It is based on evidence and you're revising those beliefs.
00:35:18But the determining factor, what's so important about this is that for the most part, we don't base it on reality.
00:35:24We base it on our perception of reality, that even the things that we could accomplish, we give up way too soon based on these limiting beliefs,
00:35:33based on that little whisper in our head of, I can't do this.
00:35:37I'm not ready.
00:35:37There's no time.
00:35:38I'm not good enough.
00:35:39The real problem is not that we have goals that are too big for us.
00:35:43The real problem is that we are capable of so much more than we can ever imagine.
00:35:47Right. Those rats who kept quitting at 15 minutes and died because actually, you know, the reason we do this is because your brain is actually trying to protect you.
00:35:55It's a protective mechanism.
00:35:57We have evolved to stay way far away from our actual limits.
00:36:01The brain is trying so hard to protect us from actual exhaustion, from actually meeting our limits that it's called the central governor.
00:36:09It tries to keep us so far away from actual exhaustion so that we won't experience it.
00:36:14And why does the brain do this?
00:36:15Why do we even have limiting beliefs?
00:36:17Because your brain is not interested in you being happy or flourishing or meeting your full potential.
00:36:23Your brain doesn't care about any of that stuff.
00:36:25Evolution has created a brain that is there to keep you alive and procreating.
00:36:31That's what evolution wants.
00:36:32That's got nothing to do with you being happy and flourishing and meeting your full potential.
00:36:36So, yeah, our beliefs do need to be grounded in some kind of evidence.
00:36:39But most of us don't fail.
00:36:40Most of us don't quit because our dreams are too big.
00:36:42For most of us, our dreams are probably fairly achievable.
00:36:44And yet we still quit before we achieve them, even though they actually would be achievable.
00:36:48And what Nir is going to talk about here is the idea that we quit when we start to interpret signals of pain as being suffering.
00:36:56And so then our brain protects us by causing us to quit.
00:36:59Why do we quit, right?
00:37:01Why do you say, I don't have time to work on the second book or I don't have time to go to the gym.
00:37:05I don't have time to start a family.
00:37:07I don't have time to start a business.
00:37:08I can't do these things.
00:37:09The reason we give up is because it hurts.
00:37:13At the end of the day, pain is the reason that we quit.
00:37:18It's too hard.
00:37:19I don't like it.
00:37:19It feels bad.
00:37:20Pain is there.
00:37:21The suffering is there to tell you, hey, you're approaching your limit.
00:37:25Back off.
00:37:26This, you know, you could get into danger here.
00:37:28Again, the brain is not interested in you flourishing and being happy.
00:37:31The brain is trying to protect you.
00:37:33So pain is not suffering, even if things are happening, right?
00:37:37Even if pain is that signal that's coming into our brains all the time, even if that pain is there, we don't have to suffer from it.
00:37:45I find that this is very true with students within our Lifestyle Business Academy, which is the online business school that we've been running for the last six months.
00:37:51And this was also true back when we were doing live cohorts of my YouTuber Academy a few years ago.
00:37:55So there would be a profound difference between the students in our academies that would actually make it, like actually grow YouTube channels or actually make tens of thousands of dollars and build their own businesses versus the ones who had exactly the same set of skills and experiences and backgrounds and stuff, but they just wouldn't do the thing.
00:38:11And one of the key differences is that the students that succeed are more able and willing to tolerate discomfort.
00:38:18And then other students feel the pain and treat that as a sign that they should quit because the brain interprets pain as a signal that, oh, my God, our survival is being threatened.
00:38:27Our brain evolved over like hundreds of millions of years to protect us and to optimize for survival at all costs.
00:38:32And the brain doesn't really care about helping us thrive.
00:38:34And probably for the goals that you're working on, they're more like thriving goals rather than surviving goals.
00:38:38And so especially in that context, it's very easy for us to misinterpret a signal of discomfort or pain as a reason why we should quit.
00:38:45The number one hack to succeeding in business is not what you think.
00:38:50Most people think it's just about the right market or the right technology or the right tools or the right program that you have to take before you start.
00:38:57The most important life hack to being successful in any venture, not just in business, is to see the suffering differently.
00:39:06And if you can learn to savor the suffering, to enjoy the process, to learn how to prepare for the pain in a way that you believe that what's happening is not happening to you.
00:39:19It's happening for you that the sales calls are hard to make.
00:39:22Great.
00:39:23You're learning how to be a great salesperson that pitching to investors is uncomfortable.
00:39:26Amazing.
