Why ADHD Labels Can Hold You Back (with Nir Eyal)

Presented by Understood.org

Getting diagnosed with ADHD explains a lot. Then it starts explaining too much.

In this episode, Nir Eyal breaks down what happens after that initial relief. When ADHD stops being useful information and starts becoming your identity.

He shares how that shift can quietly limit effort, create anxiety loops, and turn every struggle into “this is just how I am.”

This isn’t about ignoring ADHD. It’s about understanding the difference between what’s real and what you’ve started to believe about it.

Because those beliefs don’t just describe your behavior. They shape it.

You’ll hear how to separate facts from interpretations, why beliefs are tools not truths, and how small shifts in how you think can reduce friction and make action easier.

What We Cover:

• Why ADHD diagnosis brings relief, then can create new limits
• The difference between a label and an identity
• How “this is just my ADHD” becomes a stopping point
• Why beliefs increase or reduce effort before you even start
• The difference between pain and suffering in focus and work
• A simple way to question beliefs that aren’t helping

If you're enjoying ADHD Skills Lab, you may also enjoy Understood.org’s new podcast, Sorry, I Missed This.

Listen here: https://lnk.to/sorryimissedthisPS!theadhdskillslab

Connect With Nir Eyal

Book: geni.us/beyondbelief

Website: nirandfar.com

Instagram: instagram.com/nireyal

 P.S. Losing work because the admin layer around your business can't keep up with you? Invisible Systems is a 90-day done-for-you sprint where I (Skye) extract the processes from your head, build the operating layer, and find the right person to run it. Six spots left at the founding price, book a call at invisiblesystem.co

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There are costs to a label. The cost that we need to be very, very aware of is letting our labels become our limits. I was allowing this label to capture my mind. When I found something difficult, it would allow me to give up way before it was time. When that wasn't helpful, it wasn't serving me. When it comes to the ADHD community, a lot of what we think is fact because it has scientific credibility is just transitory.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab, brought to you by understood.org, the leading nonprofit helping millions of people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. Today I am incredibly happy to introduce you to the wonderful Nier. If you haven't heard about him, Nier is a globally recognized expert on behavioral change and human potential, a former lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He is a New York Times best-selling author of Hooked, Indistractable, and his latest book, Beyond Belief. His work has sold over a million copies worldwide and helped millions of people build better habits, overcome distraction, and unlock greater agency in their life. So welcome, Nier. It's great to have you.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Thank you. Great to be with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah. So I'm incredibly excited to get into this because quite honestly, I love research. That's what we talk about here. We talk about behavioral research, we talk about strategies and things like that. And so many good pieces of research were included in both of you know your books, like Beyond Belief and Indistractable. So to touch a little bit on Beyond Belief, what was the last belief that you felt like you needed to change personally?

