The School of Greatness
Stop Limiting Yourself: How Your Beliefs Become Your Biology | Nir Eyal
02 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
It turns out that people who can persist the longest are the ones who are more likely to succeed. When I did interviews for this research, I talked to billionaires and I talked to people who were broke. And you would expect that people who don't succeed in life, that they would have more failures. That's actually the opposite.
People who are more successful are the ones who failed more because they were more persistent. And when they persevered, even though they failed more times, eventually if they hit it, sometimes they hit it big.
He is an author, a behavioral design expert, and teacher who focuses on the intersection of psychology, technology, and human behavior, the inspiring Nir Eyal.
So what happens if day after day, week after week, year after year, we constantly recite a script about our limitations, about our labels, about what we can't do? It becomes physiologically as well as psychologically true. Really?
If you have positive views about aging at 30, studies have found, there's a study at Yale that found that people who had those positive views at 30 lived on average seven and a half years longer. That is more of an effect size than quitting smoking, than diet.
It's more of an effect than exercise. How important or terrifying is the words we think or say about ourselves and our limits to our life? Incredibly important. The best things you can do Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Nir Eyal in the house.
And he is an author, a behavioral design expert, and teacher who focuses on the intersection of psychology, technology, and human behavior. He's sold millions of books worldwide, helping people overcome distractions, build habits that stick, and take back control in a world that is designed to pull us off track. Thank you so much, Nir, for being here. Excited about this, man. Thanks.
Great to be back. It's going to be fun, man. This is a topic that I love because most of my life, I grew up feeling very insecure originally because school, I was in the bottom of my class all through grade school, all through middle school, high school, and college.
Bottom of my class, bottom four, because they used to rank us on our grade cards and tell us essentially either how smart or how stupid we are based on the rest of the class. And I was always in the bottom four. So I always... had this belief that I wasn't smart enough.
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Chapter 2: How do beliefs shape our perception of success?
There was like some calling, some voice, some feeling, some essence that was like, it doesn't matter if you're stupid on your grade card or if you're lack the intelligence in school. If you have the courage to risk, to put yourself out there, to try and fail, to make mistakes, you can get better and you can do extraordinary things.
And that belief, thank goodness, has carried me over the last 20 years. To, you know, excelling in athletics and sports, to building a business where I had no skills or like anything about business, to launching a podcast, to writing best-selling books, when I didn't have any of the evidence that those things would be possible. Yeah.
But I had this like essence or belief that was like, I think I can figure this out. If I just... If I take the next step, if I meet the right person, if I ask the right questions and then try, try, try, something's going to work out.
And that belief has given me the ability to, I think, outperform so many people who are way more intelligent than I am, who are way smarter, who have more degrees, who have higher education than me, all that stuff. But I just had the courage to believe. And why is it, in your opinion,
Thank you.
that so many people who are extremely smart, extremely talented, have all the degrees, accolades in the world, still lack the courage or the belief that they can go and launch the thing that they really wanna launch.
We see this all the time. And the myth is that in order to succeed, you have to be the smartest. That's the defining trait. And in fact, in some ways, I think that being too smart can be a liability. Really? Because you start looking for facts. So facts are very different from beliefs. A fact is an objective truth.
And in school, we're graded by how many facts we can regurgitate onto a piece of paper. A fact is something that is true whether you believe it or not. That's one end of the spectrum. And the other end of the spectrum is faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of persistence in achieving goals?
Those are two different sides. In the middle, however, is a belief. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. So unlike a fact, which won't change, unlike a faith that doesn't require any kind of evidence to be a conviction, beliefs can change. And those people who hold themselves
to their beliefs rather than sticking to things that they will only do if they know they are objectively true, they succeed more. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken with in researching around the power beliefs. who tell me the same story, is that something inside me, I just believe that it was going to succeed and it did.
And that's why I've done this research over the past six years, is because there's an untapped power that people do not realize that they can access that releases their potential by harnessing the power of beliefs. My favorite story around this, my favorite piece of research is the Kurt Richter rat study, where in the 1950s, Kurt Richter took these rats and he put them in a cylinder.
And he wanted to see at the time, you can't do this kind of study anymore. It's kind of ethically devious, but he wanted to see how long these wild rats could survive swimming in water. In a cylinder with water. Halfway filled with water, he put a wild rat inside. To see how long, how long they could survive. How long they could swim.
And he sat there with a timer and it turns out the average wild rat can swim for about 15 minutes. Before it drowns. Before it drowns. It gives up and drowns, right? 15 minutes. Then here's where the experiment really started. The interesting part. He brought in a new group of wild rats.
He put them in the water and he wanted to see now what would happen if as soon as he knew that they would give up, as soon as they were about to drown, after 15 minutes, he plucked them out, dried off the rat, let it catch its breath, and then put it back in the water. And he did this a few times. Wow. Okay. Have you heard this study before? No. Okay. It sounds like torture, but it's... Okay.
So... How long? Here's the question. You know there's a trick here, right? You know there's something surprising. If originally the rats could swim for 15 minutes, how long could the rats swim after they were conditioned? After they had been pulled out, dried off, caught their breath, put back in the water, how much longer could they swim? I would say double. Double. That would be amazing, right?
If they went for 15 minutes to 30 minutes of extra perseverance, wow, that would be incredible. wasn't double Lewis. It wasn't triple. It wasn't quadruple. It wasn't for an hour. These rats, after they had been conditioned, could swim for 60 hours.
What?
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Chapter 4: How can we transform limiting beliefs into empowering ones?
And that's exactly what happened. And when we keep trying, invariably we don't succeed. Now, this isn't magical thinking. This isn't positive thinking. I'm not a big advocate. If you look at the research literature, just wishing for something actually makes you less likely to go out and get it.
