Nir's Note: This article is written by Jasmine Eyal, the co-author of The Indistractable Workbook: Protect Your Time, Transform Your Life. She also happens to be my daughter.

It’s not every day a bestselling author asks me for advice. But there I was, listening to one of the most widely read voices in self-help work through his anxiety about an upcoming book launch.

“I just really want it to work,” he told me. “I want it to reach the New York Times bestseller list. I want it to touch millions of lives, but what if people don’t know it exists?”

I listened intently. Then I told him: “Those aren’t goals. Those are dreams.”

The best-selling author looked at me in confusion. “What’s the difference?”

It’s a good question. All too often, we set our sights on an outcome and call it a goal. It’s easy to mistake the two — and in fact, I’d have thought the author, who is also my dad, would know better. Nir Eyal has spent a career studying human motivation. But even he loses sight of the difference.

Earlier this year, we spent six hours on a road trip together, just before his latest book was coming out. We discussed why one of the most popular goal-setting frameworks was leaving him feeling stressed and doubtful, and then we came up with a new framework — one that connects decisions to outcomes and fosters a cycle that increases motivation.

The Misuse of SMART Goals

Many of us have been instructed to set what’s called “SMART goals”: They must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Originally developed as a managerial tool, SMART goals were designed to help leaders write clear, accountable objectives within organizations. In its original form, the framework wasn’t about personal growth but execution. Notably, the “A” initially stood for Assignable, ensuring every goal had a clear owner. A typical example from the original, 1981 paper reads: “To develop … an inventory system that will reduce inventory costs by $1 million.” It’s concrete, measurable, time-bound, and clearly built for a business context.

Over time, SMART drifted. As it spread into personal productivity and self-help, a system designed to coordinate teams was repurposed as an ill-fitting motivational tool. SMART works best when the challenge is simply execution, where metrics and deadlines reduce ambiguity. Applied to personal goals, it can create a false sense of clarity, pushing people to define and measure outcomes that aren’t under their control.

In the end, SMART goals don’t fail because they’re wrong — they fail because they’re solving the wrong problem. My dad had set “hitting the New York Times bestseller list” as a SMART goal for his previous two books. But despite his best efforts, he’d failed to reach his goal both times, leaving him frustrated, discouraged, and fearful of what would happen to his latest book.

The Role of Control

After our conversations, we examined the research behind SMART goals, which is not as settled as its reputation suggests. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, whose landmark work on goal-setting theory established much of the scientific foundation for the field, convincingly demonstrated that specific and measurable goals lead to significantly better performance. However, the remaining components of SMART (achievable, relevant, and time-bound) are far more contested in the literature. Setting an achievable goal can inadvertently discourage long-term growth, and time-bound deadlines can paralyze progress.

More fundamentally, SMART goals do not distinguish between what is within your control and what is not.

Consider the goal of getting admitted to Harvard Business School. It clears every SMART hurdle; It’s specific, measurable, achievable with the right credentials, personally relevant, and time-bound by the application deadline. Yet, the ultimate decision lies with the admissions committee, meaning your effort is necessary but not sufficient.

Or consider a sales leader who sets a goal to close $2 million in new business this quarter. That’s a textbook SMART goal. And yet, closing that revenue hinges on many factors that ultimately lie outside the leader’s control. The goal, for all its precision, has built a dependence on someone else’s priorities. When we set goals that hinge on others’ choices, we build our sense of progress on shaky ground.

Don’t Make Your Dreams Your Goals

The first step toward fixing this is recognizing a distinction most goal-setting frameworks ignore entirely: the difference between a dream and a goal.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Epictetus described a “Dichotomy of Control,” asserting that we must distinguish between what is prohairetic (fully in our control) and aprohairetic (what is not).

Following this distinction, a dream is an outcome you desire but cannot fully control. Dreams involve other people, external circumstances, and the whims of timing and luck. By this definition, SMART goals can become dreams dressed up in quantitative trappings. My father’s aspiration to reach the New York Times bestseller list was genuine. However, it was a dream, not a goal.

In contrast, a true goal involves an outcome you can attain through your sustained effort alone, barring extenuating circumstances. You can dream of winning a marathon, but make a goal of training daily.

Research shows there is a psychological cost to blurring the distinction between dreams and goals. Research on self-determination theory by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan shows that when people perceive a clear connection between their effort and their outcomes, intrinsic motivation strengthens. When that connection breaks down, and effort doesn’t reliably produce progress, motivation deteriorates. The result is a vicious cycle in which diminished agency leads to reduced effort, which in turn produces worse outcomes, which reinforces the feeling of helplessness.

When goals are genuinely within our control — submitting X applications, exercising Y hours daily, making Z sales calls — the opposite cycle takes hold. Effort translates into visible progress, ensuring motivation compounds rather than erodes.

WISE Beats SMART

SMART goals are better than no goals at all, but we wanted to create something more grounded and realistic.

That’s why we came up with a framework we call “WISE goals”. This framework poses four questions and is designed to feed your motivation and thereby increase the likelihood of achieving your dreams:

Here are the questions:

W — Within your control?

Can you achieve this goal through your own effort, independent of others’ decisions? If the answer is no, reframe accordingly. Rather than setting a $2 million revenue target, aim to conduct 40 qualified discovery calls per month. Your efforts will likely raise your revenue, but you have not made your success dependent on others.

I — Ignites new skills?

Good goals ignite the capabilities you need to be successful on your way to your target.

Consider lottery winners. Research on jackpot winners suggests that large cash windfalls often only postpone financial ruin; big winners become significantly more likely to file for bankruptcy within three to five years.

Building wealth through consistent, self-directed action and careful planning develops financial literacy, discipline, and decision-making skills. Dreams that suddenly come true without that preparation leave the dreamer unprepared to handle their good fortune.

S — Specific action?

Dreams are never guaranteed, but working on your goal should make them more probable. Locke and Latham’s research is unambiguous, showing specific goals outperform vague ones. Like SMART goals, this feature should be incorporated into the WISE framework.