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Well, where do we start? I'll tell you one of the most significant beliefs that changed for me was my around my relationships. And I know this isn't exactly on topic in terms of neurodivergence and you know how different people's brains work, but I think it it illustrates kind of this this revelation that I came to in the course of researching Beyond Belief. This had to do with my relationship with my mom. And uh I know I'm not the only one who has a difficult relationship with her mother. So a few years ago, it was her 74th birthday, and I decided that a nice thing to do would be to get her some flowers. The problem was I was here in Singapore and she was in Central Florida where I grew up. And getting flowers from Singapore to Central Florida, it's kind of a hassle. I had to call up a bunch of florists and make sure that they would arrive on time. And I went to bed that night thinking, you know, she's gonna call me up tomorrow and tell me what a great son I am. That's not at all what happened. What happened was I called her the next day and said, Hey, mom, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers I sent you? To which she said, Yes, I did. Thank you. But just so you know, those flowers that you sent, they arrived half dead. So don't order from that florist again. To which I said something like, Well, that's the last time I buy you flowers. And it went over about as well as you'd expect. Not so good. And my wife was sitting next to me during this call, and she turned to me and she asked, Nier, would you like to do a turnaround on this? To which I said, No, I don't want to do your touchy feely hocus pocus mumbo jumbo. I need to vent, right? That's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to, when people offend us, we are supposed to tell them how they made us feel because it's their responsibility. We're supposed to, you know, get it off our chest. You're not supposed to hold your feelings inside. Well, thankfully, I knew enough at that point from what the psychology literature actually says that venting and complaining about other people does nothing but reinforce your beliefs about them. She's always like that. That's there she goes again. He always does things like that. And so I had enough knowledge in terms of what the psychology literature says to not do that. Instead, I used a technique called inquiry-based stress reduction, which it was developed first by Byron Cady and now has actually been scientifically validated in quite a few studies. But this is a technique actually that's even older. It actually goes back thousands of years. Aristotle did something very similar. And the idea behind inquiry-based stress reduction is to take out a belief that is causing you suffering and assess whether it's serving you or hurting you. So here's here's how it works. And this might take a minute, but I think it'll kind of illustrate and frame the entire conversation. So inquiry-based stress reduction gives you four questions. The first question is: Is this belief true? So, what was the belief that was causing me suffering? The reason that I was suffering was because my mother was being too judgmental and hard to please. And so I wrote down that belief and I asked myself the first question, is it true? Well, of course it's true. Yeah, like clearly, like if somebody buys you flowers, you should just thank them and move on. No, she had to tell me how the flowers weren't very good and I shouldn't order from that florist again. So the answer to the first question, is it true? Yes, it's a fact that she was being judgmental. Second question, is it absolutely true? So absolutely means 100% of the time, there is no possible other explanation. Absolutely means in all cases. Well, this one sounded like the first question, but it was fundamentally different because now I had to consider was there really no other interpretation? There might be. Maybe. I don't know what that other interpretation is, but I could be with 100% certainty that there was no other explanation. Now the third question: who am I when I hold on to this belief? So when I took out that belief, my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, I realized that actually that belief wasn't making me feel good. It was making me short-tempered. It was making me this 13-year-old version of myself that I didn't really like. Okay, now the fourth belief, or sorry, the fourth question, who would I be without this belief? Without this belief that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, I instantly kind of felt lighter, right? That I could be more myself, someone I actually liked. And so what I learned in just those four questions and maybe two minutes of self-inquiry was that this thing that I thought was a fact was just a belief, that that belief wasn't really serving me, and that if I let go of that belief, I actually could be much better off. And so now what inquiry-based stress reduction does is ask you to do what's called a turnaround. A turnaround is when we we don't try and change our mind. You know, the brain hates changing its mind. And so you're always going to default into your old beliefs. So you're not going to try and change your beliefs. You're just trying to determine whether there could be alternative perspectives. So, how do you do that? You collect what I call a portfolio of perspectives. Okay, so right now I had one belief. My mother is too judgmental and hard to please. That's one. What could other beliefs look like? So what you do is you ask yourself, could the exact opposite be true? Not that you have to believe it, you don't have to change your mind. You're just collecting perspectives. So, what's the exact opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please? My mother is not too judgmental and hard to please. How could that possibly be true? Well, if I thought about it for a minute, she was just saying a statement of fact that the flowers weren't so nice, that she had thanked me after all, and maybe there was an alternative explanation that she was actually just trying to help me so I wouldn't get scammed from this florist rather than trying to hurt me. Could be true. I don't know if it's true, but it could be true. Okay, now I have two beliefs. Let's try a third. The opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please could also be I am too judgmental and hard to please. How could that be true? Well, I had rehearsed since the night before her call that I deserved to be told what a good son I was for this nice thing I did. And when that effusive praise didn't come in exactly the words that I had rehearsed in my mind, I lost it. So who was being judgmental? I was. Here's a fourth belief. The opposite of my mother's too judgmental and hard to please could be I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. That one was the hardest to think about and also turned out to be the most true. Because when I had done something and it didn't work out, I felt incompetent. And this is what we call a misattribution of emotion. When we feel crummy inside, the first thing we do is to attribute our feelings to some other source. And we do this all the time. And that's what I did to my mom. So now, Skye, I had four beliefs. Okay, I started with one, now I have four. Which one of those four, Skye, is true? Which is false?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

All of them.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

All of them, none of them, who cares? Who cares?

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

The fundamental revelation that I had in doing this work of the past six years, studying the powers of belief, is that beliefs are tools, not truths. Facts are objective truths. You cannot change a fact. Fact is a fact. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence, but you can change your beliefs. Beliefs are defined as convictions that are open to revision based on new evidence. And so that's the beauty of beliefs, is that you can change them based on whether they serve you or they hurt you. Because that first belief I had, my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. There was only one way out of my suffering. She had to change so I could be happy. It's the only way, only I could get what I wanted, which was to stop suffering. The other three beliefs were in my control. I could do something with those. Now, does that mean I have to be best friends with my mom? I have to hang out with her all the time? No. Does it mean that that she's never offended me before, after, or since? No, it doesn't matter. What this means is that I could look at this limiting belief. A limiting belief is a belief that decreases motivation and increases suffering. I could look at that first limiting belief and say to myself, wait, why do I keep holding on to that belief? I could adopt a liberating belief. A liberating belief is a belief that increases your motivation and decreases your suffering. So when you ask me, I'm sorry it took a few minutes, but I think it's very important because you can apply this to everything, especially neurodivergence. Because I think a lot of people assume, and I have ADHD, I've been diagnosed as dyslexic, and I've struggled with it for years. Yeah. So I'm part of this community. And I have to tell you, a lot of what we thought was settled science and settled fact ain't. It just isn't.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Before we get back to the ADHD Skills Lab, I want to share a podcast I think you're gonna love. It's called Sorry I Miss This from the team at understood.org. We know that our executive functioning challenges don't just stay at our desks, they follow us into every part of our lives, including our most intimate relationships, whether it's dating or longer-term commitments. Hosted by Kate Osborne, the show explores strategies that will actually respect how our neurodivergent minds are uniquely wired for love and connection. I listened to an episode called Oh Baby, it's an ADHD pregnancy, which I've been through three times now, and I loved what they said about sensory struggles we can have, how we remember, and all of those little differences you don't realize until it gets there. So to listen to Sorry I Miss This, search for sorry I missed this in your podcast app. That's sorry I missed this. Well, let's get into it then, because I'm I'm really curious to talk to you about this. Because I heard you tell that story on Chris's podcast, and and it was and obviously I've read the book as well, so I've I've sort of seen it in the book, but it's it was interesting because it's so interesting, this idea of belief, because it's important, but also the beliefs you have when you start your life, and then you get in your 20s and they kind of get pulled out a little bit, you know, like that happens to all of us. That is often like when you start to you have those moments where you realize beliefs are like you said, they can adjust. I used I grew up religious, no longer, you know, as religious. Interesting, your conversation on prayer um kind of was like, oh, maybe I should get back into it. Um but but it it really um allowed, you know, but then there was a space where I think coming back around and going, well, maybe there's more of an integration now of bringing these pieces back in. And it's kind of the same with ADHD. I didn't know I had ADHD until I was in my PhD. I don't know when when did you find out that you might have ADHD?

