Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Surviving Lies, Rumors, and Digital Hate: Dan Ariely’s Guide to Thriving Online

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Dan Ariely didn’t just accept the hand life dealt him. He turned it into something powerful. After a traumatic burn accident that scarred 70% of his body, he struggled to find his place in the world. This journey led him to study human psychology and behavior, focusing on how people cope with pain and trauma. Later, when false rumors spread about him on social media, Dan chose to understand and empathize with the “misbelievers.” In this episode, Dan joins Ilana to share his journey from personal trauma to professional triumph, exploring how lies, rumors, and "misbelief" take root and affect lives, and what he’s learned by going through it all firsthand. Dan Ariely is a three-time New York Times bestselling author and Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University. His personal experience as a burn survivor has influenced his approach to understanding human behavior. His latest book, Misbelief, explores how false beliefs form and how to challenge them. In this episode, Ilana and Dan will discuss: (00:00) Introduction  (00:28) The Story Behind the Iconic Half Beard (04:46) Turning Personal Pain into Professional Purpose (09:07) From Burn Victim to Social Scientist (14:49) Confronting Death Threats and Conspiracy Theorists (17:54) How Stress Fuels Misbelief (25:05) How Online Hate Turns to Moral Outrage (31:50) Navigating Trust, Risk, and Failure in Leadership  (37:51) How Technology Is Making Us Worse (41:07) Dan’s 45-Minute Work Ritual for Better Productivity (43:43) Life Lessons on Finding Your True Strengths Dan Ariely is a three-time New York Times bestselling author and Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University. Known for his research on irrational behavior and decision-making, he’s advised companies like Google, Apple, and governments worldwide. His books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, have been translated into 30+ languages, and his work inspired NBC’s The Irrational. As a burn survivor, Dan’s personal experience has influenced his approach to understanding human behavior. His latest book, Misbelief, explores how false beliefs form and how to challenge them. Connect with Dan: Dan’s Website: https://danariely.com  Dan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danariely  Resources Mentioned: Dan’s Book, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things: https://www.amazon.com/Misbelief-Rational-People-Believe-Irrational/dp/0063280426  Dan’s Book, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone--Especially Ourselves: https://www.amazon.com/Honest-Truth-About-Dishonesty-Everyone-Especially/dp/0062183613  NBC Show: The Irrational: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16288838/  Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW way for professionals to Advance Their Careers & Make 5-6 figures of EXTRA INCOME in Record Time. Check out our free training today at leapacademy.com/training

The recipe for a good life has to involve lots of progress and lots of progress means lots of scars. Dan Ariely, he's one of the most well-known behavioral economists of our time. He's also a professor in psychology and behavior economics at Duke and author of many books, including bestsellers like The Honest Truth about dishonesty. And we're also going to talk about your new book Misbelief which actually give me chills. Many years ago I was burned in a bad accident. 70% of my body was burned. I was in hospital for about three years. I get a simple email from somebody and

she sent me a list of links. I'll just describe to you one video. It says I was burned, 70% of my body, all of this correct? And then the video goes on to say that this is why I started hating healthy people and that's why I joined Bill Gates the cabal the illuminati to try and kill as many healthy people as possible I started getting death threats it became very tough I feel hate in the digital world became really really easy why do people become villains what happened is that people start with... Dan Ariely, he's one of the most well-known behavioral economists of our time.

But I saw Dan on stage about a decade ago, and I was mesmerized by his wisdom and how we make decisions. He's also a professor in psychology and behavior economics at Duke and author of many books, including bestsellers like The Honest Truth about dishonesty. And we're also going to talk about your new book, Misbelief, which actually gives me chills. But Dan, especially for those who are watching us on video, but also for those on a podcast,

you have to start with a little bit, why Half a Beard? Half a beard is a good way to think about my life, my history, and also on behavioral economics. So here's the story. I have half a beard. not the only thing i have a beard my right cheek doesn't have hair my left cheek does it is also some white there. And this has to be a few reasons the first one is that i was badly burnt many years ago i was a burned in a bad accident seventy percent of my body was burned i was in hospital for about three years. Terrible tragedy very difficult got me to think about lots of things in life. What is the consequence i don't have hair on the right side of my face is all scar tissue so hair doesn't grow on this side. What of course i could change if i shave that would have no hair on both sides.