However, it’s important to acknowledge that there is a Goldilocks principle at work. Goals that are too narrowly scoped, like “write for 15 minutes every morning,” can become monotonous checkbox exercises. Goals that are too broad, like “write more often,” become discouraging. The right goal is specific enough to guide daily action, but substantial enough that completing it feels like a genuine accomplishment.

E — Enough?

If you work toward this goal for months or years and the dream never materializes, will you be glad you pursued it anyway? If the process itself — the learning, the discipline, and the growth — holds real value, then the goal is sustainable. If you are pursuing it solely because you believe it will deliver some eventual outcome, you have made your motivation contingent on something you cannot control.

WISE Goals Raise the Bar

A reasonable skeptic might push back: Isn’t this just lowering your ambitions? Aren’t you telling people to stop holding themselves accountable for outcomes?

The answer is, in fact, the opposite. WISE goals raise the bar on personal accountability, precisely because they remove the escape that outcome-based goals provide.

When your goal is to close $2 million in new revenue, and you fall short, there is always someone or something to blame: the market was soft, a key deal collapsed, a competitor got lucky. External factors absorb the blame. However, when your goal is to conduct 40 qualified discovery calls, there is nowhere to hide. Either you put in the work, or you didn’t. WISE goals make excuses structurally impossible.

Putting WISE Goals Into Practice

The WISE framework does not guarantee that every dream comes true. Nothing can. However, by committing to goals that are within your control, that ignite new skills, that involve specific actions, and that are enough regardless of outcomes, you turn a dream into a plan.

When my father applied this thinking to his book launch, he set a dream of reaching the New York Times bestseller list and helping millions. However, he stopped confusing his dreams with his goals. While getting on the list may have been a SMART goal, it was not a WISE one. It perpetuated unnecessary suffering and stress, rather than motivating progress.

He replaced his outcome-based wishes with WISE goals, including writing a substantive article every week, pursuing all speaking and podcasting opportunities his schedule allowed, and continuing to deepen the research behind his ideas. He may have pursued similar actions with his prior SMART goal, but his mindset had completely shifted. WISE goals transformed his work from a borderline plea for external validation to an agentic mindset that fueled motivation.

By the time we pulled into the driveway, my father had stopped worrying about how many copies he would sell. His book did end up on the New York Times bestseller list, not because he dreamt it would, but because he took the actions that made that outcome more likely — without the unnecessary stress.

Stop Confusing Your Dreams with Your Goals was originally published in Psychology of Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For much of my life, I was the kid who never took off his shirt at the community pool. While other teenagers splashed in the Central Florida heat, I sat on the edge in an oversized t-shirt, hiding my belly rolls.

Over the next thirty years, my bookshelf became a graveyard of diet books. I meticulously logged fat grams in 1994. Three years later, I packed my fridge with tofu and potatoes. Then those same foods became contraband when I embraced keto. Eventually, intermittent fasting became my new gospel.

Each plan felt like the answer. And in a way, each one was. I’d lose weight, feel better, preach my latest revelation at dinner parties.

But every time, something would happen. I’d read an article explaining why my current diet was flawed. As my confidence wavered, so did my results. Familiar, failure-justifying beliefs crept back in: It’s harder for bigger people to exercise. It doesn’t really matter what I eat. The pounds returned. Every diet worked — until it didn’t.

It took me years to understand that the problem was never the plan. It was belief.

When I truly believed a diet would work, I followed through with devotion. The moment doubt crept in, commitment collapsed. What I couldn’t see at the time: a belief can be useful without being universal or even strictly true. The real shift came when I stopped chasing the perfect diet and started believing that consistent daily choices mattered more than dramatic overhauls.

Think about the last time you quit something that mattered. Maybe it was the novel gathering dust on your desk, the business idea you talked yourself out of, or the difficult conversation you’ve been avoiding for months.

What story did you tell yourself?

I’m not creative enough.

It’s too late for me.

People like me don’t succeed at this.

We repeat these phrases until they feel like facts. But they’re not facts. They’re invisible barriers — and they determine whether we persist or quit.

Motivation Is a Triangle

Most people picture motivation as a straight line: want the benefit, do the behavior. But that model is missing a critical piece.

If knowing what to do were enough, we’d all follow through on everything we know is good for us. The missing variable is this: you can have a perfect plan, but if you don’t believe your effort will make a difference, you won’t persist long enough for it to matter.

Motivation is actually a triangle.

One side is behavior — the actions you take.

Another is benefit — the outcomes you want.

But at the base, holding everything together, is belief: your conviction that actions will lead to results.

All three matter, but belief is the foundation. Without it, the whole structure collapses.

Where Belief Lives

Some things are certain. Water freezes at 32°F. These are facts.

At the other extreme is faith: conviction without evidence.

But most of life exists somewhere in between. Will this business succeed? Is this the right person to marry? We can’t wait for certainty before acting, so we build working models of reality to guide our decisions. That’s where belief lives.

A belief is a firmly held opinion, open to revision based on new evidence. Beliefs aren’t thoughts or feelings. They’re tools — mental models we use when the full truth isn’t knowable. And because they’re tools, we can choose them based on usefulness, not just provability.

The real question isn’t Is this belief true? It’s Does this belief serve me?

The Three Powers of Belief

When I finally lost the weight and kept it off, it wasn’t because I found the perfect diet. It was because I developed the right beliefs — about myself and about what was possible.

This pattern shows up everywhere. The programmer who masters a new language, the musician who performs on a real stage, the executive who leads through a crisis — they succeed because they cultivated beliefs that sustained their effort through setbacks, not just through easy wins.

“Just believe” is not the answer, though. Beliefs aren’t wishes you flip on like a switch. They’re mental models built through experience, evidence, and deliberate practice. You can’t develop powerful beliefs without strategic effort, just as you can’t build physical strength by wishing for it.

Belief works through three powers:

1. Attention: Seeing What You Believe

Believing is seeing. Beliefs filter what we notice. When I believed I was destined to be overweight, I registered every failure and overlooked every success. When my beliefs shifted, I suddenly noticed people who had succeeded, strategies that worked, small moments of progress I’d been ignoring for years. The world hadn’t changed. My attention had.