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Well, I was diagnosed as dyslexic in my teens, and just a few years ago, uh I think it was about five years ago, I got my ADHD diagnosis.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Okay, wow. So it's yeah, so also as an adult. And then initially it's really helpful because now the beliefs have shifted because the beliefs used to just be I was scatterbrained and I didn't know what I was doing, and now I have a thing, and it's like, oh, there's there's a success, there's some good things behind it, but then the belief can also be bad. Like, okay, well, now I have an identity of ADHD, but do I agree with everything that that identity comes with? No, do I think the science is sometimes quite dubious because we talk about it all the time on this podcast? Yeah. You know, and and so I guess my question for you, really, the question of this whole episode is how do you feel about your ADHD identity? And how do you feel about those kinds of identities in general?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

I had the exact same experience that when I was first diagnosed, it explained so much. It was so helpful. It was such a relief to explain what I'd been suffering through. And in fact, just recently I learned that there's a term for this. It's called the Rumpel Stilskin effect. Uh, I don't know if this is a story that that you have in Australia, but but you know the Rumpel Stilskin. You do. Okay, okay, okay. So it's it's about this princess who has to name this little troll who's causing her trouble, that uh he he grants her wishes, but he can she can only free herself from his spell if she guesses his name, Rumpel Stilskin. And that's what we call in psychology, it's called the Rumpelstilskin effect, because there is tremendous relief from our suffering when we can name something. The problem is that, like many goods, there's also some bad. And the bad for me was that now that I had this name that my brain would jump to every time I was struggling, that kind of became the problem, the source of all my problems. So when I would get distracted, when I would go off task, when I would have one of my struggles, it immediately became this rumination loop around there's my ADHD again, and this is a chronic brain disease, and it's never gonna go away. And how am I gonna keep struggling with this? And what if I can never do the kind of work that other people can do? And what if my boss, you know, starts getting down my and I would go down this anxiety spiral, which a hundred percent was focused on my diagnosis and my identity at the expense of getting back to work.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Yeah. Yeah, and being distracted, which is the employee of the other book.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And so, you know, over the past several years, especially doing this research around the power of beliefs, what I what I realized is that I think there's a differentiation between a diagnosis that is helpful when we see it as a map. A map says, okay, you're here and your goal is over there, right? The treasure chest is over there, and here's how to get to that treasure chest. Now, it could be that other people are using the same map and they're at different places. So maybe where we're starting, having ADHD or dyslexia means that we're on a different place on that map. And so here's the path to get to where you want to go. The problem is that I became the map. I became my diagnosis. My diagnosis became my identity. And we see people doing this all the time today, right? They'll introduce themselves as their diagnosis. That's, I think, a mistake. This leads to what psychologists call identity foreclosure because a behavior can change, an identity can't. Well, that's who I am.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

It reminds me of the introversion conversation. I think before ADHD, there was a big thing about introverts and extroverts, and that is really well signed, you know, in terms of the ocean and you know, psychology and that kind of stuff. And there was a sense of like, no, I can't because I'm an introvert. And now that feels like, no, that's just a more complex connection and part of who we are. We wouldn't identify ourselves as introverts so much. I wonder if ADHD is almost going through that same journey at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Even even the big five, even ocean, openness. Wait, well, uh, what was C is uh conscientiousness?

