Dismantling & Advocating The Power of Your Beliefs w/ Behavior Design Expert Nir Eyal

The Kevin Miller Podcast

Kevin Miller

Nutrition, Relationships, Mental Health, Education, Social Sciences, Science, Society & Culture, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Spirituality, Medicine, Life Sciences, How To

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2026

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Not truths, but theories to consider in regards to yourself and your beliefs and ultimately how your beliefs are guiding your life for better and worse. My guest is Nir Eyal (Near A-yall). Nir consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and human potential. He previously taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is the author of the international bestsellers Hooked, and Indistractible, which have sold over 1 million copies in more than 30 languages. Nir’s research and writing has been featured in The New York Times and Harvard Business Review, and he is a regular contributor to Psychology Today. Nir has a new book, BEYOND BELIEF: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results, and I took the opportunity to go head on with our cultural perspective on beliefs. To help you see if you're interested, I'll read some concepts that came from Nir and our talk: Beliefs can be helpful regardless of if they are true. Beliefs are the driver of sustained motivation. But not because they are necessarily true. If you make a triangle with belief on one side and behavior on the other, belief is the foundation underneath. Facts are true whether you believe in them or not. Faith is conviction that doesn't require evidence, and belief is the messy space between fact and faith. We don't agree about what we choose to put our faith in, we argue about whether our faith is true and other's faith is false. A belief is only good if it holds up to real-world feedback, remains open to revision, and doesn’t require ignoring evidence to sustain it. Healthy belief requires intellectual humility. And a couple side items that came up, “All pain is real. And it’s all in your brain.” And, “Your brain isn’t seeing reality - it’s seeing your beliefs about reality.” If this sounds intriguing, stay tuned. You can find Nir’s book, Beyond Belief, anywhere. Connect with him at nirandfar.com Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome. I'm Kevin Miller. In this podcast, I have conversations with people that help us make better meaning of our lives. In this episode, dismantling and advocating the power of our beliefs. Beliefs are our primary focus for me and looking at how our beliefs guide our lives for better and worse.
0:23.4	My guest is Near Aal.
0:26.8	Near, it's spelled NIR.
0:28.3	He consults and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and human potential.
0:34.7	He previously taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He's the
0:39.6	author of international bestselling books hooked and indistractable, which has sold over a million
0:46.9	copies in more than 30 languages. Nears research and writing, it's been featured in the New York
0:52.5	Times, Harvard Business Review,
0:54.4	and he's a regular contributor to psychology today. So he's got a new book. It's called Beyond
1:00.0	Belief, the science-backed way to stop limiting yourself and achieve breakthrough results.
1:05.6	I took the opportunity to go head on with our cultural perspectives on beliefs.
1:12.2	It's to help us really understand how we conceive of and use beliefs in our lives.
1:20.5	And you know what?
1:21.3	Just to help you see if you're interested, I'm just going to read you some highlights of our discussion together.
1:30.9	Beliefs can be helpful regardless of if they are true.
1:35.4	Beliefs are the driver of sustained motivation, but not because they're necessarily true.
1:41.8	If you make a triangle with belief on one side, behavior on the other,
1:45.4	belief is the foundation underneath. I like this distinction. Facts are true whether you believe
1:52.8	in them or not. Faith is conviction that doesn't require evidence. And belief, as Neer says,
1:59.6	is the messy space between fact and faith.
2:03.7	We often don't agree about what we choose to put our faith in. We have a lot of disagreements about
2:13.9	what we put our faith in, and we argue about whether our faith is true and others' faith is
	...

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