Of course i could shave and if i shaved i would have no hair on both sides. For many years indeed i shaved in a few years ago i went on a month long hike and at the end of this month long hike i came out with half a beard. And it was the first time i looked at myself in the mirror and i didn't like how i look it's a very strange look strange look at the strange for me to look at and I thought to myself that I'll certainly shave this half a beard but I'll keep it for a few more weeks just as a memory of the hike. So I kept it for a few weeks and then I posted a few comments on social networks and so on and to my surprise a few people reached out to me thanking me for the half a beard. Now why were they thanking me for the half a beard? These were people who were struggling with their own injuries. They were feeling that they were hiding their own injuries and that now that might give them some energy to try something different. So for example, there was a woman in her 50s who told me that when she was 17 she had a car accident, her leg was injured and she never wore a dress or a skirt since and she's

going to try. So that gave me power to say, okay, I'll continue with this half a beard. But then the other thing that happened was about four months down the line, I felt more comfortable with my scars. Now I got injured when I was about 18, it was many years ago. And all of a sudden now, four months into this half a beard, I feel better about my scars. I don't feel that they are me and my injury, I feel that I'm together. It's part of the story of my life. And I think to myself, what's happening?

Why now? And here is what happened. Imagine somebody like me wakes up. When I wake up, my right cheek is smooth, no hair. The left cheek has stubble, little black dots. And the act of shaving is also an act of hiding. Exactly the thing that people told me that they wanted to stop doing. I start the day more non-symmetrical and after shaving it's less apparent. Now here's the thing about this i'm a social scientist i should know those things but of course i didn't. In fact for many years i did the thing that wasn't good for me i shaved and letting go of that was an incredible act of self acceptance and i think that what happened there was that I basically stopped hiding, started accepting

myself to a higher degree, and it had lots of implications in all kinds of ways. And if I think about what it means in social science terms, where are our half beards? And if you asked me, you know, a few years ago, how would life look like with half a beard, I would be very able to tell you how day one would look like people would ask questions Kid would laugh people would point But if you ask me how would that lead to self-acceptance or to anything down the road? I would not be good at it And it's true for lots of things and some of the things we'll talk about today with our intuitions are about short-term activities

And our long-term intuitions are about short term activities, and our long term intuitions about processes are not that good. So somebody thinks about switching jobs, we might have good intuitions about day one, we might not have intuition about month four, and so on. So anyway, that's my happy beard and my introduction. That's incredible story. I knew it, but I love hearing it again and again. So tell me, Dan, I do want to go back in time, though, because you suffered for three years an incredible injury. You talk about it with some details,

and I'm sure it's not a fraction of what you went through. But that somehow built you. That injury actually became your gift. Can you talk a little bit about that? There's an expression in the pain research when they call people pain people. And the idea that at certain level of pain, the pain becomes so much that there's really nothing beyond the pain. And in the initial period of the injury, there's really wasn't more.

I can't take credit for anything. I wasn't planning, I wasn't thinking. I was just focusing on a daily pain, trying to get over it. I think managing quite well with the daily pain, trying to come up with my own strategies to dealing with pain and so on. But the beginning was just pain. And in some strange way, maybe year two, when I was trying to be a bit better, was psychologically

more difficult. This is when I all of a sudden had time. And I asked myself questions like, where would I find my place in society where will i find my place professionally. Will society accept me will i have a romantic life with all of these cars when will the pain go away and then there was another interesting period interesting in the difficult sense. interesting in a difficult sense. Burns are really interesting because all of us had burns and mostly they go away. But if you look at my hand, for example, these are burns that don't go away. This is all transplanted skin. The fingers are deformed, the joints were burned.

This doesn't go away. And I had lots of questions about where will this leave me and how will I manage my life? What do you do with that? And in the beginning was not easy. I remember actually the people in the hospital brought somebody to talk to me that had a bad injury and then became a car mechanic. So even though his fingers were not so good, he actually managed to be a car mechanic. And I think it was a tremendous feat for him to be a car mechanic. But I looked at it and said, that's what they expect me to be.

What will happen to me? What skills will I have and not have and so on. So there was a lot of wondering about what would life be with somebody with very substantial injuries. And you're about 1920 at this time when you're having all these debates, right? I mean, you're young. Yeah. The whole future is in front of you.

