INTERVIEW | Make Money by Changing Your Beliefs, feat. Nir Eyal

0:00This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate to see. According to Indeed Data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast, Terms and Conditions Apply. You're listening to the Travis Makes Money Podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com. For a free 30-day trial of the best all-in-one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to GoHighLevel.com slash Travis. Hey, what's going everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money Podcast. What's our mission to help you make more money today on the show? I'm talking to an old friend of mine, someone who I've reconnected with. Recently, near IEL, near is a globally recognized authority on behavior change and human potential. His frameworks have empowered millions to build better habits, enhanced focus, and unlock greater agency in their lives and work.

1:02A former lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, near has collaborated with leaders and organizations worldwide to boost performance through behavior design. He's also the author of the International Best Sellers Hooked and Indistractable, which have sold over 1 million copies in more than 30 languages now, which is insane. His books have earned numerous accolades and have been celebrated by Amazon and Goodreads as among the best in business and personal development. And he's also founded and sold multiple companies, and now advises and invests in pioneering organizations that actually apply his research. And you can read more from him over on near and far.com, which is his blog. Near what's up, man? Welcome back to the show. Travis, great to see you and thanks so much for having me back. Of course, man, it's always a pleasure to have an initial conversation. That's one of the coolest parts about doing podcasting for as long as I have, is that you almost get to do interviews as anchor points for the cool stuff that people are doing along the way, you know? So it's been a fan of yours ever since we had the first conversation, so I appreciate taking the time to come back and spend more time with us.

2:04Tell me, catch me up, last few years. What have you been working on? What are you excited about now? Yeah, so I've been working on this new book. Beyond belief, it's very exciting. It has changed my life. I think it's going to touch the lives of a lot of people. I'm very excited about it. It's been a long journey, but I learned so much. It has been a mind-blowing adventure. As an author, you can write on literally any topic you want to why this one. Okay, so here's what happens. So a few years ago, I published indistractable my second book, how to control your attention and choose your life. And it's such a common problem, right? I feel like everybody's distracted these days. I have ADHD, I've been diagnosed with it, and it seems like everybody's struggling with distraction, even if you don't have an ADHD diagnosis. And I used to do these office hours where people can call me and ask me anything they want. If they've read one of my books, I love hearing from readers. And so sometimes they would have to wait a few months and get a call with me. Maybe one in every 20 calls would sound like this. Someone would call and say, hey, Nier, I read indistractable. I really liked it, but it didn't work.

3:06I'd say, oh, wow, you know, tell me more. I spent five years writing this thing. 30 pages of peer-reviewed, citations to peer-reviewed studies. Like, you know, change my life. Tell me what happened. Let's start with step one. How did step one go for you? You know, I read it. I read step one. I just didn't, I just didn't do step one. Okay, no problem. I understand. Maybe skip that one. Let's skip to step two. How did step two go? Yeah, step two. Okay, so I read step two. I read it. I read it. I just didn't, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I'm sensing a pattern here. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I thought, wow, what did I do wrong with this book? The people aren't putting it to use it. Everybody says, oh, I'm so distracted. Well, here, I spent five years here on a silver platter. I'm telling you what to do. Go for it. This is going to solve your problem. And yet, somehow they weren't doing it. Even though, you know, I have a million people bought the book amazing, but a good chunk of them, I'm guessing kind of read it and didn't do it, didn't implement. And so I want to know why. What was missing here? What did I get? And then if I was honest with myself, I have bookshelves full of books that I haven't put into practice.

4:07I've paid gurus and experts to give me advice. I haven't put the good use either. Why? Why is it that despite knowing what to do, wanting the benefit of that behavior, how do we just do it? Well, it turns out that motivation is not a straight line. That we think of motivation as, well, if I want this benefit, I do this behavior. Easy peasy. But if that were true, we would all have six pack abs and be multimillionaires. That's right. Who doesn't know what to do these days? If you want to know how to do something, there's no secrets anymore. You just go on chat GPT, you Google it. You're going to learn how to do it. It's not that information is the problem. What's the problem? Is it skill? Well, skill can be taught. Is it resources? Well, I know lots of people who have every resource. They have tons of resources. And they accomplish very little. I know people who have very little who go on to do amazing things. So it's not that easier. I think either. I think what's missing is that we don't understand that motivation is not a straight line. Motivation is a triangle. That you need to know what to do. That's the behavior. You need to know why you're doing it. That's the benefit.

