Your Beliefs Are Sabotaging You | Nir Eyal

March 9, 2026·1 hr 4 min·5 clips

Nir Eyal reveals how a simple birthday gift to his mom led to a painful realization about beliefs and suffering.

Suffering starts in the gap. The episode opens with a clean idea: pain often lives between accepting what happened and demanding that it should have gone another way. Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractable, comes in through Beyond Belief and the question of how limiting beliefs shape what people see. The listener this is aimed at is pretty specific: high performers with a plan, the research, and the discipline who still cannot get themselves to move. More information is not the fix if the belief underneath keeps calling the shots. The useful part is the family example. The guest walks the host through a missed response and asks what else could explain the silence besides selfishness. Busy is one possible answer. It is a small shift, but it matters because the host can see how quickly he ties that silence to old family history. Then the question gets uncomfortable: who does he become while believing that story? His answer is frustration, grumpiness, and a version of himself he does not like much. Letting go of it sounds just as concrete. He says he would feel more connected, more upbeat, lighter, and less stuck to an old grudge. The turn is simple. Instead of trying to prove the family member wrong, the exercise asks whether the opposite could also be true here. The episode keeps the tool close to the ground: challenge the story, try another explanation, and notice who you become while you are holding the belief.

As heard by us

A grounded look at the beliefs that can keep capable people stuck.

Nir Eyal joins to talk through Beyond Belief and the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. The episode keeps circling one plain point: limiting beliefs can stall capable people even when they have the plan, the research, and the discipline.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

See why knowing what to do can still leave you stuck, and how a limiting belief may be filling the gap.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Art of Charm