2. Anticipation: Feeling What You Believe

Beliefs are emotional forecasts. When I believed a diet would fail, my stress increased, cravings intensified, and willpower felt harder to sustain. When I believed in a plan, I felt energized. What we expect actively shapes our biochemistry and our capacity to persist.

3. Agency: Doing What You Believe

This is where belief becomes action. When I believed my daily efforts didn’t matter, I couldn’t maintain consistency. When I believed those same efforts would lead to real change, I kept going — through plateaus, setbacks, and discouraging weeks.

Together, these three powers form a feedback loop. What you believe shapes what you see. What you see shapes what you expect. What you expect shapes what you do. And what you do produces evidence that reinforces or challenges your original belief.

This is how beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies.

The question isn’t whether your beliefs will shape your reality. They will. The question is whether you’ll choose beliefs that expand what’s possible — or ones that quietly close the door.

If this resonated with you, Beyond Belief is available now wherever books are sold.

I Wasted 30 Years Dieting Because Nobody Told Me This One Thing was originally published in Psychology of Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here’s something that surprised me when doing research for my upcoming book Beyond Belief:

Positive visualization often doesn’t work. In fact, it can make things worse.

I know that’s hard to hear, especially when Instagram is filled with manifestation coaches and vision boards. But the research is crystal clear.

The Problem With Imagining Success

Dr. Gabriele Oettingen at NYU spent decades studying goal-setting. Her findings: The more positively people fantasize about success, the less well they actually do.

In one study, she hooked people up to blood pressure monitors and asked them to visualize achieving their biggest dreams: landing the job, losing weight, finding romance.

Their blood pressure dropped immediately.

Why? The fantasy gave them a temporary high…but it drained the energy needed for actual effort. Their brains acted as if they’d already succeeded.

From academic tests to weight loss to career advancement, positive fantasies consistently led to worse outcomes.

Here’s Why Positive Thinking Backfires

When you vividly imagine achieving a goal, your brain registers some of the emotional reward before any work has been done. You feel encouraged, even satisfied, as if progress is already underway.

But the reality of pursuing that goal is almost always harder than the fantasy suggests. When friction appears, effort declines, persistence weakens, and the gap between imagination and reality feels discouraging.

To escape those feelings, it’s easy to return to the fantasy rather than engage the work itself. Over time, this creates a loop in which imagining success subtly replaces pursuing it.

In Beyond Belief, I call this “The Circle of False Promise.”

The Solution: Mental Contrasting

Dr. Oettingen discovered the solution: mental contrasting.

Instead of visualizing success in isolation, you deliberately pair your desired outcome with the real obstacles in your way. Then you construct an “if-then” strategy that specifies what you’ll do when that obstacle appears.

For example:

• Desired outcome: Run a 5K by June
• Visualization: Crossing the finish line, feeling strong
• Obstacle: Wanting to chill/rest instead of train for the run
• If-then plan: If I’m tempted to sleep in, then I’ll put my shoes by my bed and commit to just putting them on.

Studies show people who practice mental contrasting stick with goals longer, achieve more, and feel less discouraged when challenges appear.

Why? Because mental contrasting engages what I describe in Beyond Belief as the three powers of belief:

• Attention: You see obstacles clearly instead of filtering them out.
• Anticipation: You expect and prepare for difficulty, not just success.
• Agency: You build conviction that you can handle challenges.

So the next time you want to set a goal, rather than visualizing or manifesting it, try mental contrasting instead.

Believe!

Get your free 5-Minute Belief Transformation Guide here: https://www.nirandfar.com/beyond-belief-live/

The Negative Side of Positive Thinking was originally published in Psychology of Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Horror legend Stephen King has written more than 60 books. In one of them, On Writing, he explains the secret to his incredible productivity.

“There are certain things I do if I sit down to write. I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning. I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places,” he reveals.

King doesn’t just keep to this strict schedule because he loves routine. It serves a deeper aim: “The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon.”

The idea that where you sit and when can affect your state of mind might sound like magic at first. But it’s not, it’s science. Any writer can use the research-backed power of ritual to make their own writing practice more pleasant and productive.

The science of secular rituals

Before we dig into this discussion, it’s important to define our terms. What makes a ritual different from a simple routine?

A routine is a set of actions you do in a particular order or at a particular time. A ritual, according to psychologists, is a sequence of actions with a symbolic rather than practical purpose. That symbolism can be religious, such as a ritual you perform at a church or synagogue. Or it can be entirely secular, like Stephen King’s pre-writing routine. Either way, rituals are formalized actions that have meaning. Often, they shift your mindset or perceptions.

And, studies show, they work. Research has found that even simple, made-up rituals like writing down and throwing away your fears or wearing a pair of lucky socks on game day can help us deal with anxiety and improve performance and well-being.

Rituals also help us get in the proper mental state for a particular task. Google’s in-house productivity coach, Laura Mae Martin, for instance, advises executives to choose “hot spots” where they will consistently do specific tasks, such as a favorite coffee shop for brainstorming or a preferred spot for writing.

“Our brain makes associations with the sights, sounds, and smells of places and when we do an activity in the same place regularly, it makes it easier to ‘get in the zone’ each time we go back to that same spot,” she has explained.

Rituals are for non-believers too

Stephen King, with his daily writing ritual, clearly understands the power of ritual to shape mindset. I discovered the power of entirely secular rituals for myself while researching my forthcoming book, Beyond Belief.

Studies, I uncovered, showed that those who pray regularly have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, are more resilient to challenges, and are at lower risk of depression. To explore whether freethinkers like me could learn anything useful about prayer from the world’s great religious traditions, I interviewed a rabbi, an imam, a swami, a priest, and a Buddhist monk about the power of prayer.

Each conversation was unique and enlightening in its own way. They all shared a common theme, however. Rituals like prayer are a powerful tool, even if we are unsure about our spiritual beliefs. In fact, often ritual is powerful precisely because it puts action before belief.

When I talked to Rabbi Mordechai in his book-lined office at the synagogue, he explained, “everything is about practice. A person’s psyche is impacted by what he does, not just what he thinks.”