5:07But holding in those two elements, holding it all together is belief. And if you don't believe that you will get the benefit, let's say for example, you're working for a boss who you don't think has your best interest at heart. Maybe you don't believe they're going to give you that promotion or that raise. Well, are you going to sustain your motivation to work for them? No. And what about if you don't believe in your ability to do the behavior? Are you going to be able to stain your motivation if you think, oh, I'm no good at this? This is hard. I don't like this. No, you're not going to sustain your motivation either. So it's not good enough to know what you need to do and why you want to do it. You also have that belief that keeps you going to persist long enough to actually achieve your goals. And so that's where I decided I really wanted to dive into the psychology. And the truth as well as the myths, there's a lot of myths out there around what works, for example, positive thinking turns out positive thinking has some serious negative effects that we really have to use this properly or it can actually hurt us. Yeah, can we talk more about that? Because that's been, I don't know what it is.

6:08Sometimes when you do a bunch of research and you read a lot and do a bunch of podcasting for living, I feel like I've found myself to go down these certain like topic silos every once in a while. And it feels like this thing about optimism has been one of those for me recently because I felt when I was a younger person, I was very optimistic. It was just like anything that I did, I had this belief that it was just possible that I could do it. I just had to figure it out. And then you start going through out life and you take a bunch of at-ats and then you have failures. Start inevitably kind of stacking up along the way. And then you're almost building some bank of evidence that suggests that not everything's going to work out. And then I sort of found myself in this almost not necessarily pessimistic phase, but skeptical I would say at least of phase where it was just like, nah, I caught myself saying stuff like, you know, anything can happen, but we're going to do our best instead of saying like we're going to make this happen. And then I hear people like Adam Sandler

7:09on a podcast talking about how he just had this weird, delusional optimism, this belief that it was going to work, that he was going to be the next Steve Martin and end up becoming true. For every Adam Sandler that believed that, there's a person who's still, you know, busing tables in Hollywood waiting for their big break. How do you balance these ideas together? It seems like there's a lot of reward for optimistic thinkers and there's less reward for pessimistic kind of intellectuals, but there's obviously danger, like you said, to becoming like wildly optimistic to some degree. So how do you think about these things? How do they how do they play in your mind? Yeah. So thinking positive is negative. And because the way we do it generally, the way it's preached to us is maybe it were... This episode of the show is brought to you by Mars Men. So look guys, I don't know if everybody listening knows this, but a couple years ago I was diagnosed with cancer and around that time I also noticed that my testosterone levels were dropping like crazy and I know that some of it was due to the fact

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10:32For some people, but I think for the vast majority of us, it actually backfires. And there's quite a bit of research on this. So Gabrielle Oatogen did a beautiful study where she connected people to blood pressure monitors as they visualize success. Okay, so they did their manifesting exercise. They did their vision boarding. They did their thinking about the outcomes they wanted. Okay, I'm going to be a famous comedian. I'm going to be very wealthy. I'm going to find love. I'm going to have a beach body. And what she found was that when they were visualizing the outcomes, their blood pressure dropped. They became more relaxed. And in follow-up interventions with these folks, she learned that people who had done this became less likely to actually achieve their goals. So students who visualized getting a good grade on an exam became less likely to not only get that grade, they didn't study enough to actually warn that good grade. So it actually negatively affected them. It actually hurt themselves. So all this mumbo jumbo about manifesting, the way most people are doing it,

11:33is actually hurting them. Is that related to the idea that they, because they visualized it so much, they almost felt like they had already accomplished it without putting in the work? Like, what exactly is the cause of that? That's exactly right. That's exactly right. They became so relaxed. The body thought that, okay, we already got it. And that's one factor. The other big factor is that people don't understand what visualizing the right way means. If you say, well, look at athletes. Don't athletes visualize, like this whole technique comes from athletics, right? Well, what do athletes visualize? Athletes don't visualize getting the gold medal, getting the trophy. That's not what they visualize. An athlete visualizes the obstacles in their way. They mentally and physically prepare for the challenge. That's where positive thinking and manifesting and all that stuff goes off the rails. Because, you know, just manifesting the universe will give you good things or just be an optimist and all these good things are going to happen. What happens when it doesn't happen?