The whole future is ahead of me and I'm also mostly in bed. So I'm thinking about those things, but I'm mostly in bed. And I actually don't feel very much part of human society. I don't know if you know this, but I helped write a TV show loosely based on my life. The TV show is called The Irrational and we're filming now the second season. In the writers' room they asked me what have I learned. You know, injuries are terrible, but they also asked me what did I gain from this experience. And one of the very dual elements that is both good and bad is that I didn't feel human. My friends were doing regular human things and I was not doing any of those.

I wasn't dating and I wasn't going to the movies and I wasn't doing anything. Even in the beginning I wasn't eating, I was fed by a tube for a very long time. But I think this distance also was really helpful for me as a social scientist. I think that now I'm a little bit more objective. I might not feel as connected in some ways to the human experience, but I feel a bit more observant and I think some of it has been very good for me in terms of my ability to sit back and try and observe our behaviors.

So this is where you started just observing, understanding, but then you made this your life mission, I guess, to understand and take it to a whole different level. How did that become your profession? The first thing that started was that I really hated the bandage removal process. So imagine that you are mostly burned. It means that the flesh is exposed, there's no skin. Bandages have to come on because you have to prevent infections

and once a day they have to come off, the skin has to be scrubbed and new bandages have to come again. Very, very painful process. Morphine was helpful but certainly not eliminating all the pain, excruciating and especially when the flesh is bleeding bleeding bandages adhere. Anyway, I was very much occupied with how do we make this process not as bad? And it has to be done. It's not an avoidable process, but can it be done in a better way?

That was the thing that troubled me. And these kinds of questions have led the rest of my career. kind of questions have led the rest of my career. I'm a social scientist, but really I'm concerned with problems that I think social science can help improve. My motivation is to say, let's analyze things that I think people are not doing so well right now, and let's think if we can do them better. Let's study them, understand them, and see if we can improve how things are done. So it started with this experience with bandages, where I started just arguing with the nurses and doctors,

and later on I did some experiments. I found out that they were indeed wrong. I started a campaign to change how things were done in hospital, had some success, and then went from there to continue with this path. First of all, it makes sense because the level of questions dictate the level of problems and focus and wisdom that you're going to start gaining. Yeah, by the way, I think that personal passion for me is crucial. So a few years ago, I hired a guy in my research lab to work on health related problems.

And he came first day in the lab, and we talked about what he's going to do and the project and so on. And then I asked him about him, his life, his childhood, his hobbies, where he is. And it turns out that his parents had to declare bankruptcy when he was in high school, and his whole growing up experience came from a family that was doing well, so a family in bankruptcy, to try and fight with all the bureaucracy and the complexity that comes with it. And we talked a lot about this.

And when we finished, I said to him, this looks like you're really passionate about understanding what's happening during bankruptcy, how you can prevent it, how you can help people When we finished, I said to him, this looks like you're really passionate about understanding what's happening during bankruptcy, how you can prevent it, how you can help people deal better with it. He said, yes. And I said, so why did you want to study healthcare? He said, this is what you offered. I said, okay, I don't think you should study healthcare.

I think you should study these kind of problems because if that's what motivates you, that's what you should be doing. We switched him, we found a new job for him, we started a new project. But I think at the end, every project we do is going to take longer, going to be more complex, going to have ups and downs plus downs.

To sustain the motivation, we need something that we're interested in in general, that we're truly excited about. And I think we need to spend time figuring those things out and finding those projects. And I think, but somehow, and we'll talk about this because you're able from really hard moments to actually find your passion and swerve it towards analyzing and actually understanding. So to me, that is your zone of genius. I think it was really interesting for the listeners to understand, sometimes from your hardest moments will actually come the biggest breakthroughs. I think of hardest moment as a magnifying glass, or as a telescope, or something that

allows you to understand more of the nuances. I'll give an example. Because of my injury and because I write so much about this, I get lots of people with injuries writing me. And there was this one kid who wrote me, also got very badly burned. So this is many years after I got out of hospital, I visit him in hospital, and the nurse comes in and she said,

today we're going to have a new treatment. And she says the name of the treatment and I remembered what it was and it didn't bring up good memories. And the kid says, can we do it tomorrow? And the nurse says no. And the kid said, can we do it only on my legs and not on my upper body? The nurse said no. And she said, it could do it in a

few hours and not now. And she says no. And as this negotiation happens, I remember all my negotiations. And I remember the feeling of helplessness. One of the things that happened in the hospital, of course, is pain. But another thing is helplessness. And I remember all the helplessness and I just couldn't stand. I was standing next to him in bed. The nurse was standing on the bottom of his bed and talking. And I couldn't stand up. I just had to sit and put my head between my knees and kind of just breathe a little bit.

