Nir Eyal: The Four Questions That Can Change Any Belief

About this episode

Nir Eyal discusses how motivation is rooted in the desire to escape discomfort and explores the impact of beliefs on our perceptions and outcomes.

#699: You've probably heard that mindset matters. But what does that actually mean, and is there science behind it? Nir Eyal, author of Beyond Belief, joins us to break down the research. Eyal, who writes about the intersection between psychology and technology and taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business, opens with a counterintuitive claim: Motivation has nothing to do with rewards, he says. All motivation, he argues, stems from the desire to escape discomfort. That means money management, time management, and weight management are all really just pain management. That reframe sets up a bigger argument about beliefs. Our brains can't process the roughly 11 million bits of information hitting them every second, so instead of seeing reality, we predict it - based on whatever we already believe. That's why two people can face the same circumstances and have completely different outcomes. We dig into why visualization often backfires. Research by psychologist Gabrielle Oettingen found that people who pictured their ideal outcomes became less likely to do the work to achieve them. Athletes don't visualize trophies - they visualize obstacles. Eyal calls the productive version…

People in this episode

Guest: Nir Eyal

Topics covered

• mindset
• motivation
• psychology
• beliefs
• pain management
• visualization
• mental contrasting

Keywords

• Beyond Belief
• Stanford Graduate School of Business
• Gabrielle Oettingen
• Byron Katie

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Beyond Belief, Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself

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