Recommendations of the week:
Nir Eyal’s new book, Beyond Belief, is out today. Eyal is one of my favorite authors, and, as you’ll read below, Beyond Belief is a fascinating guide to overcoming our limits by changing our beliefs. Nir’s giving out a ton of awesome bonus content—like an entire bonus workbook and workshops—if you buy it this week. (FYI, I’m not getting paid to plug this.)
I’m giving a virtual talk for my friends at Codeword on the 3 Levels of Storytelling Innovation in the AI Age on Thursday, March 19, at 4 PM. Join us—this is a brand new talk that I haven’t yet previewed in the newsletter. Register here.
For a limited time, you can still get a personalized, signed copy of my #1 New Release Super Skill: Why Storytelling Is the Superpower of the AI Age when you upgrade to an annual subscription (less than $1/week). Plus a new course, exclusive content, dope socks, and more. You’ll support my work as an independent writer, and keep my 3-year-old son stocked in the fancy Once Upon a Farm pouches he loves!
Imagine having a plate removed from your leg... without a single painkiller
This isn’t a story from World War I. It’s a tale from 2024.
A couple of years ago, a 55-year-old Swiss commodities trader named Daniel Gisler checked into the hospital for an unusual procedure.
Two years earlier, he’d broken his shin and calf bone in a freak accident; surgeons had stabilized it with a plate and screws, but they dug into his leg anytime he wore boots. He wanted the metal out of his leg. And he wanted to undergo surgery without any anesthesia or painkillers.
Because Sweden is the land where all your healthcare dreams come true, the doctors obliged. As Gisler prepared for the surgery, he put himself into a trance-like state by listening to a soothing mantra.
Two hours later, he walked out of the hospital with a plate-free leg and a clear head. He reported that he barely felt any pain during the entire operation.
When Nir Eyal—the best-selling author of Hooked and Indistractable—told this story to Shane Snow and me on our podcast, The Art of the Zag, my jaw dropped to the floor. “Bullsh*t,” we exclaimed in unison. But the story was true.
Gisler had used a technique called hypnosedation to transport himself into an ultra-calm state. He was conscious of everything that was happening, but only felt pain three times during the 40-minute procedure.
Watch the 60-second teaser of our conversation below.
Listen to Nir’s fascinating interview above or on your favorite podcast platform:
Watch it on YouTube and analyze our body language. (Are they in love?!)
The story of Gisler’s anesthesia-free surgery is from Nir’s new book: Beyond Belief—which reveals the science of belief and how most of our limits aren’t physical. They’re psychological.
It’s sure to become another top best-seller, and I wanted to understand something crucial: How does Nir come up with the ideas for his best-selling books?
Eyal’s process—from Hooked to Indistractable to his new book—is driven by one question
That simple question: What do I want to know?
“I write not because of what I know,” he told us. “I write because of what I want to know.”
It’s a simple mindset that drives the curiosity of the most accomplished narrative non-fiction writers—from Eyal to Malcolm Gladwell to Daniel Pink—and allows them to constantly reinvent themselves as writers.
Just take Eyal’s strange and winding journey.
In the early 2010s, Eyal wanted to understand how Silicon Valley giants created addictive products and share that knowledge with the masses. That led him to write Hooked, which became the bible for founders everywhere who wanted to create sticky products and made Nir one of the most sought-after keynote speakers in the world.
“I write not because of what I know. I write because of what I want to know.”
After writing Hooked, he found himself paying more attention to his phone than to his daughter. He wanted to understand the science of attention and how to break the hold of addictive technology. And so he began studying the science of attention and wrote Indistractable—the best-selling guide to reclaiming your focus.
Eyal got a ton of flak for what seemed like a contradiction: He wrote the tech-addiction playbook, and then he wrote the cure. But it’s a move that I admire. As writers and storytellers and business leaders, we’re under constant pressure to stay in our lane. To keep pushing the same idea or take. But Eyal was brave enough to break out of it by following that simple question: What do I want to understand?
And that led Eyal to his latest zag: Beyond Belief.Eyal got a ton of flak for what seemed like a contradiction: He wrote the tech-addiction playbook, and then he wrote the cure. But it’s a move that I admire. As writers and storytellers and business leaders, we’re under constant pressure to stay in our lane. To keep pushing the same idea or take. But Eyal was brave enough to break out of it by following that simple question: What do I want to understand?
And that led Eyal to his latest zag: Beyond Belief.
How the most skeptical writer I know wrote a book about belief
When I heard Eyal was writing a book about belief, I was shocked. After all, he’s the antithesis of a woo-woo dude—rigorous in his research, deeply skeptical, science-pilled to the gills. But then he told me the story of why he wrote the book.
After writing Indistractable, Eyal realized how hard it was for readers to apply his advice, even though he’d given them the playbook. They knew the behavior. They knew the benefits. But something was missing. It haunted him. He needed to understand why all the great advice we get rarely sticks.
That bridge between behavior and benefit, Eyal realized, was belief—the conviction that their behavior will actually lead to the benefit, and that they’re capable of that behavior.
The surprising science of belief
In our podcast interview—and in the book—Nir revealed the strange and surprising science behind belief:
Why talk therapy fails, and how the “labels” we put on ourselves and others often hold us back.
Why placebos are so effective for the biggest afflictions of our age (IBS, chronic pain, and more).
Why changing the story we change ourselves can literally change our abilities and limits.
It’s a fantastic book, filled with compelling science and stories that will make you rethink the most important narrative in your life: The story you tell yourself about what’s possible.
Watch our interview with Nir and check out Beyond Belief. Then ask yourself Nir’s magic storytelling question: What do you want to understand?
Tell great stories!
-Joe
Listen to Nir’s fascinating interview above or on your favorite podcast platform:
If you liked this post, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to get the storytelling bundle or checking out my new book Super Skill: Why Storytelling Is the Superpower of the AI Age.