And only then I realized the role of helplessness. Up to that point, I thought a lot about pain. I didn't think about helplessness. From that point on, I realized the role of helplessness and how tough it was. So I think the moment we get into a phenomena and we get dive deeper and deeper into it, we learn more and more about it. You've been author of many books, top keynotes, you've been on Google talks and Brazilian podcasts, right?

But at some point during COVID, something flipped and you started going into some very weird things. Can you share a little bit? When I read this, I have to say in your book, Misbelief, it's heart wrenching. I literally had tears in my eyes. Can you share a little bit what happened? That was a very, very, very tough, very tough period.

So here I was in COVID. I'm feeling at the best period of my life. Why? Because there's this crazy thing going on in the world. And all of a sudden, people ask for social science. So I do all kinds of things. People ask about remote work and people ask about remote studying and what do you do with domestic violence

and how do you get people to wear a mask and lots and lots of things. And I am feeling this unbelievable height of my career. And all of this is wonderful. And all of a sudden, about four months into it, I get a simple email from somebody and somebody says, Dan, what happened to you? What's wrong with you?

How did you become that person? And I answer very quickly, what kind of person? This was a person I helped at some point. I volunteered time to help her. I thought this was a good thing. And she sent me a list of links and this list of links it's like opening a curtain and realizing that the world has a very very different idea about me something that i had no idea not understanding and i'll just describe to you one video

one video shows me in hospital burns the custom pictures it says i was burned early seventy percent of my body almost three years all of this correct. End the video goes on to say that this is why i started hating healthy people. And that's why i joined bill gates the cabal the illuminati to try and kill as many healthy people as possible, first with the plandemic and then with the vaccine when there would be one. And there were many links like that. There was one video of two women sitting like in a living room setting, complaining about me, discussing my downsides.

I started getting death threats. It became very tough. The last death threat came just a few months ago. So it was first two years, it maybe was once a day, now it's slowed down, but still. And my first reaction was to talk to those people. And I said, if they only knew, if they only knew that I wake up in the morning and all I try is to help, that's the only thing that drives me, is try to help as many people as possible. I might make some mistakes from time to time, but my only motivation is to help. That's the only thing that drives me is trying to help as many people as possible. I might make some mistakes from time to time, but my only motivation is

to help. But talking to those people only got things worse. It was a very tough month. I learned a lot, right? We said you dive into something, you learned a lot. So for example, in psychology there's a notion of scarcity mindset. And scarcity mindset is usually thought of for people who are very low scarcity mindset. And scarcity mindset is usually thought of for people who are very low income. And the idea is that if you're concerned with will I have money for dinner? Will I have money to pay bills? Some of your IQ is dedicated to those tasks and your active IQ dedicated to other things goes down. So people perform worse on IQ test.

It's not as if they have worse IQ, it's just as some of their mind is occupied. For me, part of it was, what are they talking about me now? When the next death threat and so on. I felt I had less IQ, it was just incredible. I had a very, very tough month trying to argue, I joined discussions group and Zooms and Telegram and WhatsApp and all kinds of crazy sites and at the end of the month

I decided to give up I said I'm not going to convince anybody that I'm not evil I tried for a month I failed I'm a slow learner but I learned and I decided to turn it into a learning process and I said okay I am very close to this phenomena very few people in the world have been attacked this brutally and very few people are social scientists who've been attacked this brutally I'm a unique position to both care a lot and try and understand this and then I spent two very very complex difficult years for example there was one guy these people thought that there will be nierenberg 2.0 trials in which the people who committed crimes against

humanity like me will be sentenced for their trial and there was one guy who said he wanted to be my executioner and i talked to him i Okay, I'm going to forget the executionary for now. Help me understand. So I try to understand them. By the way, I gave chat GPT my book. And I said, Please summarize it in one word. And the word was empathy. And I kind of liked that. At the end of the day, it's a very sad story about our time. but I think I ended up having a lot of empathy for my attackers. And I can't still understand that, I have to say, even though I read the book. And I think one of the things that you explained so well there is how this can happen almost

