Nir Eyal

Now I have a new liberating belief that says I can decide the next thing I put in my mouth.

Right?

That I can get back on track over the long term.

This will work.

And I think another thing that really helped me

was I completely misinterpreted positive thinking.

That there's a lot of research out there that shows that most of us are being hurt by thinking positive and even manifesting and vision boarding.

We're getting it completely wrong.

that in fact, it's actively harmful.

And here's why.

This is the work of Gabrielle Oettingen, where she connected people to blood pressure monitors as they were doing a visioning exercise, right?

They were manifesting the future they wanted.

They were picturing their beach body.

They were picturing the love of their life.

They were picturing a huge mansion and a Lamborghini out in the driveway, all the things that you're supposed to manifest in your life.

And she found that when they did that,

their blood pressure dropped, they became more relaxed, and most importantly, they became less likely to go out there and do the things that would get them their end results.

She did this study on students who were envisioning getting an A on their exam.

And those very same students who were manifesting an A on the exam studied less than the students who didn't do the visioning exercise.

But people say, yeah, but visioning works, right?