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Conscientiousness, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Extroversion, neuroticism, and even the big five we are now learning are actually downstream of beliefs. That the big five that we thought, yes, that it turns out, and this is the work of Jair Clifton around primal beliefs, turns out to be there's a there's quite a bit, I mean, you know, nothing is settled in science, or we're just always collecting evidence. But when it comes to extroversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, uh, openness, all of these big five personality traits that we thought are consistent throughout your life are downstream of beliefs. So even that is malleable. And so, yeah, it turns out that that that personality is is not fixed. Now, you have tendencies, you have practices, because again, what why does that happen? Your brain wants to constantly pull you back into whatever you've been doing, right? That's that's what's evolutionarily beneficial. So, yes, it's it's true that we consistently wake up every morning and this morning I'm gonna wake up with an American accent and you're gonna have, you know, uh an Australian twang to your accent, because that's what you did in the past. Now, if you practiced, you could speak with a different accent or a different language completely. It's not that it's your it's your it's a fixed trait, it's just a tendency, it's a habit, it's what something that you default into. And so I think when it comes to these diagnoses, we need to remember too that you know, we evaluate these diagnoses through subjective analysis. It's a Likert scale. So when I took my ADHD evaluation, it was how often do you experience all these symptoms? Well, compared to who? Compared to what? I've never been inside anybody else's brain. So to me, it feels like I'm oftentimes distracted. Compared to who? People who don't often get, right? So, and and that when what we're seeing is as ADHD diagnoses increase, it's also because people are discussing this more. It's something that we now expect. So that's not to say that diagnoses aren't real. I want to be very clear. I I'm not saying that it's fake, that it's not real. It is, but we need to understand how there are costs to things. There are costs to a label. And the cost to a certain label, we we know the benefits, right? We can seek a better care, we can find new skill sets. We sometimes, if we need it, we might access medication that we wouldn't otherwise get uh access to. All those things are fine. The cost, however, that we need to be very, very aware of is letting our labels become our limits. That's what I did. I was allowing this label to capture my mind. And when I found something difficult, it would allow me to give up way before it was time because of these beliefs. Because of, well, that means I can't, or why should I even try? Or I'm just gonna fail again. These limiting beliefs that were constantly berating me in my mind when that wasn't helpful. It wasn't serving me. Just like having a belief about my mother that that I believe that was a fact. Turns out it's not a fact. And I think when it comes to to the ADHD community, the neurodivergent community, a lot of what we think, I mean, you you've seen this all the time, a lot of what we think is fact because it has scientific credibility is just transitory, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Yesterday we believed teachers in a room going, yeah, this seems about right.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

That's right, right. And they're and they're optimizing for studies that get attention. And we don't know how many studies they ran that they never published that showed alternative results. There's all kinds of funny business happening in academia that is being revealed now. You know, studies that are not pre-registered, studies that do not replicate. So just because it comes out of a university with a fancy title and uh somebody in a in a white lab coat says it's so, we need to be very, very cautious.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah, no, 100%, 100%. It reminds me though, I'm curious then what your thought is on the whole ADHD as a superpower conversation, because that's the the alternative, right? People I wouldn't say the alternative, but like the opposite extreme in some ways. People come along and say, like, ADHD is my superpower, it's the reason I can do all of this. There is some evidence, like there is evidence for the strengths of ADHD. You talk about entrepreneurial awareness and there is some links there, you know, between ADHD and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

I mean, I I think I'm a case study in that. You know, I I have ADHD and I have struggled with distraction, and yet I've written three bestsellers. So well, why is that? It's probably because when I'm really interested in something, I hyperfixate it on it. Now, is that my ADHD? Maybe, maybe not. I'll tell you what, it's a liberating belief, whether it's true or not, for me to believe that I have something special about me that allows me to do things that other people find very difficult, that I find very enjoyable. So I can, I could say that's my AD. I think what where we get into trouble, if we try and kid ourselves, if we try and lie to ourselves, and you know, it's almost like the affirmation research that if you, you know, if you go in the mirror and you tell yourself, you know, I'm likable and I'm perfect and everybody loves me and I'm pretty, and the brain looks at the mirror and says, no, you're not. There's people who don't like you, right? And you're not that pretty. Uh when we lie to ourselves and try and inflate our ego, you know, this is exactly the trouble we got into over self-esteem. This is why a self-esteem research fell flat on its face. Because the brain is a pretty good bullshit detector. So it's it's not that it has, you're not, you can't lie to yourself about something that is not true. If it's not a fact, facts are facts. You cannot change facts. However, if it's a capability that is always within you and just needs to be pulled out, now we're talking. That's something special. Let me let me give you an example. Serena Williams, the tennis player, was playing in Wimbledon one year and she was doing very poorly. And the problem was that she was hesitating, rushing the net. If you don't rush the net, you know, milliseconds count. If you don't rush the net, you're gonna lose the match. And she was scared. She was fearful of rushing the net. For some reason, she'd gotten to her head that that she shouldn't rush the net and she she wasn't playing the way she usually did. Her coach, Patrick Montaglu, saw what was happening, called her aside, and he said, Hey, Serena, I just ran the numbers. And it turns out that did you know that 80% of the time that you rush the net, you score a point. 80% of the time. She looks at him, she says, What are you talking about? I thought I was terrible at the net. He says, Look, you know, statistics don't lie. This is the best news of the day. And it's true, statistics don't lie, but he did. She wasn't scoring anywhere near 80% of points at the net. And yet he told her this. The lie became reality because her performance improved. She started scoring 80% of points at the net, and she went on to win Wimbledon that year. Now, this sounds like gaslighting. This sounds like delusional thinking. But her coach knew what he was doing. He wasn't telling her something that was pulled out of thin air. He was telling her about the capabilities she always had. That's the difference. So if it is true that you have this capability already within you, you're just keeping it locked up because you believe you can't. And I see this all the time. Why even try? My ADHD is just going to flare up and I'm not going to be able to do it. This is not the kind of thing that a person with ADHD can do. And of course, if you believe that, boom, you're right. You're absolutely right. You won't do it. And so that's where we have to be very careful of not allowing our ADHD to be our limitation. On the other hand, we also don't need to think, oh my God, it's a superpower. I can do this and this and this, even though you've never done it or come anywhere close. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