Brushing your teeth each morning is a routine. The result is strictly practical — clean teeth and a happy dentist. Rituals have psychological results. Whether it’s something religious, like a morning prayer or something secular like putting on your writing playlist, rituals reinforce our identities and nudge us toward a particular frame of mind. As the rabbi taught me, action can lead to calm and conviction as much as the other way around.

What’s your writing ritual?

Which brings us back to Stephen King sitting down at his desk promptly at 8:00 every morning with just the right music and cup of tea, Joan Didion picking up her needlepoint when she felt blocked, or Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s going on a 10-kilometer run every day he’s at work on a novel.

These simple writing rituals are a far cry from the splendor of a high mass, but they serve many of the same purposes. Rituals settle the mind and cue us to focus on what is important. They also reconfirm our commitment to a particular goal. A good ritual, in the words of Murakami, is a “form of mesmerism” that shapes the writer’s mindset and, through that, their actions.

As Father Andrian Danker told me when I spoke to him at his church, “Prayer invites us to get off our butts, to move from contemplation to action.” So do everyday rituals.

This isn’t just spiritual. It is also science. Emory University psychologist and author of The Hidden Power of Ritual, Bradd Shore has called rituals, “perhaps the most powerful tool in the human toolkit that is largely under local control.”

Writers would be foolish not to employ such a powerful tool to make the hard work of getting words down on the page a little easier. To consider how you can leverage ritual in your own writing practice, try this prompt:

Write a Medium story about your own writing ritual. How does it shape your experience of writing? Could it be improved or altered in any way? If you decide to publish on Medium, use the topic tag “Beyond Belief” — I’d love to read your stories.

How to Use the Magic (and Science) of Rituals to Improve Your Writing was originally published in Psychology of Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Right now, your senses are collecting 11 million bits of information per second. That’s the equivalent of seeing every word of War and Peace flash before your eyes — twice — every single second. But your conscious mind? It can handle only about 50 bits per second. Which means your brain is silently discarding 99.9995% of reality before you ever become aware of it.

Your beliefs are choosing what makes the cut.

If you’re a writer who’s ever thought I have nothing original to say, that thought isn’t just discouraging. It’s distorting your vision — in ways that are measurable, documented, and, once you understand them, fixable.

You’re seeing life through a keyhole

Think about what this means. We don’t see the world as it is. We see a curated sliver of it — a tiny keyhole view, shaped by what we already believe, expect, and pay attention to. Neuroscientists have known this for decades. Fiction writers have known it for centuries.

Picture two characters in the same story walking into the same room. One is having a great day. The other is furious about something that happened earlier. Would the author describe the room the same way for both?

Of course not. The happy character sees the fireplace “crackling warmly.” The angry one sees a room that’s overheated, dimly lit, the fire vaguely menacing. Dedicated readers of fiction understand that descriptions like these don’t just reveal the outer world of the story — they reveal the inner reality of the characters.

This literary convention works because it mirrors real life. Your feelings and beliefs affect how you perceive the world, and far more dramatically than most people realize. Scientists have proven it experimentally.

The checkerboard that breaks your brain

I explore this science in depth in my new book, Beyond Belief. But you can get a visceral sense of it right now. Look at the classic checkerboard illusion below. Are squares A and B the same color?

If you’re like most people, square A looks obviously darker than square B. But they are exactly the same shade of gray. Your brain knows that chessboards alternate between light and dark squares and that shadows make things look darker. So your visual system automatically “corrects” what you see to match what you believe should be there. You aren’t seeing reality. You’re seeing your beliefs about reality.

Then there’s the famous “invisible gorilla” experiment. Participants were asked to count the number of ball passes in a video. While they counted, a person in a gorilla suit strolled through the middle of the frame. Most people missed the gorilla entirely. They were so focused on counting that a man-sized ape became invisible.

We see what we pay attention to, not what’s actually there.

The optical illusion that’s sabotaging your writing

Attention doesn’t just shape how fictional characters perceive a room, or what volunteers notice during a psychology experiment. It shapes how writers perceive themselves.

Just as your prior beliefs about shadows make it impossible to see the checkerboard accurately, prior beliefs about your ability can make it impossible to see yourself clearly. Tell yourself you lack talent or fixate on past rejections, and you quite literally start seeing problems that aren’t there. Constructive feedback sounds like harsh discouragement, and you abandon a project instead of improving it. You skim over a call for submissions, convinced you’re underqualified, when it could have been a career-changing opportunity.

Your self-doubt isn’t a personality trait. It’s an optical illusion.

And like all optical illusions, it loses its power once you understand how it works.

Why no one else can write what you can

Understanding the science of attention doesn’t just explain self-doubt — it cures one of the most common anxieties writers face.

Many writers worry they have nothing original to say. That their thoughts on any given subject will never measure up to those of more experienced or celebrated writers.

But think about what you now know. Every person sees the world through their own keyhole. Your brain is selecting a different 0.0005% of reality than mine is — filtered through different beliefs, different fears, different experiences, different knowledge. Whatever topic you’re examining will, quite literally, look different through your eyes than through anyone else’s. It will even look different to you at different stages of your life.

You are physically incapable of seeing the world the way any other writer does. That’s not a limitation. It’s your only real competitive advantage.

Learning to see like a writer

Once you internalize this, a practical skill emerges. Learning to see like a writer means learning to imagine how differently the world looks through different people’s eyes. What prior beliefs are shaping their experience? What stories are they telling themselves about the world and their place in it? What do they fear? What do they want? What does it feel like to inhabit their body?

Through questions like these, writers understand — and therefore describe — their characters and subjects more vividly. But the same skill also helps you value your own voice. Because once you start noticing how radically different the world looks through different keyholes, you realize your view is irreplaceable.

The view through everyone’s keyhole is unique. Yours included.

Prove it to yourself

Here’s a challenge:

Write a Medium story where you describe the same scene from the perspective of two very different people. How does what they pay attention to shape what they experience?

Alternatively, write about whether the way you’ve been looking at your own writing is really the truth. Or just the view from one keyhole?

If you decide to publish on Medium, use the topic tag “Beyond Belief” — I’d love to read your stories.