12:34What happens when bad things happen? Well, it's your fault. You didn't manifest hard enough. You didn't think positively enough. No, that's bullshit. And it's actually destructive. Because you think, well, then I must not be the right person. Now you have an identity. Well, I'm a loser. I can't do it. I'm not cut out for it. I'm no good. It's me, not what I did, but it's who I am. And then you're sunk. Then you built a cage of your own creation. So that doesn't work. What works instead is preparing yourself psychologically for the difficulty that you are invariably going to face. So for example, I used to be clinically obese, not just overweight, actually obese. And the way I learned to lose weight was not, oh, I'm going to sit here and manifest a beach body. That doesn't work. What worked is when I'm at that dinner party, right? When I'm out with my family and someone offers me a chocolate cake or an extra drink or something that has a lot of calories, what am I going to do in that uncomfortable moment? What am I going to do when it's painful to say no? Say no things. Well, that's what I have to visualize.

13:36I have to rehearse not just what I will do, but how I am going to feel. And that's where beliefs come in. You have to prepare yourself with the right belief so that when that moment comes, you have the right tools that you're disposal. To visualize the difficulty of that moment and essentially basically train your brain to make it more habitual, rather than thinking of it as an option in that time. To not freak out. To not freak out. So it used to be when chocolate cake came across my face, I want the chocolate cake, I want the chocolate cake, I want that, I couldn't stop the script of rumination in my head. I had to have it. The only way to remove, stop that voice in my head was to eat it. Whereas what you need to do to prepare is not to think positive, not to the universe doesn't care about your stupid vibrations. The right thing to do is to say, how am I going to feel? It's not going to feel good. And you know what? Pain is not suffering. Pain is not suffering. Pain is data. Pain is just information. People have gone through much worse. If I don't eat the chocolate cake, none's going to happen.

14:37Right? I'll want the chocolate cake. So what? And this is exactly the same technique that helps people quit smoking. It helps people stop chronic pain. I've seen people use similar techniques to go through surgery without anesthesia. I've seen the video. It's not magic. It's the power of the mind. By using beliefs the right way, we can separate pain from suffering and meet our full potential. Yeah, pain is guaranteed, but suffering is optional. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm nodding along with you because I also used to be like 250 pounds. Oh, is that right? Wow. Yeah, so you've been through this. Yeah, what I think what finally helped me was thinking, truly thinking about the teeny, teeny, teeny tiny bit of pleasure that I'm going to get followed by the long-term pain. You know, like eating the cake is going to be so good, but it's literally only going to last as long as the cake is in my mouth.

15:37And then as soon as it's down my gullet, I'm immediately going to be like, man, I shouldn't have eaten that. Tomorrow I'm going to wake up and be like, dang, I shouldn't have eaten that. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think the last work for me was when you study what is motivation. You know, I used to think that motivation is about wanting to feel good. That's what motivation is about. And actually what the literature shows that that's not true, that when we actually look inside the brain, the only thing that motivates us is the desire to escape discomfort. That's it. Everything we do is not about the pursuit of pleasure. It's about escaping discomfort. Even wanting to feel good, right? I want to eat the chocolate cake. I want to be with my family. I want to watch Netflix. I want to do all these things. Wanting, craving, hunger, lusting is psychologically uncomfortable. And that's the way the brain spurs us to actions. By making us feel bad, so we get the thing that makes us feel good. So the motive here is discomfort. So what that means is that weight management is pain management. Time management is pain management.

16:37Money management is a pain management. All of it. We have to change our beliefs about what is pain. Pain is not suffering. How would you apply? Obviously you have now written some very successful books. Do a lot of speaking. You've been a professor and you have all these different accolades. But you also built and sold companies. How does this apply in the entrepreneurial space? Oh, big time. So there are three powers of belief, the power of anticipation. Beliefs change what you see, like literally what you see. We'll get back to that in a minute. Beliefs change what you, the power of anticipation, beliefs change how you feel. We talked about that a little bit about pain is not suffering. And then the power to change what you do, the power of agency. So the entrepreneurial success is all about mastering these beliefs. So for example, when it comes to the power of attention, we know that entrepreneurs have a very specific traits called entrepreneurial alertness. And so there's research studies that show that entrepreneurs literally see the world differently, not figuratively, not metaphorically, they actually see it differently.

