Nir Eyal

Well, no surprise, the people who prayed, who had a faith-based prayer practice, they lasted much longer than the control group.

But even the people who were taught how to pray, who did not have a faith,

background, if they could substitute some other word, okay, the universe, the sum of all forces, Mother Nature, something that was meaningful to them, they also had higher pain tolerance than the control group.

And so this fascinated me.

And so I went to five religious leaders, and this is going to sound like a setup of a joke, but this is exactly what happened.

I went to a rabbi, an imam, a priest, a monk, and a swami, and I asked them all the same question.

How do you pray even if you have doubts about God?

And I took away from each of them practices that I think anyone can use, whether you have a belief in the supernatural or not.

If you do have a faith in the supernatural, that's fantastic.

Turns out that a lot of us, I was missing out because I wanted to have the facts that I'm not going to pray unless I absolutely believe exactly what the religion says.

And now I've been able to release that, that now every time I go by a place of worship, whether it's a church or a mosque or a synagogue, if they'll have me inside, I go in and pray.

And it doesn't cost me anything.

And it helps me refocus.

It helps me become grateful.

And it sometimes engages me in a community.

All these practices that religion teaches have kind of escaped us.

By the way, and interesting, you asked why is spiritual but not religious, why does that have these negative outcomes?

Not every country is the same when it comes to that regard.

In fact, in Japan, I just got back from Japan a few weeks ago.

In Japan, it's the exact opposite.