Your Self-Doubt Is a Literal Optical Illusion. Here’s the Proof. was originally published in Psychology of Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sarah continually questions if she has the creativity and dedication to succeed as a writer. Thoughts like “I don’t know if I am cut out for this,” or “My ideas just aren’t good enough,” swirl in her head. Fighting this self-doubt often makes writing difficult and tiring

Jennifer, on the other hand, recognizes that she still has a lot to learn but chooses to focus on her potential for growth. “If I keep plugging away,” she tells herself, “I can build the skills I need to make a name for myself as a writer.” Thoughts like this help her keep going when she encounters inevitable bad days.

Who is more likely to succeed?

Beliefs are your hidden operating system

When we observe others from the outside, it’s clear that what we believe has a huge impact on the course of our lives. Jennifer, we all recognize, is going to have an easier time sticking with writing than Sarah.

But when it comes to ourselves, we are often unaware of the beliefs running in the background of our minds, shaping decisions, filtering possibilities, and determining outcomes. Research, however, has demonstrated just how much our beliefs shape our perceptions.

In one study, for instance, scientists asked people to sample two wines. One, they were told, was a premium bottle, the other just an ordinary table wine. The tasters reported the expensive vintage was far superior. An fMRI scan of their brains even showed that the pleasure centers in their brain lit up more strongly when they sipped the premium wine. The kicker, of course, was that both wines were identical.

Similarly, scientists discovered that when golfers believe they are using a professional player’s putter, their swings improve. Branded medicines have been shown to work better than generic pills, even when they contain the same active ingredients. Each of these experiments underlines the same truth. Our beliefs shape not just our subjective experience of the world, but also how we physically sense and respond to it, whether we’re aware of these effects or not.

Like an operating system on your computer, your beliefs control what you can and cannot do. And like an operating system, they often go unnoticed. Unlike an operating system, however, your beliefs were not carefully designed by an engineer. Instead, they are installed mainly by accident. Our beliefs are largely determined by childhood experiences, offhand comments from authority figures, past failures you over-interpreted, and cultural messages you absorbed without questioning.

Software programs are usually routinely debugged. Not so with our beliefs. That means they can fall into two categories:

• Limiting beliefs are firmly held opinions that sap motivation to persist on an important goal, like Sarah’s.
• Liberating beliefs are firmly held opinions that sustain motivation to persist on an important goal, like Jennifer’s.

We can’t choose what facts to believe. (Gravity doesn’t care what you think. It will cause objects to accelerate at 9.8 meters per second regardless.) Nor should we abandon our firmly held values. But we can freely choose what operating system is running in our heads.

Why not choose liberating beliefs that help us accomplish our goals rather than limiting ones that make reaching them more difficult?

The most common limiting beliefs of writers

Choosing beliefs that help you weather difficulties and stay focused means you write more consistently and confidently. Over time, that will help you succeed in your writing goals, whatever they may be. But just because the benefits of adopting liberating beliefs are clear, it doesn’t make it easy to battle limiting ones.

Ask any author (including me), and they will tell you the same thing: every writer struggles with limiting beliefs to some degree. These problematic scripts often sound similar, whether you are just starting out or, like me, deep into your writing career and about to publish your third book. Based on my own experience and conversations with fellow writers, here are some of the most common:

• I’m not creative enough to be a writer
• I can’t show this to anyone — it’s not perfect yet
• Somebody smarter than me has already written about this
• I’m not famous, so no one will care what I have to say
• When something I write does well, it’s just luck
• I’m so busy. Next year/month/week will be a better time to start writing
• I can only write when inspiration strikes
• I’m too young (or old) to become a writer
• Self-promotion is gross! I shouldn’t need to promote my writing
• I’m not a real writer

The exact phrasing of your particular limiting beliefs may be slightly different. But if you write, you almost certainly will recognize some of these in one form or another.

Start to debug your inner operating system with a belief audit

How do you fight back against these types of limiting beliefs and install liberating ones instead? That’s the topic of my forthcoming book, Beyond Belief. It explores how to update your internal operating system in detail.

But you can get started on rewriting your internal architecture today. All you need is a couple of powerful tools that every writer already possesses: your attention and your words. Battling limiting beliefs begins with noticing and labelling them. Once you’re aware of your inner operating system, you’ll be better positioned to start building a new architecture to support your goals.

Begin by conducting a ‘belief audit’ in which you reflect on and write about the scripts running through your head and their impact on your day-to-day life as a writer. Here’s a prompt to get you started:

Write a Medium story about your limiting beliefs around becoming a writer. What real-life opportunities and joys have they cost you? What liberating beliefs might you be able to replace them with? If you decide to publish yours on Medium, use the topic tag “Beyond Belief” — I’d love to read your stories.

How to Eliminate Self-Doubt as a Writer: A Belief Audit was originally published in Psychology of Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Almost everyone quits right before things start working. And they don’t even realize it.

The story we tell about quitting is too simple. It usually comes packaged as a moral: winners never quit; quitters never win. Or its contrarian cousin: know when to walk away; sunk costs are for suckers.

Both slogans are tidy. Both are wrong in the ways that matter most.

Here’s what most people actually struggle with: quitting too soon.

I’ve spent two decades studying behavior. Why people stick with habits that hurt them. Why they abandon goals that could help them. And over and over, I see the same pattern: people mistake the signal of progress for the feeling of progress. When effort starts to feel heavy, boring, or discouraging, they assume the strategy isn’t working. They confuse discomfort with failure. So they quit. Often at the exact moment persistence would have paid off.

There’s a famous experiment that illustrates this. Researchers placed rats in a cylinder of water. With no apparent escape, the animals initially swam for a short time before giving up. But when the researchers intervened, briefly rescuing the rats and then placing them back into the water, the animals swam far longer on the second attempt. What changed wasn’t the water. It wasn’t the rats’ physical ability. It was their belief. The expectation of rescue altered how long they endured.

Hope didn’t make the task easier. Hope made endurance possible.

This finding has been repeated across psychology and neuroscience: expectations shape persistence. When people believe effort might lead somewhere, they tolerate discomfort longer. When they believe the outcome is futile, the same discomfort becomes unbearable.

That’s the uncomfortable truth about breakthroughs. They often arrive after the moment you feel like you’re done.