17:40There was a study done where they asked people who thought they were lucky or unlucky. And by the way, entrepreneurs buy and large believe that they are lucky, right? Why would you be so crazy to think that you see $100 bills while other people see nothing, right? Like, you have to have what Walter Isaacson set of steep jobs. You have this reality distortion field where you are seeing reality differently. And I'll demonstrate this through this study. There's a study where they asked two groups of people to do a very simple task. So the task was, look through this newspaper and count how many images are in the newspaper, right? Just how many images? One, two, three, four, five, count the images. People who saw themselves as unlucky, okay? Who had a belief, I'm an unlucky person, took two and a half minutes to count the images. People who were self-identified as lucky people, people who thought believed good things happened to me, I'm a lucky person, took 11 seconds. 11 seconds compared to two and a half minutes. Why? They didn't count faster. On page two of the newspaper,

18:42one of those images in big bold text said, there are 43 images in this newspaper, collect your reward. The unlucky people didn't see it. It wasn't in their universe to pay attention to it because they were counting like dopes, one, two, three, four, five. They just counted for two and a half minutes. They couldn't see it. Just like for entrepreneurs, they see something so obvious, like let's do this. Yeah, this is gonna happen, like I know. America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first, nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home and not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads, America cures. Let's tell Washington to keep us in the lead. Learn how at americacures.com. Pay for it by Farma. During Lowe's pro savings days, save more on what goes into the job.

19:44Add power to your lineup with a free to walk 20 volt max five amp hour battery. When you buy a select to walk 20 volt max tool, plus get up to 35% off, select major appliances for whirlpool, maytag, and more. Get the job done right. Keep more in your pocket. That's pro savings days. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's, valid to 327 selection barriers by location, raw supplies last. Oh, it's gonna happen. I can see it. Whereas the rest of us, the non entrepreneurs, we can't. So it's larger that's because of beliefs. It's what we choose to adopt as our beliefs. Yeah, that, I mean, when you are researching for a book like this and you have sort of like this concept of like, here's what I want to learn more about. Are there, when you come across studies like this, do you go like, oh, this is like, yeah, obviously this is what happened or when you come across studies and go like, wow, that blows my mind and I'm on to something here. I mean, I, I'll, the book that came out is like a third of what I wrote, because I'm sure.

20:47Yeah, the, all the studies I looked at that I didn't include in the book, you know, you're, it's kind of, it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle where you've got like six other jigsaw puzzle pieces mixed in. And you're telling me how we usually wrote like four books and then had those. Yeah, well, that's why I keep writing books. Because like, I'll have all this leftover material of a problem that I'm not really, I haven't quite figured out enough. And so if there's one of those problems that I want to figure out for myself, it's always quite selfish. Frankly, like I'm always following my own curiosity to solve my own problems. Sure. That's where I always go next with it. Well, this has to be, I mean, this is like the building block. Right, like this is, this is almost the step one of succeeding in anything that you're doing is just the belief that it's possible. And the very first one that you said that, you know, if you believe something that you actually start seeing things differently, this is sort of going into the biases that your brain starts choosing for you essentially. Like if you believe that something's possible, then you're going to find the opportunities within that world

21:49that could make it possible. Whereas if you believe something's impossible, you're going to find all the reasons why it's impossible. And then it paralyzes you from taking any action. That's something we talk about on the show a lot because, you know, I find that the entrepreneurial audience, you don't have to beg, you don't have to beg in their mind that it's possible to make more money. They, like you said, they kind of already think that way. It's the launchpreneur portion of the audience that I think really needs to hear this piece because in their mind, especially if like they grew up in a place with limited access, they didn't know a lot of people who had any money and, you know, they were just proud of themselves to get their bachelor's degree and get a $65,000 salary. And that was more than anybody in their family's ever made. And so for them to sit here and listen to people be like, oh, yeah, we did 4.4 million last year or like we just exited our company for $78 million or, you know, we got this whatever side hustle that started out as a hundred K a year, but then we grew it into this thing. In their mind, it's like the gap is so large between where they are and where they want to be. But it all has to begin with the belief, right? Like the belief, the,

22:51I can actually, your evidence to suggest that it's actually true, you have to just believe it. Yeah, let me share a riddle with your listeners. You may have heard this one before, but don't say the answer. Let me share this riddle because 83% of people can't get the answer to this riddle and it demonstrates exactly the point that we're making here. So there's a father and a son who are driving on a dark dirt road. There's no lights and a deer jumps in front of the car. The deer smashes into the windshield. The father is killed instantly. His son is in critical condition, rushed to the hospital, brought to the ER. The surgeon takes one look at the boy and says, I can't operate on this boy. He's my son. How can that be? Now, don't say the answer, okay Travis? You know it, but 83% of people don't know the answer to this riddle. And you can give them all the time in the world and they will not figure out the answer. And right now your listeners are listening and I'm telling you, 83% of them don't know the answer.