to everybody, how they can move from something nudged them a little bit to the wrong way, and suddenly you're going off to the dark holes of the internet and beyond. We're seeing a lot of people losing their job, they can barely pay the bill, they run into endless rejections. We can see how it's taking them to really dark places. What do you feel they should do? Like what helped you wake up in the morning and say, I didn't sleep well at night, but I'm gonna try again? So first of all, I think your conclusion

that we're all susceptible is very important, because it's very interesting how it's them versus us. We don't need to worry because we're good people and it's those people and they need to worry. But of course it's not them versus us, it's humanity. And we have a machine that is creating stress and information and so on and it's leading us down a path toward misbelief. And the first thing that I learned was causing people to question the current narrative and to go for an alternative one is stress. I don't mean the stress of saying gee i have too much email i don't know how i'll finish.

I mean the stressing i don't understand the world why am i sick why did i lose my job my parents told me i'll do better than they do. I lose my job. My parents told me I'll do better than they do. Why is my town losing? I mean, just think about it. What are the Houthis doing attacking American merchantships around the world? What is Iran exactly doing? And my students, right, they say things like,

tell me that whatever profession I'm learning now will still be around in three years? So I'm not so sure. So we're dealing with a period of very high stress and very low resilience. learning now will still be around in three years? So I'm not so sure. So we're dealing with a period of very high stress and very low resilience. We don't have the same number of good friends. We don't spend enough time with extended family. At work we don't have friends anymore.

We have work friends. Economic inequality is decreasing, resilience. So we're dealing in a very tough period and look the stress in the world is the stress in the world the hooties are the hooties until we get rid of that problem it's not something but the thing that we need to deal with is resilience i have to say that part of my attempt to try and understand this problem is my attempt to control it. If you're a victim, which I was, for the first month I was just a victim.

I was just accused, accused, accused, accused. And by starting to study it, I had some of my own autonomy, some agency. I said, okay, now I'm studying you. You're the one who's been attacking me. You want to be my executionary? Fine. Help me understand how you got to these beliefs. So taking control back to you. Yeah. I needed to understand what was going on. In some sense, what you're asking, and

it's very true, in some sense, I was doing what they were doing. So the misbelievers, as I call them, were living in a very, very stressful time and they were looking for an explanation. And they found Bill Gates and the cabal were doing kind of things. Me, I was also in a very stressful period. I was also looking for an explanation, but the explanation I was looking for is explanation about the interaction of human nature and technology. I think it's a healthier journey. And I looked at it more as a scientist, but I think, yes, the part of getting control, explaining the story, understanding what is going on, these were very important parts of the story. First of all, it's really great to be boxed together with Bill Gates in the same... Right? To me, that's a huge compliment. But I hear you. It's tough, you know.

There's a good chance that some of them are still after me. There's a good chance that even this podcast, some people would write some really terrible things. Well, we'll bash them back because I'm a big fan and I think that's all BS. And I know how you've been for decades trying to just help explain humanity, help people date better, help people make more money. You've been trying to help humanity for decades. How can they even take you there? Thank you so much for saying this.

I will say that the videos that people send me burning my books, so death threats are very tough. Death threats are tougher than I would have imagined. When people write a death threat, it feels worse than I would have imagined. But also, burning books is very tough as well. Right? It hurts. And it also means that these are people that know something about me because they read my book. So it's extra tough. It's not a stranger just writing.

This is people who read the book and burning it, it's very tough. I feel hate in the digital world became really, really easy. I personally got rape threats to myself and my daughter. By the way, the minute they involved my daughter, I went berserk. You want to threat me, I'm okay, I can take it. You're involving my daughter in any way. I went through the roof, Dan. I could not sleep at night.

I was going nuts. I feel it became too easy to just be an anonymous or not even anonymous and just throw things. How do you explain it? Why do people become villains? One of the things we need to understand is that we always tell ourselves, oh, this is online behavior.

It just stays online. No, the emotions that people have of real hate are real. Yes, it's harder to execute in real world than to execute threats, but I had people shouting at me in the street as well. But what happened is that people start hating, and then they go into what is called moral outrage. And what they try to do is they try to feel that it's not just that they dislike you, it's that your existence in the world offends them. And now you've transitioned to a very different way.