00:39:27You're learning how to present properly that the managing the team is difficult.
00:39:31Incredible.
00:39:32That means that you're becoming a better manager.
00:39:34So if you can see those experiences differently, you'll be less likely to quit and be more likely to persevere and more likely to succeed.
00:39:39People who succeed over the long term, remember how we talked about how they fail more, but they don't suffer more.
00:39:47That's the trick that if you can do these things and it's fun, the same thing that somebody else says is miserable.
00:39:54So I used to believe this is hard.
00:39:56This sucks.
00:39:57I need a break.
00:39:58Instead, I believe I have this mantra that I repeat all the time.
00:40:03I take a deep breath and I repeat to myself, this is what it feels like to get better.
00:40:07This is what it feels like to get better.
00:40:09Another mantra I like to repeat to myself a lot is things don't get easier.
00:40:13You get stronger.
00:40:15There will always be the chaos and we should relish that chaos.
00:40:17We can see it differently because it serves us to think of it differently.
00:40:21When we relish it, when we say, hey, it's never going to get easier.
00:40:25I'm just going to get stronger.
00:40:26It motivates us and it decreases our suffering.
00:40:29Now, all of these like positive affirmations and mantras and stuff can sound a lot like manifesting.
00:40:33And so I asked Nir about the difference between what he's talking about and this whole manifestation, positive thinking.
00:40:38As long as you visualize strongly enough, then you're guaranteed to get the outcome.
00:40:43But that's all you can control.
00:40:44By the way, this is why manifesting doesn't work.
00:40:48Manifesting positive thinking, magical thinking.
00:40:52This is what I'm actually fighting against in this book.
00:40:54And so I really want to not be in that category because why is manifesting and positive thinking, you know, it's actively harmful.
00:41:01The reason it's actively harmful and studies have shown this.
00:41:03This isn't just me saying this.
00:41:04You're actually less likely to meet your goals when you visualize the outcomes.
00:41:10And that's what manifesting and positive thinking all about is all about.
00:41:12It's it's all about, you know, to get those goals vibrate harder, be more positive.
00:41:18You're not being positive enough.
00:41:19That's and it backfires because it's totally outcome focused.
00:41:23You know, it's the right way to visualize the right way to visualize is not about the outcome.
00:41:28This is a great example of how the self-help industry has taken something that's true and made it false.
00:41:33So, for example, athletes do in fact visualize, but what are athletes visualizing?
00:41:39They're not visualizing the gold medal.
00:41:40They're not visualizing the trophy.
00:41:42They're visualizing what they will do physically as well as mentally when they have some kind of barrier in their way.
00:41:50That's what we do.
00:41:51It's called mental contrasting.
00:41:53You're contrasting what you want, the outcome with what you will do with what's in your way.
00:42:00That's the right way to do it, because now you're increasing your agency and control over not the outcome, how you will feel about the barrier.
00:42:08So the trick here, the unlock is to prepare yourself psychologically for what will happen when I know I need to do that thing and I don't feel like it.
00:42:17And I start going down this shame spiral and anxiety loop about what if it doesn't work and people don't like it.
00:42:21And do I even like this topic?
00:42:22What's going to happen?
00:42:23So the useful visualization is not like visualizing yourself winning the thing.
00:42:27It's short, you visualize yourself winning the thing, and then you imagine all of the obstacles that are going to get in your way and you visualize yourself overcoming those obstacles.
00:42:34Now, at this point, Nir offered to do like a live sort of turnaround type thing on me to explore a limiting belief that I have and see if we could turn it into something more empowering.
00:42:42I'm going to warn you that like this is a very champagne first world problem that I'm going to talk about.
00:42:47Like it's probably not relevant to a lot of people, but we'll keep it in any way, because why not?
00:42:53I've been in the muck for the last several years when it comes to making YouTube videos, which is that when it comes to a filming day before I'm hitting record, that I feel a lot of like muck around like hitting record and making a video.
00:43:08But are we all hearing this that like Ali Abdaal that has a gigantic YouTube audience also feels the same exact limiting beliefs that we all feel right?
00:43:19I mean, that should be, I think, very comforting to everybody out there that even someone as successful as you also has these limiting beliefs also has the same script.
00:43:30I love how you've just confirmed so much of what we've been talking about.
00:43:33You confirmed the reasons for quitting, that it was just a mile marker, right, that you were learning, that it was an area where persistence did pay off, and that you used to have a situation where you had high expectations perhaps for yourself of I'm just going to do this video for every week for a few years.