23:53The answer is, how is it that the, when the surgeon saw the boy, the surgeon says, I can't operate on this boy. He's my son. The answer is the surgeon was the boy's mother. Duh, okay? 83% of people can't get the answer because of their beliefs. Because 80% of surgeons are men. 20% are women. But the most common case, what we believe prior, it's called our prior beliefs, what our experience has been. Well, most of the time, surgeons are men. So in this case, your brain can't even see the possibility of a different reality. It's exactly the way with entrepreneurship. It's exactly the way with financial success. Most of the time, the people you know, don't get ahead. They're just working their day jobs. And so that's the future you see. You can only envision, just like you can't envision that the surgeon could have been the boy's mom. You can't envision any other reality. Your beliefs won't let you see things differently because of your prior experiences. And so, but once you see the answer,

24:54holy crap, of course it's the boy's mom. Like so obvious, right? But it's only once you know the answer. How do you, if you're in that position, how do you craft an environment that allows you to start seeing that there's other potential answers to the problem? Yeah, there are many techniques. One of my favorites is called inquiry-based stress reduction, which is where you do what's called a turnaround. This was based on the work of Byron Katie. It actually extends this technique though, is thousands of years old. It's basically having a systematic way to collect a portfolio of perspectives. It sounds complicated. Essentially, all you're doing is you're taking a belief that you think is true. Limiting beliefs are like your face. You can't see your face. Now, you can see your hand, see your feet. Unless you look at a mirror, you can't see your face. But we all have faces. The only way you can see your face is if you go to a mirror and look at your face. You can see other people's faces, just like you can see other people's limiting beliefs.

25:55Think of a family member, think of a friend. I bet you know tons of their limiting beliefs. You can't see your own limiting beliefs because you think they're facts. So you don't question them. So you have to have a systematic process. So there's these four questions that I detail in the book and that come from this inquiry-based stress reduction technique. Number one is a true. Number two, is it 100% true? Number three, who am I going to believe this? And number four, who would I believe? Who would I be if I didn't hold this belief? And then what you do, and here's the powerful part, you open up the possibility of looking at the exact opposite of that belief. So you literally take whatever is that belief. That thing that you think is crazy. And the brain hates changing its mind, okay? First start with that. Your brain hates changing its mind. Hates it, hates it, hates it, right? It's going to feel weird. It's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to give me every excuse. People like me can't do this. I don't have enough time. Too fat, I'm too thin, I'm too broke, I'm too whatever. You're going to find a million excuses. That is your brain fighting tooth and nail to get you to not change your mind. But through following this process,

26:56what you're going to do is look for the exact opposite, okay? I don't have enough time. I hear that all the time. What's the opposite? I do have enough time. Could that be true? Is there any possibility that could be true, right? So what you're doing is intentionally testing out the things that you think are facts to see if they're just beliefs. What's the definition of belief? A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. So you follow a systematic process. I'm going through it very, very quick here. But you're following a systematic process to constantly assess, is this belief serving me? Or is it hurting me? Is it helping me stay motivated? Or is it causing me suffering? Near I appreciate you taking the time, man. I know you're a busy guy. I don't take that for granted. Working people go to get a copy of the book or follow more of the stuff that you're working on. Appreciate it. Yeah, I just go to nearandfar.com that's spelled N-I-R, like my first name, AndFar.com. And the book is called Beyond Belief. Beyond Belief, go pick up a copy of this book. We say it all the time here on the show, guys. Whenever you have a book recommendation, just pick it up. Just pick it up. These are written by people who've spent countless hours

27:58putting their effort into making sure they put a finished product in the world that actually can impact your life. So Beyond Belief, pick up probably that book, follow near and all the channels. And you will not regret it. I've been following for a long time. And I don't either. Near I appreciate you taking the time. Everybody else listening, remember money only solves your money problems. It's easier to solve the rest of your problems with money in the bank. So let's solve that one first to hear on the Travis Minks money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you next time. Peace.