If you look at, for example, how many people are adding pedophilia to the accusations of the Illuminati and so on. Why is that? It's because they're trying to add a crime that we would never forgive people for. So if they say, oh, these people are terrible, they wanted to make too much money, they changed something, you could forgive people for that. But what they're trying to do is they're trying to paint people in a way that they will be unforgivable and once people say it a few times and one needs to become a currency it just continues from there and you know I look a little strange with my half a beard and so on

but there was a long period where I felt that I was a social currency that somebody wanted to elevate their position within the community of misbelievers, and they would make something new about me with a picture, and there's lots on the internet to choose from, and they would get lots of social credit for it. But of course, once they say something, people start believing it. I gave a talk, by the way, somewhere a few weeks weeks ago and there were flyers around that place with the barcode that you could scan to take to all kinds of terrible information about me.

It's a cycle. So you ask, what happens? What happens is that people start with a rumor, it becomes stronger and stronger, it becomes a currency, they develop emotions, it becomes an identity issue, and then they continue. And let me say one thing about identity. There's a term called Shibolet. And Shibolet came from a war between two tribes in Israel many years ago. And at the end of the war, they settled on two sides of the river. And when they walked around, they wanted to know whether the people that they meet are from their tribe or from the

other tribe. And it just so happened that these two tribes pronounced the name of the plant, she-ballet, slightly differently. One of them said she-ballet and one of them said she-ballet. So imagine we walk, I see you, I show you the plant, I say, hey you, how do you call this? If you say it the way I say it, we're brothers, we're from the same tribe, if you say it the way the other people are saying it, I try to chase you away. And we now use this term, shibbolit, is a discussion that is not about the facts, but it's about identity. Now take that lens and say a discussion is not about the facts but is about identity and think about the political discourse

in the world or in the US. How much of our political discourse is not really about the facts? It's about Chewbacca. It's about this idea of you might think that I'm saying this, but I'm actually thinking I'm saying something about identity to other people. If we think about example, Fox News.

So in the last election, presidential election, Fox News said that Trump won the election and they stole the election from and they lost almost a billion dollars for the statement. But I think what they meant to say is, look what strong Trumpists we are. Now because we know from their communication, they didn't believe that Trump won the election, but what they wanted to say is they want to say, look like only people who are really strong believer of Trumps will say something this extreme. Now I'm not justifying what they said, but I'm saying if you look at it through that lens, it's much more understandable.

Now it had some all kinds of downside effects because people thought they meant it literally, but they actually meant it to say, look what Trump supporters we are. And these discussions on Shibboleth are very confusing because if you take it at face value, you're very confused. And if you repeat something, it might start with Shibboleth are very confusing. Because if you take it at face value, you're very confused. And if you repeat something, it might start with shibboleth, but then become something that people accept as truth, and then go down the line as well. Is it because we're impatient

and we jump to conclusions too fast? So we want a simple version of the world. This goes back to the stress. There's this test that I love. You show people a piece of paper version of the world. This goes back to the stress. There's this test that I love. You show people a piece of paper with black and white dots organized in a random way. You say, do you see a figure? Yes or no? There's another one. Do you see a figure? And I show you 50 of those. And people see a few figures, not that many. What happens when stress goes

up? As stress goes up, people see more figures. Now why is that? Imagine you're an animal like many years in the past or a revolutionary past you're an animal in the savanna and you think there's a tiger. Now every movement of a leaf you want to interpret it as if it's a tiger. When we are stressed our system goes into hyperdrive to interpret everything as if it's a pattern. In regular life you say there's all kinds of random things but when you stress you try very hard to see patterns. So we are very stressed. We are very stressed, we're concerned, we're not sure and we are looking for patterns. We don't

have the comfort to basically say you know know what, let me hold judgment. I'm not yet sure what is really going on. We really want answers. And by the way, a lot of these misbeliefs come because they give quick answers that calm people down. They also tell them it's not their fault. It's the villain's fault. It makes them feel superior.

So all of those things are very, very helpful. It's always easier to look at somebody else their fault. It's the villain's fault. And it makes them feel superior. So all of those things are very, very helpful. It's always easier to look at somebody else's fault. I mean, that's for sure. But one of the things that I hear for a lot of people are listening to this podcast, one of the things that will scare them a little bit is they're going to say, well, if I build my brand or if I go to these executive level roles, I'm more susceptible to be in the forefront, to suddenly find myself in these situations and I need to create thick skin or I need to learn how to be more resilient because, and between us then, I get hurt by

these things. I can't even imagine what you went through. I take it personally. So how do you build either a thicker skin or motivate yourself to still be on a mission, get back up, continue going? This is a scary thing. Very scary and you're very right.