00:43:52And you had high control because that was the only thing you cared about was to just do the thing.
00:43:57Yes.
00:43:57So all the things that you talked about that were causing this muck, this uncomfortable sensation, it's because you still have these high expectations, but now you feel like you have low control.
00:44:07This is a perfect example of how we keep holding up to these old beliefs that actually demotivate us, right?
00:44:12When I believed that my mother was too judgmental and hard to please, I became less likely to have a good relationship with her.
00:44:18I wanted nothing to do with her because she's too judgmental and hard to please.
00:44:21It's a fact.
00:44:22And by you thinking to yourself, I have to create videos because I'm on a schedule, that served you in the past, but actually has decreased your motivation today to keep making videos.
00:44:32So which one is true?
00:44:34Which one is false?
00:44:36Beliefs are tools, not truths.
00:44:38So it's just like a carpenter doesn't say, hey, you know, one time I built a house and I used a hammer, and so I'm only going to use hammers from now on.
00:44:45No screwdrivers, no saws, only hammers.
00:44:47That's stupid, right?
00:44:48We've got tools.
00:44:49We can take a belief that served us in the past and say, you know what?
00:44:52Thank you very much.
00:44:53Great tool, no longer useful.
00:44:55That doesn't motivate me more.
00:44:56It creates more suffering.
00:44:58And I can pick up a different tool at a different stage of life and say, whoa, that belief is way better.
00:45:02The problem is, if we don't stop to think about it and write it down and do this little exercise where we say, hey, you know, if I look through the world through these different lenses, am I better off?
00:45:14No, we just keep doing and doing and doing without taking a step back and saying, I fundamentally need to shift a belief here.
00:45:19You know, we're so obsessed with the behavior part, right?
00:45:23The strategy, the tactics.
00:45:25But all that stuff is downstream from the belief.
00:45:28So hopefully you took something away from that.
00:45:29Maybe even if the specific situation doesn't apply to you, maybe there's something that you can take away and apply to your own life.
00:45:34And actually, if you found that interesting, I'd love to hear a comment about what you personally took away from that example.
00:45:39But I think the general principle here is that our beliefs are often there because they served us at one point or another, right?
00:45:43Like, we're not freaking idiots.
00:45:45We're not dumbasses.
00:45:46We're not just holding on to beliefs that have never, ever served us, that are just sabotaging us throughout our whole life.
00:45:50It's often that when we hold a belief, it's because that belief served us when we were in a different season of life.
00:45:55If, for example, you grew up in a household where expressing anger to your parents was not allowed for whatever reason, then, you know, you adopt the belief that anger is bad.
00:46:03Anger makes me a bad person.
00:46:05And that belief is very useful when you're a kid.
00:46:07But then that belief, when you become an adult and enter relationships and you start carrying all this, like, resentment that's unexpressed and all this sort of stuff, you know, it starts to sabotage your, it starts to sabotage you from getting the things that you actually want, which is, you know, joyful, peaceful, fulfilling life where you're not, like, repressing your emotions.
00:46:24A belief that can be useful in one season of life can be completely useless and actively harmful in another.
00:46:28Now, at this point, we want to talk about the beliefs that are hardest to notice.
00:46:31The beliefs that are hardest to notice are the ones that become labels.
00:46:35I think we are going down a very dangerous path where we don't realize how our labels can become our limits.
00:46:42And that doesn't mean that diagnoses aren't helpful.
00:46:45They certainly are.
00:46:46But I think we're looking at our diagnoses completely wrong, especially when it comes to ADHD and depression, anxiety, insomnia.
00:46:52Many of these conditions are highly susceptible to placebo effects and nocebo effects.
00:46:58In fact, for me, you know, I have ADHD.
00:47:00I've been diagnosed with ADHD.
00:47:02And in my experience, it was very helpful at first because we have what we call the Rumpelstiltskin effect.
00:47:08When we have a label for something, when we can name something that's troubling us, it's very empowering.
00:47:14It's it's it feels great.
00:47:16You know, when I got my ADHD diagnosis, it explained so much.
00:47:20It felt really good.
00:47:22The problem was that very soon after I got my diagnosis, it became a distraction in itself.
00:47:30That every time I went off track, every time I got distracted, I would say to myself, there's my ADHD again.
00:47:37And am I always going to have this?
00:47:38Because this is a chronic condition and I'm never going to get better at this.
00:47:42And what if I don't meet my deadline?
00:47:43And you see, why do I have to struggle this?
00:47:44Nobody else.
