Nir Eyal started to get heart palpitations, dry mouth and sweaty armpits when he was about to talk to a large crowd. The best-selling author would tell himself he was sure he was going to do a bad job and ruin his career — so he should probably just get a diagnosis for his anxiety and pop a pill, he said. Eventually Eyal, who has many speaking engagements, realized those beliefs weren't serving him well and flipped his own narrative. "Now I tell myself, 'I'm anxious, awesome! That means I'm going to do so much better, because my heart pumping in my chest is sending more oxygen to my brain so I can deliver my best possible talk.'" As he writes in his new book, "Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results," the assumptions we carry about ourselves and others "shape what we see, how we feel and what we do." If your beliefs are limiting your potential, you could revise them to help you achieve your goals and even age better and possibly live longer.
CNN: Let's start by sorting out the difference between beliefs, faith and facts.
Nir Eyal: Facts are objective — truths that are true, whether you believe them or not. Faith, on the other hand, is something that does not require evidence for it to be a conviction. Beliefs are somewhere in between. Beliefs are not facts. They're convictions that are open to revision based on new evidence.
CNN: How can our beliefs add years to our life?
Eyal: Research has found that people who have positive views about aging live longer than those who don't. A positive view of aging might be believing that growth is possible at any age versus a negative view that involves inevitable decline. Which one is true? They're both true. Belief itself is not what changes your biology. It's just the first step. What happens to somebody when they believe growth is possible at any age versus somebody else who says, "Aging involves inevitable decline"? How does the person who says, "I'm having a senior moment" behave? They behave old. So, it turns out it's not magic. Your beliefs become your biology by way of behavior. When you believe you can adapt and grow with age, you might exercise more and therefore build more physical strength. Studies have shown that people with positive aging beliefs show better memory performance and slower cognitive decline. And the longevity benefit is significant.
CNN: You discuss how certain practices work in one chapter. Is this a religious book?
Eyal: It is not a religious book, but it is a ritual book. When I was doing the research around the power of beliefs, I came across research about placebos and nocebos. A nocebo is the opposite of a placebo in which adverse symptoms ensue as a result of negative expectation. The part that I couldn't ignore was how powerful certain practices are. The literature is pretty conclusive that these practices can be beneficial. They're incredibly helpful even if you don't have certainty about the underlying mechanisms. I used to engage in such practices earlier in life. But at a certain point, they began to feel different to me. I thought they were pointless. Once I had new evidence though, I changed my perspective to believe that they're incredibly helpful. So now I do engage in them. It's something that's enhanced my life quite a bit. I interviewed several experts for my book to get practices that anybody can utilize, whether you have a particular background or not. When I asked whether someone could engage in these practices without certainty about their foundation, one expert shrugged and said, "Yeah. Sure." Then he pointed to a principle: Practice comes before understanding. "You want to change yourself? Start to do." The lesson: You don't need to believe first. You act, and the understanding follows.
CNN: You call choosing a belief a strategic decision and say your book is a "staunch rejection of magical thinking." Why is that?
Eyal: What magical thinking and manifesting tell you is, 'What do you want? Envision it, and then the universe will bring it to you.' But that's not true. Manifesting and magical thinking are missing a very important step — to prepare for the pain. It's wonderful to have goals. What you have to prepare yourself for is what you will do when you feel the discomfort standing in the way of them. Stop visualizing the outcome and instead prepare for the pain. Researcher Gabriele Oettingen studied this with students who visualized acing their exams. The ones who only pictured success — without planning for the obstacles ahead — actually studied less and performed worse. The mental high of the fantasy acted like a false signal that the goal was already reached, draining the motivation to actually pursue it. The solution isn't to stop having goals. It's to pair your vision with a clear-eyed look at what will get in the way. Oettingen calls this mental contrasting, and it works because your brain starts linking obstacles to solutions instead of treating them as reasons to quit.
CNN: Why is it so difficult to change our own beliefs and the beliefs of other people?
Eyal: Very few of our decisions in life are based on facts. They're based on predictions of what's going to happen, and so they can't be facts. Should I marry this person? Should I take this job? Should I move to this city? Are those facts? No, they're beliefs. And so that's why it's so important to hold those beliefs lightly, as opposed to what almost all of us do — we cling to our beliefs. Our beliefs act as perceptual filters — we literally see more of what we already believe and screen out the rest. If somebody challenges our beliefs, we think they're rude for doing that. But actually what they might be doing is showing us a more accurate version of reality. They're forcing us to look at evidence we've been unconsciously ignoring. Research on what psychologists call disconfirmation shows this is exactly how we break free from confirmation bias. Without that challenge, we keep reinforcing the same mental models even when they're working against us. The person pushing back isn't being rude — they're offering access to a more complete picture of reality. That's a gift. Of course, it's very difficult for us to change our beliefs. We don't like to change our beliefs because we have certainty. So as opposed to taking risks, our default is always to retreat into what we know. For our beliefs, we foolishly cling on to whatever worked that one time — even if it's not working anymore. I did this for many years with different approaches. Every new plan worked at first. So I clung to it, preached it to anyone who'd listen, convinced I'd finally found the answer. Until it stopped working. Then I'd abandon it entirely and grab the next approach. It never occurred to me that the problem wasn't the specific method — it was my all-or-nothing belief that one approach had to work forever. The moment I updated that belief, the yo-yo cycle finally stopped.
CNN: How has researching this book led to changes in your beliefs and in your own life?
Eyal: It's changed my life in so many ways. I wrote this book because I needed the answer to why it was that, so many times, I knew what to do but I didn't do it. I think it's that process of constantly trying on new beliefs that I've adopted that has helped me discover which ones work for me. My breakthrough wasn't finding the perfect solution. It was realizing that the belief doing the heavy lifting wasn't the specific rules — it was the conviction that consistent daily effort mattered. Once I swapped my all-or-nothing thinking for that more flexible belief, the yo-yo cycle finally broke.