You're like, it's the top people in the world have ADHD. So I guess I'm the top person in the world now.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, because it's there's kind of a contradiction here. Wait, wait, wait. You're super good at doing this, and yet you need, you know, time and a half or double time on a test, and you need all these accommodations, and you need, you know, you need, you need, you need. Well, like there's a contradiction here, right? Like there's something strange about that. So what we want to do is to see whether we can take areas of in our life where we do show extreme concentration, figure out what it is special about those situations that we can learn from and sometimes suffer through. I think we kind of have an aversion to, well, if this is hard, if this is painful, then I need to stop. Then that means that something wrong is happening. I'm suffering. And I think one of the biggest revelations that I learned in the six years of research writing Beyond Belief is that successful people are able to separate pain from suffering. They're not the same thing. Neurologically, they're not the same thing. Pain is signal, pain is information. Suffering is the interpretation of that signal. So emotion, for example, emotion is physiological. I'm hungry, I'm uh I'm I'm I'm you know, I'm I'm too hot, I'm too cold. All these are physiological. The interpretation, the feeling is psychological. So if we can separate pain from suffering, emotion from feeling, and just understand that it's signal and it's my interpretation of that signal. So for example, if I'm hyperfixated on something I really enjoy, I can still feel physical fatigue, right? When I'm writing and it's something I really, really am interested in and I want to get to the bottom of that mystery, yeah, sometimes I'm fatigued. But it's just signal. It doesn't mean I should quit. It doesn't mean I'm suffering. It means I'm loving what I'm doing. Whereas if I'm working on something I really hate, if I'm doing my taxes or I have to do something because somebody else asked me to do it as opposed to something I love doing, well, now that same fatigue is, oh, there's my ADHD. I'm so tired, I can't do it anymore, my brain is scattered, I need a distraction. Same signal, same signal.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

It is interesting. I actually I wanted to ask you about the research, because we've we've been chatting about that a little bit. How do you feel about research overall? Because, you know, on the one hand, we're sort of saying, oh, and now ocean. I was like, oh God, that was like the one, the one of the personalities that I thought we had locked up. And and, you know, but you're writing these books and you're doing the research and you're you're in that sort of process of discovery. How do you feel about the sort of shaky pyramid that is academic research in general?

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Oof. Well, it's getting better because now, you know, this it, you know, when you tell a lay person how academic research works, they just have no idea, right? Like, for example, pre-registering results. Did you know that a researcher, well, you know this, but the average person doesn't understand that a researcher can run a hundred tests, find the one that has an outlier that has dramatic results, and just publish that result. It's called p-hacking. You can do that.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

I've seen people do it in real time in academia. I remember all the time.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

They run thousands of experiments on thousands of variables, and then they cherry pick the one that they think is is has shows dramatic results. Well, look, you know, if if if you roll a dice thousands of times, you're gonna get some outliers where you hit snake eyes 10 times in a row, and then you say, Oh my God, look at this. What a what it went. It just you know, statistical probability. It's a it's a it's a bell curve. So people don't realize it. So now what we have is called pre-registered results, where you have to say, like, here is what I expect to find, then you run the study, and then you see whether you got those results or not. So it's getting better. But I would say a tremendous amount of research in in all fields, but specifically the social sciences, is really, really crummy research when you actually look at what it says. Because, you know, what do academics do, right? Academics have to publish or perish. That's the academic model. It's not about it's not about teaching, it's not about being a good teacher, it's not about uh advancing human uh wellness per se. It's about publish, publish, publish, publish. So that's what they have to do in order to get their tenure. And so we just have to be very dubious about especially exaggerated claims, claims that feel too good to be true. And we see this a lot when it comes to the social sciences, belief research, anything that's kind of sexy, anything that tells us what we kind of want to hear, you know, that's the kind of stuff we should be very skeptical of.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

So, how do you feel? I'm gonna go super nerdy. This is just what we do a little bit. So, how do you feel then about meta-analyses? Because obviously we talk about, you know, a lot of times people go, okay, well, individual papers, let's go with the meta-analyses. Do you feel like they are a gold, more of a gold standard for research in general?

