Nir Eyal: Beyond Belief and how to change your mind to change your life
From Design Better by The Curiosity Department, sponsored by Wix Studio
May 14, 2026 · 1h 7m · Season 12 · Episode 176
About this episode
Nir Eyal discusses how beliefs shape our reality and the importance of motivation in behavior change.
Visit our Substack for bonus content and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/nir-eyal-returns If you want to understand how much your beliefs shape your reality, try this quick exercise. Google the “checkerboard illusion” below and you can witness first-hand that even when you know two squares are the same shade of gray, your brain still refuses to show you the truth. If it can’t get a simple shade right, imagine what it’s doing with everything else. In his book Hooked, Nir Eyal helped people build habit-forming products for good. Then he wrote Indistractable to help people break free from the ones that weren’t. But after years of hearing from readers who knew exactly what to do and still couldn’t make themselves do it, he realized something was missing from the equation entirely. His new book, Beyond Belief, argues that motivation isn’t a straight line between behavior and benefit — it’s a triangle, and the third side is belief. The convictions we carry about ourselves, our abilities, and our circumstances quietly determine what we see, what we feel, and ultimately what we do. In this conversation, we dig into why your brain actively resists changing its mind, how the…
People in this episode
Host: The Curiosity Department
Guest: Nir Eyal
Topics covered
- belief
- motivation
- habit formation
- ADHD
- dyslexia
- AI
Keywords
- beliefs
- motivation
- habit-forming products
- ADHD
- dyslexia
- placebo effect
- AI
Sponsors
Wix Studio
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Hooked, Indistractable, Beyond Belief
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