Nir Eyal

In the short term, they protect us from suffering.

Remember, all motivation is about the desire to escape discomfort.

Well, when I used to have terrible anxiety around public speaking,

not the best thing to feel when you are a professional public speaker, or at least that's your dream.

And what would I do when I was about to get on stage?

I would get sweaty armpits and I would feel the cotton mouth and my heart palpitations would get going.

And I'd start telling myself a story based on my beliefs that I'm not going to do very well on stage.

And what if I forget what I was going to say and people are going to laugh at me?

And I bet other public speakers don't feel this and what's wrong with me?

And I would go down this rumination cycle.

that made me shrink and I would cancel on, I wouldn't take opportunities and I would look for ways to get out of speaking engagements because that limiting belief protected me, right?

It protected me from embarrassment.

It protected me from potential danger.

And so I constantly was being pulled back by that limiting belief.

Well, today, I've adopted a new liberating belief.

That liberating belief, even though I feel the same physiological symptoms I've always felt, I'll be totally honest with you, John, I have the sweating armpits and the cotton mouth and the beating heart right now.

I still feel nothing has changed in terms of the physiological sensations.

I still feel them right this minute.

But the belief completely changed.

Now, when I feel the same exact signals,