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Or yeah, they're probably better than than just one study, all right? We want to see a trend because any one study can be, and we see that quite a bit, right? Especially like the studies that get repeated over and over and over again. Many times when you look at those studies, you're like, oh, that wasn't really well done, or it doesn't replicate. You know, for example, ego depletion is a wonderful example of this. Ego depletion is this idea that that your willpower is a depletable resource. And this, this everybody heard about ego depletion. They maybe they didn't know the terminology for it, but kind of the common wisdom is that my willpower is spent, kind of like gas in a gas tank or battery on your phone, that the more difficult tasks I do, the less willpower I have. And there was quite a bit of research. Roy Baumeister put out this theory and it kind of became gospel. Everybody believed it. It was like common sense that, you know, that's what happens. If I worked real hard on a task, well, then I have less willpower resources available for other things. So when I come home from work, give me that pint of ice cream and I'm gonna watch Netflix because I'm spent. I've got no more willpower left. Well, what we do in the social sciences when science is is well done is done correctly, is we try and replicate these results. And it turns out, from the best we know, there's no such thing that that willpower is not a depletable resource, except, except in one group of people. That there is one group of people who really do experience ego depletion. This was done by Carol Dweck at Stanford, and she's a wonderful researcher who I highly respect. And she found that in fact, the only people who experience ego depletion, who really do run out of willpower, like gas in a gas tank, are people who believe that willpower is a depletable resource.

unknown 28:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

You will act in accordance with that.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

That's crazy. What about decision making? Isn't I mean that's the reason why all the founders wear just one outfit? Is that a thing?

SPEAKER_00 29:02

No, I don't think it is. From the research I've seen.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Mark Zuckerberg's just been wearing the same outfit every day for nothing.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

It's probably pretty smelly, Mark. It's probably change of clothes. No, it's it's it's BS. I think it's it's silly. There's no such thing as decision fatigue. And now, you could get tired. There's such a thing as physical fatigue, but it's it's more of I think it's more around that that willpower is not a resource, it's an emotion. It's it's just a feeling, right? It's it's uh it's not an emotion, it's an interpretation of an emotion. So it's it would be a feeling. And just like feelings come and go, right? You you're upset, you're happy, you're sad, you're you know, these things they come and go in waves. So that doesn't mean we're out of happiness. That's it. Oh, I've been enough happy today. I I've ran out. I cannot be happy anymore. No, it's not a depletable resource, it's it's a feeling.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Yeah, that's true. My happy meter is down. This comedian is not gonna, is not gonna do it for me. I'm sorry, I already, I already laughed today.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

That's right. I can't enjoy. That's it. That's my maximum. And it's the same with willpower. It's just the psychological interpretation of that emotion.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

To come back to this idea then of identity, what do you think about the the community aspect of identity? Because obviously identity is a, for a lot of people, it's a connecting factor. You know, there's large amounts of identity. Some people will take on identities they don't even feel connected to, especially when you're younger, in order to have that community.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

So so this can be a force multiplier, it can be a benefit, or it can be detrimental, right? That that in many ways our community can provide uh belonging, it can provide understanding, it can provide this sharing of useful information. On the other hand, it can keep us stuck. You know, we see this with religious communities that people inside religious communities have all kinds of benefits, but you you know this yourself, it can be very, very difficult to change your beliefs or change your faith, because when you give up that identity, that religious, you know, if you refuse to call yourself a Muslim anymore, there's some serious consequences, and not just in Islam, in many different faiths, in many different communities, including ours, right? If you stand up and say some of the unpopular things that I've alluded to in this conversation, there will be groups that ostracize you because they take that as an affront. Because you leaving a community means de facto you're calling them fakers, you're calling them incompetent because you no longer believe it. So that can be very, very difficult and dangerous. Now, the benefit is that you are seeking a better reality for yourself, you're seeking a more honest truth for yourself. But it you know, you know, I'd love to hear your experience. You know, leaving a faith community is more than just, well, I don't believe in what's in your holy book. That's the easy part.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

It's a big deal. I mean, I think especially when it's a belief, like those are the really locked-in ones, the ones that you have had from when before you really even knew you were developing beliefs, they almost never really go away in some ways. You're sort of it's more like you're shutting a door in a room of a house that still exists in your house, if you know what I mean. I feel like that's yeah, that's that's probably one of the most difficult ones. And I would but I also wouldn't necessarily say, you know, in terms of community, I wouldn't I wonder your perspective on this idea of like, well, that was the identity that serves other people. And because of a whole variety of factors like personality or other things, you know, what I wanted to do with my life, etc., it didn't serve me, but that doesn't mean it's not a bad identity, you know, kind of having that view.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Sure. Yeah, oh, I think that's that's very healthy. So I I think I would not preach to someone about what I think their identity should be or what even their beliefs should be. Uh, that's not my job. My job is to share what I think is is a helpful tool to look at our beliefs as what they truly are, which are not facts of nature, right? It's not one of Newton's laws is not that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please. That that's in my head. It's and and and the revelation is that in fact, all suffering is in your head. Where else could suffering be? Suffering isn't, oh, my back hurts, or my head hurts, or I'm having difficulty concentrating. Suffering is up here. Where else could it be? It's a subjective interpretation. And so I think that realization it sounds so simple and so obvious, but that's not how we behave. We behave as if our suffering is a fact. And it's not true. It's not true for our psychological suffering, it's not even true for our physical suffering. You know, in in the book, I document this technique called hypnosedation, which sounds woo-woo and magical, and but it's anything but I've had given birth.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

I was thinking you a hypnotherapy is huge in the community. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

You did. Wow, you gave birth under hypnocedation.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Yeah, well, my best go at it. I'm sure, you know, they sounded like they really had it together.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Amazing. So did did what did it work? Didn't work? What what how did it, what was the experience like?