But here’s where the advice usually goes off the rails. From this insight, we’re told to “never quit.” To white-knuckle our way through misery. To persist indefinitely because success might be just around the corner.

That’s not wisdom. That’s masochism.

The real challenge is knowing when persistence is buying you something and when it’s just digging the hole deeper.

So here’s the rule I use, both in my own work and when advising others: default to persistence, but quit when persistence is no longer buying you progress.

That sounds reasonable. The hard part is knowing how to tell the difference.

First: Set a checkpoint before you start.

Here’s the problem with relying on your judgment in the moment: you can’t trust it. When things get hard, your brain generates a thousand reasons to quit. It tells you the strategy is broken. That you’re wasting time. That smarter people would have pivoted by now.

That voice isn’t wisdom. It’s discomfort looking for an exit.

The solution is to make the quitting decision before you’re in pain. Before you start any meaningful endeavor, set a checkpoint. A date in the future when you’ll evaluate whether to continue. This is different from a deadline to finish. It’s a predetermined point to reassess with a clear head.

The checkpoint protects you from two failure modes. It prevents you from quitting the moment things feel hard, because you’ve already committed to reaching the checkpoint. And it prevents you from persisting indefinitely on pure stubbornness, because you’ve built in a rational moment to step back and evaluate.

If you don’t set a checkpoint, you’ll give up as soon as it gets uncomfortable. You’ll outsource the most important decision of the project to the version of yourself that’s exhausted, discouraged, and looking for relief.

When the checkpoint arrives, ask yourself: Based on what I know now, would I start this project today? If yes, set another checkpoint and keep going. If no, you have permission to walk away. Either answer is valid. What matters is that you’re making the decision from a position of clarity, not desperation.

Second: Are you still learning?

If each attempt yields new information, about what works, what doesn’t, what variables matter, you’re making progress. Even if the outcome hasn’t arrived yet.

Learning is a leading indicator. In creative work, entrepreneurship, relationships, and personal change, visible results lag behind invisible understanding.

People quit too early because they expect linear returns on effort. One hour in, one unit of progress out. But most meaningful pursuits don’t work that way. They compound quietly. The learning curve stays flat until it suddenly isn’t.

If you’re still getting new data, don’t quit. You’re not stuck. You’re incubating.

Third: Would persistence make a difference?

Some plateaus are part of the process. Others are permanent.

When you’re exercising and progress stalls, that’s usually a signal to keep going. Fitness plateaus are normal. Your body adapts, results slow down, and then, if you sustain the effort, you break through to a new level. The plateau isn’t evidence that the strategy failed. It’s evidence that you’re in the middle.

But some situations won’t change no matter how long you persist. If you’re grinding away in a workplace surrounded by people who make you miserable, more persistence won’t fix it. The people aren’t going to leave because you outlasted them. That’s not a plateau. That’s a ceiling.

The question to ask: Is this the kind of problem that rewards sustained effort, or is this a fixed constraint outside my control?

If persistence can move the needle, stay the course. If the obstacle is structural and unchangeable, persistence just digs you deeper into a hole that was never going to become a tunnel.

The most dangerous quitting decisions aren’t made after careful analysis. They’re made in moments of emotional fatigue. Late at night, after a setback, when progress feels invisible and self-doubt fills in the gaps. In those moments, quitting feels like relief. And sometimes it is. But often it’s just the relief of lowering the bar.

If you quit because it feels hard, you’re outsourcing your decisions to discomfort. If you persist blindly because you’ve been told “never quit,” you’re outsourcing your decisions to slogans.

Neither is a strategy.

The better approach is quieter and less dramatic. Default to persistence when you’re learning and adapting. Use your checkpoint to evaluate with a clear head. Step away when the data, not your feelings, tell you the path forward is blocked.

Most people don’t fail because they lack talent or discipline. They fail because they misread the middle. The long, boring, discouraging stretch where nothing seems to happen, but everything is actually being decided.

That’s the moment when quitting feels most tempting.

And that’s precisely why it deserves a second look.

Order my new book, Beyond Belief, and I’ll send you my free 30-day Belief Transformation Journal, a daily guide for identifying and replacing the beliefs holding you back. Go to: NirAndFar.com/beyond-belief

How to Know if You Should Quit — Or if You’re One Step from a Breakthrough was originally published in Psychology of Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Your beliefs are tools, not truths.

In 2006, U.S. Team freestyle skier Michelle Roark zoomed down the slope at her first Olympics, conquering hilly terrain that not even a 4×4 could handle. At 31, she was already years older than the average Olympic freestyle skier (24 years old at the time). She had fought through massive obstacles for half her life to get there.

Roark was kicked out of her mother’s house when she was 15 and spent the next three years living in a tent in Winter Park, Colorado. She worked three jobs to support herself. At 16, she qualified for the Olympics but sustained a knee injury that kept her out of the 1994 Olympics. Two more serious knee injuries, each right before the Olympic Games in 1998 and 2002, prevented her from competing. At one point, a coach told her she was never going to make it to the Games.

But Roark knew what she wanted, believed she was capable of it, and refused to quit. She used the rehab time after her second knee surgery to pursue a degree in chemical engineering, which she eventually used to launch a business that she continues to run today. She competed in the 2010 Olympics at the age of 35.

Belief is one of the most powerful forces in our lives. Roark’s unflagging belief that she could be an Olympian brought that goal to fruition. In her mind, her Olympic future was inevitable.

But beliefs are not absolute truths. They are tools that exist on a spectrum between fact and faith. Facts are objective realities that remain true whether we believe in them or not. Faith is absolute conviction without evidence, a leap beyond what the senses or science can verify.

By understanding belief as something between fact and faith, we can, like Roark, use our beliefs strategically. We can choose and adjust them to serve us better and maybe achieve things no one else thought we could.

The Function of Belief

Our beliefs make up a personal working model of reality that we hold to be true — until better evidence or perspectives come along to change it. Beliefs help us navigate and make sense of the world, and they shape our reality.

In a world buzzing with infinite information and uncertainty, our brains need some way to simplify and create order. That’s where beliefs come in. Psychologists describe belief as a cognitive framework, or a mental model we use to interpret reality and make decisions.