00:47:45And I went down this rumination loop, which led to me thinking about my diagnosis,
00:47:51as opposed to the thing I was trying to work on, because these type of diagnoses, they can be helpful.
00:47:57But the diagnosis is the map.
00:47:59The diagnosis says, hey, here's where you are and here's where you want to go.
00:48:03And so here's a map to get to that place.
00:48:05Now, the problem was that I thought I was the map.
00:48:09I became the identity.
00:48:11It became who I am.
00:48:12And that is very dangerous.
00:48:15This is called identity foreclosure.
00:48:17When we believe we are a certain type of person, I'm not a morning person, I'm, I can't remember, I have a bad memory, I'm having a senior moment, I'm a Sagittarius, I, you know, that my condition becomes who I am.
00:48:32It becomes my identity.
00:48:33Well, then we lock out any other possible perspective.
00:48:36And remember, beliefs are tools, not truths.
00:48:39So the most damaging words in the English language are I am.
00:48:44Because whatever comes after I am is what your psyche will expect you to become.
00:48:50So be very, very careful with those labels.
00:48:54Because those labels, if you're not careful, can become your limits.
00:48:57So instead, now my liberating belief is I'm learning a new skill.
00:49:02I used to tell myself, chronic condition, chronic condition, chronic condition.
00:49:05Wasn't helpful.
00:49:06All right.
00:49:06I was, I became the map.
00:49:07That is who I am.
00:49:08I am this chronic condition.
00:49:10Not helpful.
00:49:11I'm learning a new skill.
00:49:13Right.
00:49:14I learned time boxing.
00:49:16I wrote indistractable for me.
00:49:18I needed to become indistractable myself.
00:49:20And it turns out it was learnable.
00:49:21You know when I couldn't overcome it?
00:49:22When I believed I couldn't overcome it.
00:49:25When I went to, well, but my prefrontal cortex isn't as developed.
00:49:28And I, you know, and then I started spiraling into this anxiety loop,
00:49:30which made me more distracted.
00:49:33And I would give up too soon.
00:49:35Now I had a reason to give up too soon.
00:49:38Right.
00:49:38As opposed to, this is a skill.
00:49:40What about imposter syndrome?
00:49:41A lot of people feel that they have imposter syndrome.
00:49:43What's up with that?
00:49:44Totally limiting belief.
00:49:45It's not in the DSM.
00:49:47It's not a psychological diagnosis.
00:49:48It has this word syndrome,
00:49:49which makes it sound like it's a real thing.
00:49:52It's totally a limiting belief.
00:49:53And in fact, it's a limiting belief because if you think about it,
00:49:56it meets the definition.
00:49:57Definitely increases our suffering.
00:49:58Oh, what was me?
00:49:59I just have imposter syndrome.
00:50:00It's the same thing as perfectionism.
00:50:01Completely a limiting belief that I don't think serves people.
00:50:05I think imposter syndrome is a classic example
00:50:07of how your label becomes your limit.
00:50:09Because you don't even try.
00:50:10Because you say, well, that's just what I got.
00:50:13So I don't, for me, I don't think it's useful.
00:50:17So all throughout this video,
00:50:18we've been talking about the idea that beliefs are very powerful.
00:50:21Like we talked about the motivation triangle.
00:50:22We talked about how benefit is why you're doing the thing.
00:50:25The behavior is what you're actually doing.
00:50:26And then the belief underlying it,
00:50:28where if you've got a strong belief,
00:50:29it can cause you to persist.
00:50:31And that persistence and just not quitting
00:50:32means that you're more likely to compound towards success.
00:50:34Whereas if your belief is that this is not going to work
00:50:36or that you suck or that this sucks
00:50:37or that this thing's going to suck forever
00:50:39or whatever the thing might be,
00:50:40then that belief will cause the motivation and discipline to crumble.
00:50:42And then you're going to quit way too soon.
00:50:44And so Nir's argument in his book is that yes,
00:50:46beliefs are powerful and beliefs are tools.
00:50:48And crucially, we have the power to change
00:50:50and actively mold our own beliefs.
00:50:52And so the final objection I wanted to throw at Nir
00:50:53is that isn't all of this stuff just like self-gaslighting?
00:50:56Are you not simply gaslighting yourself
00:50:58by saying that like what you believe isn't actually true?
00:51:00And so when I posed this objection to him,
00:51:01this is what Nir had to say.
00:51:03I think what we don't realize
00:51:04is that we're already gaslighting ourselves.
00:51:07We're already lying to ourselves.