SPEAKER_01 34:08

It's I've had three kids, so I've decided how to go three different times. I think it's it's one of those things where it's like, I think it's it definitely helps, but man, I think you know, and look, maybe this is a limiting belief, but I found that having a distractable mind made it way harder. Like definitely like being the kind of person who I think would really resonate with meditation, which which I do not, but I do try, would make it a lot easier because it is that idea of like like you said, separating. The thing I found the most helpful actually is um is was um listening to something like a podcast where they talked about that idea of being separated, like being in a separate space. It was like that, but for but there was something else going on, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Yeah, yeah, interesting. Yeah, in in uh the book I I document this case of of Daniel Gisler where he goes under surgery, he has a 55-minute procedure where metal screws are removed from his bone in his ankle, where scapel is cutting into flesh, and he's able to undergo this 55-minute procedure, which actually, compared to what you went through three times, sounds like uh a cakewalk, right? Pregnant, you know, giving birth does not take 55 minutes. Yeah, no, that's a that's a whole nother uh level of pain. Having witnessed my my wife giving birth, I can't even imagine. You know, the fact that he could do this, and in fact, the the the remarkable thing about this technique, uh hypnocedation, is how unremarkable it is. That in fact, tens of thousands of people in Belgium, in Italy, and France, many people, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people do this all the time. And so, you know, what that demonstrates to us, I'm not advocating for hypnocedation, I'm not doing it anytime soon, but it shows us that look, if human beings can do this, and the first reaction is, yeah, but there's something special about him. No, there really, really isn't. Anyone can learn this technique. It's in us already. It's just that we don't allow ourselves to learn. That's been the biggest revelation for me is when I told myself, I have ADHD, therefore I can't, or this is my limitation, or whatnot. It now becomes I'm struggling to learn a skill, right? And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm learning a new skill. I'm learning to focus my attention, I'm learning various techniques that are helping me overcome these current challenges. What that does is separate the pain from the suffering. I still feel the fatigue, I still feel the anxiety, I still feel the distractability, I feel all the pain. It just doesn't become suffering because it's part of the pro, it's almost like what if right now you started getting heart palpitations and your body felt sore? Uh, that would be super weird. We'd have to rush you to the hospital if that happened all of a sudden. But if you were in the gym and you started breathing quickly and having heart palpitations and your muscles felt sore, you'd be like, oh, this is working, right? Like, same exact signal, different context. So I think before I was placing myself in this context where that signal of distractability, anxiety, you know, all those symptoms meant bad, meant suffering. I was judging them as bad. Now I'm judging them as growth. Now, is it true? I don't know. I'm not gonna wait for the research to tell me. I can tell you even if it does, maybe it's wrong. Maybe it's even wrong. But you know what? Beliefs are tools, not truths. So if it helps me, if I'm more productive, if I'm happier, if I suffer less, do it. It works.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

What about the beliefs? And I know you mentioned you talked about a woman in the book. The beliefs that help you, but don't help others. And I'm gonna call out some entrepreneurs here who have ADHD who are like, I'm totally fixed it, it's amazing, my levels, and then you talk to their team, and it's a different story. But I know that that's a thing. Like I've seen it before with many entrepreneurs. There is a thing where they're like, that's it, it's a superpower, it's amazing, I'm totally awesome. And then their team is kind of picking up the pieces of that conversation, and so their identity is helping them, but it's not helping necessarily the people around them.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Well, you know, there we do know that entrepreneurs see things differently. There's a there's a phenomenon called entrepreneurial alertness. And when you read the documentation around famous entrepreneurs, like for example, Steve Jobs, in the biography by Walter Isaacson, he talks about how Jobs had this reality distortion field that he was able to kind of create this reality that nobody else saw and that he thought was real. And in a way that's delusional, on the other hand, it's subjective perception. He he wasn't making up facts about what is, he was making up beliefs about what could be. And that's a big difference. You can't make up facts. Facts are facts, but you can change beliefs. You can make up beliefs. And so, in a way, if that's if that's serving you, if it's helping you become better, then believe it. Now, what does better mean? Right? If your goal as an entrepreneur is to, you know, start a great company, serve your customers, make the world better through the products and services you create, but you can't keep your employees around because they can't stand the way you work, well, then you can't accomplish your goal. Are you better? Right? Maybe you're not seeing reality clearly. You're trying to make up facts that everybody loves you, right? This is the whole affirmation thing. All my employees are super happy, everybody loves me, everything that the company is great. Well, now you really are delusional because you're making up facts. You can't make up facts. You can make up your beliefs, you can't make up facts.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