Beliefs serve three key functions:

1. Beliefs simplify complexity. The world is too vast and chaotic to analyze from scratch every second. Beliefs act as mental shortcuts (aka heuristics) and frameworks (aka schemas) that help us make quick sense of a complex environment.
2. Beliefs create meaning. Human beings are natural storytellers. Studies on narrative coherence show that being able to fit our experiences into a coherent story is linked to better emotional health. Belief-driven narratives give us a framework that facts alone often can’t provide.
3. Beliefs guide action. They are the mental bridge between perception and behavior. When we face decisions or uncertainty, we lean on our beliefs to choose a course of action.

Beliefs are a kind of mental survival tool. But not all beliefs are created equal. Some help us thrive, while others hold us back. How can we tell the difference?

A Strategic Perspective on the Power of Belief

If beliefs are tools, then we should ask ourselves, Are we using the right tools for the job? What we believe in can either propel us forward or hold us back.

For example, whether you have a growth mindset, the belief that abilities are not fixed but can be developed, or a fixed mindset, the belief that abilities are innate and can’t be changed through effort, influences your life outcomes.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s research revealed how profoundly students’ beliefs about intelligence shaped their academic resilience — and ultimately their success. Students who believed intelligence could be developed through effort (growth mindset) approached setbacks completely differently than those who saw intelligence as fixed (fixed mindset).

When faced with academic challenges, growth mindset students thought “How can I improve?” and doubled down on learning. Fixed mindset students thought “Am I smart enough?” and often gave up when the work got hard. The growth mindset students saw failure as feedback; the fixed mindset students saw it as proof of their limitations. One group used setbacks as stepping stones, while the other treated them as stop signs.

Fixed mindset’s destructive cousins are fatalism — the belief that outcomes are predetermined — and learned helplessness, where people convince themselves their actions don’t matter. Someone trapped in this thinking might say, “Why bother trying? I’m just unlucky.” This belief doesn’t just sap motivation; it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that ensures the very failure it predicts.

Beliefs are tools, not truths. Ask yourself: Are your beliefs holding you back or pushing you forward? Choose your beliefs wisely.

To leverage beliefs effectively, practice pragmatic belief selection: intentionally choose beliefs that support your goals, well-being, and personal growth, even without definitive proof. Prioritize asking, “Is this belief helpful?” over “Is this belief true?” Consider the self-imposed labels adopted early in life, such as “I’m not a runner” or “I’m not book smart,” and explore the possibilities that might arise from letting go of these limiting beliefs.

This isn’t about fooling yourself; it’s about productive optimism. Effective beliefs are typically grounded in enough evidence to be plausible but also offer enough hope to motivate you beyond your current reality. History is full of achievements that were preceded by a bold belief — Michelle Roark’s among them. The belief comes first, and the outcome follows.

We have the power to choose our beliefs — and that means we can upgrade them when they’re no longer serving us. Start by asking yourself: What story am I telling myself about my limitations? Which of my beliefs energize me to take action, and which leave me feeling stuck? What would I attempt if I truly believed it was possible?

Your beliefs are your mental toolkit. Make sure you’re carrying the right tools for the life you want to build.

Nir Eyal is a former Lecturer at Stanford and is the bestselling author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

Indistractable won numerous honors and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Amazon.

BONUS: Nir offers a complimentary Indistractable workbook on his blog, NirAndFar.com.

Unlock Your Potential With The Power Of Belief was originally published in Psychology of Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Taming your overprotective brain

In the opening shot of the music video for “Throw Some Ass,” the camera scans a clinical white sign: “Sofi Tukker Center for Asses That Don’t Move Good.” Inside the mock hospital, a heart monitor flatlines — until the beat drops. Suddenly, the music video erupts into a NSFW riot of sensual movement. To fans, the song is a catchy ode to booty shaking, but to Sophie Hawley-Weld, one half of electronic music duo Sofi Tukker, it was a revelation of her journey through chronic pain and the power of the mind.

In 2018, Sophie and Tucker Halpern were in the middle of a whirlwind year — releasing their first (later Grammy-nominated) album, launching their own record label, and headlining tours — when Sophie began to have chronic migraines.

“We were full-time touring … there was so much happening,” Sophie explained on the podcast Like Mind, Like Body. “We were going out five nights a week. We were traveling way crazier than we are now … Because our career was so new, we said yes to every opportunity, and it put our bodies through a strain. I didn’t do the simple things as well, like take a walk and go get sunlight, all these things I’ve learned how to do since this [pain]. So my body was really confused.”

For the next year and a half, Sophie endured debilitating chronic migraines that forced her to retreat to dark rooms. “I was having to cancel shows, and nothing was working.”

Later, back pain created a destructive cycle when traditional medical approaches failed. She tried every drug and treatment she could find, but they didn’t work. Doctors recommended cortisone injections for her back, which only intensified her fear and worsened her condition — a phenomenon well-documented in pain studies.

As a performing artist, her inability to move without pain didn’t just affect her health; it jeopardized her thriving career.

Yet today, Sophie has been nearly pain-free for almost seven months. How did she get there?

Predicting Pain

Sophie says that her back pain started out of the blue. “Maybe there was an injury associated with it” — Sophie’s healing journey led her to discover that she’s hypermobile and has to be careful doing certain exercises — “but … I don’t think [the pain] was that intense to begin with. I was just like, ‘What is this weird thing? This is weird. Oh, this is weird weird. Weird weird weird weird!’

“The more I was focusing on the pain and trying to make the pain go away, and obsessing over the pain, the pain got worse,” she recalled, describing what pain specialists recognize as the “pain-fear-pain cycle.” The more she anticipated pain, the worse it became — a classic example of the brain’s predictions creating the very suffering they warn against.

Sophie’s story illustrates a profound truth: All pain is real, but not all pain is necessary.

Pain isn’t in your tissues, but in your brain. It’s meant to be the brain’s way of protecting the body from harm. When you touch a hot stove, for example, danger receptors in your finger send signals so you pull your hand away fast. But your brain creates the experience of pain. This distinction is crucial for understanding chronic pain, which often persists long after tissues have healed.