00:51:09We just choose those beliefs that served us in the past
00:51:12but may not serve us in the future.
00:51:14You see, our limiting beliefs,
00:51:16they come from somewhere.
00:51:18They come from our, what's called our priors,
00:51:20your prior upbringing, your prior experiences.
00:51:24Whatever has happened to you in the past
00:51:25will color how you see the future.
00:51:28So we're already gaslighting ourselves.
00:51:30When we tell ourselves that we can't do this,
00:51:34that we have imposter syndrome,
00:51:36that we're perfectionists,
00:51:37that we're not ready,
00:51:37that we're not good enough,
00:51:39that this is too hard,
00:51:40those aren't facts.
00:51:42Those aren't facts.
00:51:43Those are beliefs.
00:51:44And so we're gaslighting ourselves
00:51:45because we have chosen
00:51:47these limiting beliefs
00:51:48that decrease our motivation
00:51:50and increase our suffering
00:51:51at our own expense.
00:51:52We are trapped in these cages
00:51:54of our own device.
00:51:55So I really like this vibe.
00:51:56It's like,
00:51:57you're already gaslighting yourself
00:51:58whether you know it or not.
00:51:59You're already choosing to believe things
00:52:00that are actually actively sabotaging you
00:52:02in your life.
00:52:02So if we're going to gaslight ourselves,
00:52:04we might as well gaslight ourselves
00:52:05into believing things
00:52:06that are helpful
00:52:07rather than into believing things
00:52:08that are harmful.
00:52:09And so all of this brings us back
00:52:10to the original question.
00:52:11Why is it that we know
00:52:13what we need to do,
00:52:13but we just don't do the thing?
00:52:15What is it that causes some people
00:52:16to know what to do
00:52:18and do the thing
00:52:18and continue doing the thing
00:52:19and causes the rest of us
00:52:21to know what to do,
00:52:22start doing the thing
00:52:23and then quit doing the thing?
00:52:25That's what it really comes down to
00:52:26is that the people
00:52:28who don't suffer from hard things
00:52:30are the ones who persist
00:52:31and the people who persist
00:52:32are the ones who are more likely
00:52:33to meet their goals.
00:52:35So this has affected me
00:52:35not even just in goal setting
00:52:37and productivity,
00:52:37but just day-to-day life.
00:52:39Like I was doing this webinar
00:52:40the other day
00:52:40with people who bought the book
00:52:42and we had this Q&A session
00:52:44and somebody asked this question
00:52:46like,
00:52:46Mir, you seem way happier.
00:52:48Is that true?
00:52:49I thought I was like,
00:52:50you know what?
00:52:51I am not because I'm like more joyful.
00:52:53That's not my goal.
00:52:55I just suffer so much less, right?
00:52:57It becomes,
00:52:57this isn't happening to me.
00:52:59It's happening for me.
00:53:00Is it true?
00:53:00I don't know.
00:53:01Is it a fact?
00:53:02Probably not.
00:53:03But I choose that belief
00:53:04because it empowers me.
00:53:06It reduces my suffering,
00:53:07increases my motivation.
00:53:09Most important things to remember
00:53:09is that beliefs are tools,
00:53:11not truths
00:53:12and you are capable
00:53:13of far more than you believe.
00:53:14So then the final question
00:53:15I would leave you with is this,
00:53:16where in your life
00:53:17are you actually quitting
00:53:18at the 15 minute mark?
00:53:20Where in your life
00:53:21is an area where
00:53:21if you just persisted,
00:53:23you would actually end up
00:53:25with way better outcomes
00:53:26than if you allowed yourself to quit
00:53:28because you have convinced yourself,
00:53:30you've gaslit yourself
00:53:31into thinking that
00:53:31you don't actually have
00:53:32what it takes.
00:53:33But then having said all of that,
00:53:34beliefs are very helpful
00:53:35but they're not a magic bullet.
00:53:36And often one thing
00:53:37that's really helpful
00:53:38to add to an empowering belief
00:53:40is an empowering system
00:53:41that can help you achieve
00:53:42your desired result or success
00:53:44without having to put in
00:53:45so much hard work
00:53:46and so much effort.
00:53:46And so we're going to be talking
00:53:47about that in this video
00:53:48right over here,
00:53:49which is about the five systems
00:53:50you can install in your life
00:53:52from literally today
00:53:53that drastically increase
00:53:54your chances of success.
00:53:54So thank you very much for watching
00:53:55and I will see you
00:53:56in the next video.
00:53:57Bye-bye.
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