That's really interesting. I feel like this is the first, because I've read your book and I've listened to your episodes. I feel like that's the first time I've really got it. Where you're like, yeah, you that's that's the difference. Is like you can have a belief, but if the people around you do a survey and say zero out of ten, you're not doing a good job, that's a fact.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

That's a fact. Exactly. So if there's a there's a woman in the book, uh Ann Mallam, who just is incredible. She started an organization called Back on My Feet that now helps unhouse people start their lives again through this volunteer program where they start running and then the job training program, it's in thousands of cities and helped millions of people. It's incredible. Then after that, she tops it and she decides to start a company called Solid Core. And she starts this company, and five years later, she sells it for a hundred million dollars. Like it's incredible. And she calls her shot. She even says when she starts the company, she writes on a piece of paper, I am going to sell this company for$100 million, and she does it. And she's an incredible case study in terms of the power of beliefs, in terms of being able to see things that other people can't see. Entrepreneurs can see hundred dollar bills all over the street, and the rest of us just see pavement. So, in that respect, it made her amazing. The downside was that she didn't see all the chaos that she was leaving in her wake, that employees felt like she was just maniacal, that she was hyper-focused on profits and growth as opposed to taking care of her people. So the good thing is she had the good sense to do employee surveys, to collect information, to talk to her board, to have what's called intellectual humility, to say, hey, here's what I believe. But the definition of a belief, remember, is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. So it's not out of whole, it's not just pulled out of thin air. It's based on it, it's open to revision based on new evidence. So when she saw, hey, why do we have so many employees leaving? You know, I thought everything was perfect. Well, it's not perfect, and and so she she took this survey. She actually ended up replacing herself as a CEO. She promoted her COO to take over as CEO because she thought, you know, I'd taken it to where I can go, and now I wanted to take it to the next level. So having that intellectual humility to, you know, having that, I'll tell you personally, okay, here's a here's a great example. You know, I've written three books, all bestsellers. I've written thousands of articles. I've been published in the New York Times, like, you know, all this, these accolades. Here's the thing. When I finished my manuscript for Beyond Belief, I sent it to my editor. They loved it. My agent loved it. Everybody loved it. Everybody was telling me how great it was. Then I gave it to my wife and she read it, and she came back to me and she didn't say a word. She just looked at me and she she just did this. And that hurt, right? Yeah. But nobody was willing to tell me that this sucked, that it needed work. And thank goodness that I have an amazing woman in my life that keeps me humble, that calls me out, that tells me, don't get too big for your britches, right? This can be very, very much improved, which is why her name is now on the cover of the book as well as mine, because she helped me so much with improving it. Because I need that person in my life to tell me, hey, here are the facts that you're not seeing right now.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

No, I love that. Actually, my husband is my co-founder of the business, and he recently started coming on the podcast as well. Because I was like, I need you to keep me level. I need to like, I need you to call me out when we're having these conversations about research. So I love that story. I usually ask people if they had a quote, you know, what they would share. Quote they often say, but I'd like to know for you a belief. What is a belief that you hold, that you share, that you say a lot to yourself?

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Oh, I have so many now. So I'll tell you, you know, that one thing that's helped me with my ADHD is instead of that spiral, instead of those negative, limiting beliefs that I used to constantly tell myself, now I have a mantra, a new belief that I say whenever I'm struggling. And that liberating belief, I sometimes I'll just close my eyes and I'll repeat to myself, this is what it feels like to get better. This is what it feels like to get better. That now I'm relishing that same exact, those same symptoms, right? The anxiety, the distractability, the tension, the fear, the fatigue. This is what it feels like to get better. This isn't something to run away from. For me, it's not something I medicate. It's what I feel like when I am getting better. Because it's not a chronic brain condition. It is a skill I am learning. To me, again, is that based on I don't want people commenting, oh my God, the science says something. I know, I know, I've read it, I've read, I know. And yet, I believe you've read it.

unknown 43:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:55

This belief serves me that that to me, thinking of it as a skill I am learning, that. This is what it feels like to get better. And is it painful? Yes. Is it suffering? Only if I make it suffering.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

Well, Nier, it's been amazing to chat with you. I've really loved this conversation and your honesty. And tell everybody where they can find your book.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Absolutely. Thank you so much. So uh my website is nearandfar.com, but near is spell like my first name, N-I-R. And there's actually a free five-minute belief change guide that you don't have to buy anything, it's totally free. I just wanted to get it out there because we couldn't fit it in the book, and I think it's very, very helpful for folks to get started. And that's available again at my website, nearandfar.com. And the book is called Beyond Belief, and it's available wherever books are sold.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. If you liked it, leave us a five star review. It helps other people learn more about us. And thank you so much to our wonderful team for making us sound good, look good. We couldn't do it without you.