Research increasingly suggests many chronic pain conditions result from “neuroplastic pain,” pain maintained by the brain’s predictions rather than ongoing tissue injury. Pain psychologist Alan Gordon explains, “The brain learns to predict pain to protect you. But sometimes these predictions become overprotective, warning you of danger even when there’s no tissue damage occurring.”

In normal pain processing, our bodies follow a straightforward path:

Normal Pain Process:

This is how we learn not to touch hot stoves after being burned once. The process is adaptive and protective.

But for millions of chronic pain sufferers like Sophie, something different happens:

Neuroplastic Pain Loop:

Gordon explains it with stark clarity in his book The Way Out: “When we respond to pain with fear, it reinforces that it’s dangerous, and the pain persists. Fear is the fuel for the pain.”

In other words, chronic pain is a conditioned response. The brain connects a physical sensation with a neutral trigger, like when Sophie felt low-level, unfamiliar back pain, that leads to an incorrect association with pain (or worse pain).

This isn’t just theory. A Netherlands study found that people with low back pain who scored high on pain-related fear were much more likely to still be in pain six months later, regardless of how bad their pain was initially or how long they’d had it.

From Pain to Performance

Sophie’s pain set her on a journey to healing, and she went to a slew of doctors: an ophthalmologist, an otolaryngologist, a neurologist, an endocrinologist, and a nutritionist.

The turning point came when Sophie learned about pain psychology and Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT). She discovered that her sensitivity, a trait that made her perceptive as an artist, also predisposed her to pain. “Hypersensitivity is both a strength and weakness. It makes me perceptive but also prone to pain,” she reflected.

Her breakthrough came unexpectedly through movement and dance, something she had initially feared would worsen her pain. “We wrote a song called ‘Throw Some Ass,’ basically about the mind-body connection,” Sophie explains. “When you do something ridiculous with your body and feel free and happy, it can make the pain go away.”

The song’s central refrain — “Throw some ass, free the mind” — captures the essence of her discovery: physical movement as a pathway to mental liberation. This simple phrase encapsulates what took pain researchers decades to formalize in therapeutic protocols.

“You’ve created the chronic pain anthem!” the podcast interviewer exclaimed during their conversation.

The Science of Unlearning Pain

Sophie, and thousands of others, have used PRT to recover, which operates on a revolutionary premise: Chronic pain often persists not because of ongoing tissue damage but because the brain has learned to produce pain inappropriately. The therapy focuses on three key steps:

1. Notice without judgment: Observing pain mindfully, without fear
2. Send messages of safety to your brain: Consciously reminding yourself that the sensation isn’t dangerous
3. Observe physical sensations with lightness and curiosity: What Gordon calls “positive affect induction” or simply “making jokes”

Readers of my book Indistractable will notice that PRT is similar to the first three steps of my four-step framework for mastering internal triggers, or negative feelings that drive us to distraction (or, in this case, chronic pain):

1. Look for the discomfort that precedes the distraction, focusing on the internal trigger
2. Write down the trigger
3. Explore your sensations

Like PRT, my method helps people notice, recognize, and explore their negative feelings with curiosity rather than contempt. It teaches them to understand and deal with their discomfort rather than attempt to escape it.

In The Way Out, Gordon describes a session with a patient named Janet who practiced these techniques. She reported, “It’s not pulsing anymore. It’s steadier. And still more spread out. It hurts less than before.”

Gordon’s response reveals the counterintuitive nature of the approach: “That’s great, but just remember, that’s not our goal. Whatever happens to the pain happens. You’re just watching and feeling with lightness and curiosity. This reinforces to your brain that the sensation is safe.”

The Wisdom of Pain

When asked about her journey, Sophie offers a perspective that surprises most chronic pain sufferers: “I’m genuinely grateful for the journey despite its challenges.” Rather than viewing her pain as something to merely overcome, she came to see it as a profound teacher — one that revealed parts of herself she might never have discovered otherwise.

“I think that’s the gift of migraines and of chronic pain, is that you have to look at every part of your life and try to improve every single part of your life,” she said. The pain forced her to make space in her highly stimulating and hectic life for her health.

This represents a profound shift from viewing pain as an enemy to recognizing it as information. The very hypersensitivity that made her vulnerable to pain also heightened her artistic perception, becoming both her challenge and her superpower.

“I’m just learning what Sophie needs and what Sophie wants,” she said. “I can be kind of bendable … Someone can be like, ‘I want eggs,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Eggs sound pretty good, let’s do that.’ Figuring out what I need and want and like has been a process that I’m actively in now … and probably will be forever.”

The Path Forward

The science of neuroplastic pain offers a revolutionary perspective: For millions suffering from chronic pain, the problem isn’t damaged tissue but a brain caught in a fear-pain cycle. When we respond to pain with fear, we unintentionally tell our brains the sensation is dangerous, perpetuating the very pain we’re trying to escape.

But when we approach pain with curiosity instead of fear, the brain can unlearn what it has mistakenly learned. The pain that once seemed like a life sentence can become the doorway to a more authentic, connected way of living.

Pain isn’t always caused by damage — it’s often a brain habit we can unlearn. Dance, laugh, and retrain your brain.

When asked what advice she had for other chronic pain sufferers, Sophie said, “I always think about the simple metaphor, ‘Taking 10 steps forward and nine steps back’ and knowing it’s still a step forward. When I was in the middle of pain, I would constantly feel like, ‘I just took five steps back’ and be like ‘What, why [is this happening]?!’ Know that you’re still taking steps forward even if it doesn’t feel like it. You’re gathering information about what works for you, and it’s just going to take some time.”

Healing isn’t always found with a sterile white coat and yet another prescription. Sometimes the best way to quiet an overprotective brain is to do something ridiculous, joyful, and a little defiant. So, the next time your brain tells you not to move a muscle, don’t. Throw some ass instead.

Nir Eyal is a former Lecturer at Stanford and is the bestselling author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

Indistractable won numerous honors and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Amazon.

BONUS: Nir offers a complimentary Indistractable workbook on his blog, NirAndFar.com.

The Pain Paradox: How Fear of Pain Creates More Pain was originally published in Psychology of Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.