Gabrielle Otagen did this wonderful study where she hooked up people to blood pressure monitors and she tracked what happened to them when they did a visualization exercise, when they manifested, when they thought about the future they wanted, when they aligned themselves with vibrations or whatever they thought. Here's what happened, Lewis.
Their blood pressure dropped and they became more relaxed. And then afterwards, they became less likely to do the things that it would take to get the results they wanted. So what the research shows us that just dreaming, just visualizing about that potential outcome, just manifesting is not enough. In fact, it hurts you. It makes you less likely to get those results.
because your body interprets that relaxation as the benefit.
Interesting.
It feels like I've already accomplished financial success because I dreamed it in my head.
So how does someone learn to manifest the right way, specifically from, you know, sports psychology, talking about visualizing the outcome, visualizing the process on the court or the field, how you're going to react and respond, strategizing and planning and business in the future, when certain things happen, how will you react, like kind of putting yourself in the future
What else needs to happen alongside visualization in order to manifest what you want?
So what the research literature shows us is that just the dreaming doesn't work. And this is a great example of how the self-help industry has taken something true and manipulated it into something that's false. We hear that visualization works and we hear that athletes use visualization exercises, which is true. But what do athletes visualize? Do athletes visualize the trophy? No.
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Chapter 5: What role do beliefs play in shaping our reality?
Unless they're empowering words. Oh, absolutely.
Like, just my luck, this happens all the time to me. You're an optimistic person. So that's how you interpret it. Gosh, I always get the first like, you know, parking spot. Oh man, things, money always comes my way. Yeah. Easily. Like, yeah, of course it does. Why not?
But most people don't do that. They don't do that. And here's what happens. There was a beautiful study where they had people who were self-identified optimist versus self-identified, no, sorry, self-identified lucky or self-identified unlucky.
Chapter 6: How can negative beliefs impact personal growth?
Okay. People who said to themselves, I am unlucky or I am lucky. They had this label. And? They took them into a room and they said, okay, here's a newspaper. We want you to do this task. If you count as quickly as you can, all the photos in this newspaper, tell us how many photos and you'll collect your prize, $250. Okay. So do it as quickly as you can. Both groups did this.
Both groups did this. The pessimists took two and a half minutes. The unlucky people took two and a half minutes. The lucky people took 11 seconds. Oh my gosh. Why? What was the difference? Because on page two, one of those pictures said there are 40, sorry, there are 43 photos in this newspaper. Collect your prize. So they just, oh, shortcut. And they saw it.
The lucky people literally saw reality differently. Whereas the unlucky people said, okay, one, two, three, four, five, six. And they sat there and counted for two and a half minutes. Whereas the lucky people, the people who say, good things always happen to me,
Chapter 7: What is the significance of gratitude in our lives?
found the opportunity for the good thing to happen to them. It wasn't that they were actually more lucky. They just were more observant. Their beliefs shaped what they could see. They could see reality differently. That's, by the way, why entrepreneurs tend to be more optimistic. Entrepreneurs tend to think they're more lucky. They think that good things happen.
So one of the things I've adopted since this line of research is that now, instead of saying... I used to. I hate to admit it. I totally was one of these people that says, oh, God, this is happening today. Traffic or otherwise it's happening or I got sick or whatever case might be. I would constantly remind myself of the bad things.
Now, every time something good happens, we say it out loud as a family. We say everything good happens to us. Is that a fact, Lewis? No. Bad things happen too. But we emphasize that everything good happens to us. Why? Because now we're more conscious of it. Vanessa Van Edwards, our mutual friend. Yeah, she's great. She has a wonderful phrase of not asking people, how you doing? Right?
What do people say? How you doing? Busy. Busy, fine, whatever.
Chapter 8: How can we redefine our beliefs for a better future?
Instead, she says, what's good? Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Because what it's doing is training us. What's good? I'll tell you what's good. Actually, you know what? I'm alive today.
You know, like I get to breathe like that. Let's start there. It's just focusing on something so small that is a positive thing rather than what's not working. I like to ask, what are you most grateful for today? What are you grateful in your life? What are you most excited about in your life? Just to get people shifting from a negative into some type of a more empowering emotion or thought.
Absolutely. The more empowering emotions and thoughts we have consistently throughout the day, the more good things will happen, or at least we'll feel better. Even if good things don't happen, we'll at least feel better.
But not only do you feel better, you start seeing more of that. So this is one of the three defining traits of what we call entrepreneurial alertness, is that people who have entrepreneurial alertness are more grateful. Tina Seligman at Stanford has this practice where she just sends thank you notes like you wouldn't believe.
Anybody who makes her feel good or does anything nice, she sends them a handwritten thank you note or an email or a quick SMS. And that turns to be one of these qualities of successful entrepreneurs, successful people, is that they constantly look for opportunities to say thanks.
Gosh, that's so interesting you're saying that because... I've literally been for the last like three weeks thinking that I need to order thank you notes, like custom thank you notes, because all I want to start doing is sending more. So you're another confirmation and a sign that this needs to happen ASAP. And I do that through texts and video messages and things like that and calls.
But there's something about receiving a letter that my dad used to do a lot as well. And I think it's one of the reasons why he became such a successful entrepreneur is because he was just constantly thinking about others. And he was thinking about, hey, how can I send a nice note?
Or I saw something in newspapers, back in the day, the newspapers, cut out a clipping and send it to someone with a little thank you note. It goes a long way. People remember.
People remember, and the crazy thing is this is called provoked luck, how we can manufacture our own luck. What happens when that thank you note lands on someone's desk and right next to the thank you note is a potential opportunity to do business with somebody?
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