So let's take a slightly different example. When I think about the first time that somebody in the business world betrayed your trust, what did you want to do? You said from now on ironclad documents. I don't care. No handshakes anymore. From now on everything goes through legal.

Nobody would ever screw me over like this and then you stop and you think to yourself and you say my goodness I benefit a lot from trust it's true from time to time I'm going to lose and the thing about it is that the screwed over is going to be very salient and the gains I'm getting from trust are not as salient if you ask me whether it's better in this world to be a trusting person or not trusting person. I would say that the trusting person would have much more improvement but they would feel more the pain of mistrust. The non trusting person will not make much gains in the world but they will not experience the betrayals. experience the betrayals. So that was a betrayal. If you think about the question of cancel culture, society, negative feedback and so on, I think it's the same thing. Lots of people are basically

saying, you know what, I'm out of the game. I'm not interested. I'm not participating. I'm not playing. And I can see why in the short term it's tempting, but I don't think it's the recipe for a good life. I think at the end of the day, the recipe for a good life has to involve lots of progress and lots of progress means lots of scars metaphorically. You're right. I think about this adventure with the misbelievers. I think of it as like climbing Mount Everest, intellectual, not the real thing, I can't climb the real thing, but when people climb Mount Everest, they get injured.

Nobody gets out of there without frostbite, some people lose their lives, I mean, it's a very, very tough thing to do. And I think a lot of the things we do that are worthwhile are kind of like that. We need to figure out if that's our life strategy. And I think that more of us would be better off by taking more of these challenges. One of my favorite stories from economics is a story from Paul Samuelson, the famous economist at MIT. And Samuelson goes to a friend of his in the department and he says, look, I'm going to offer you a bet and I'm going to give you slightly different numbers. I'll toss a coin if it comes on head I'll give you $120 if it comes on tail you'll give me a

hundred dollars I'll give you 120 you'll give me a hundred do you want to play? and his friend said no I don't want to play and he said I understand that the expected value is positive that on average it's a good deal, but if I'll win $120, I'll be slightly happy. If I lose $100, I'll be very miserable. So winning $120 is little happiness, losing $100 is a lot of misery, not worth it. And then Samuelson says, and what if we play this a thousand times? He said, of course I'll play. And then Samuelson says, and what if we play this a thousand times? He says, of course I'll play. And then Samuelson says, look what you're telling me.

You're telling me that if I came to you every day and said you want to play this, every day you would say no. And three years later, a thousand days later, I would ask you, how were your decisions up to now? And you would say, my goodness, why did I play this way? And I think that when we look at life one decision at a time, we tend to be too timid. We tend to think about the losses and the gains,

and the losses are more painful than the gains are happy. And because of that, we don't take enough risk. But I think we need like a portfolio approach. When we look at our life, we say, that's not the life I want to live. I don't want to live a timid life so I think we need to figure out it is painful it's terrible I'm not recommending it to anybody but on the other hand living a timid life is no way to live either we have to try and we have to learn to

accept it and then there are things we do to prepare. So you said thick skin. I think the thick skin is really resilience. I think the thick skin is really developing a good group of friends that trust us and support us in those moments. I don't think anybody could look at hateful comments about themselves and not care. I think it's about having those people around us who reflect to us who we really are. And again, you need people that will not drain you and take you down with this, right?

Because that's also easy. People will be so timid for you that they will start taking you down. Well, so don't try so much, right? And there's the Richard Benson quote, the brave don't live forever, but cowards don't live at all, which is kind of what we're saying. And I love that example that you just gave. I think it's so beautiful.

There's another great saying, you're going to always overestimate what you can do in a year, but we always going to underestimate what we can do in a decade. So we never really get started, which I think is sort of what you're saying. Let me ask you one of the questions that I think our listeners, if that's okay,

will really care about. You talk a little bit about mental health, I think, now for CEOs and entrepreneurs and employees. And I think this is something that is right now very much an atopic that I would love to talk a little bit about that if that's okay, Dan. We're certainly not doing well. We have a record number of people who are on all kinds of SSRIs and we have lots of people who are not doing so well. I think part of it is the attention economy, part of it is the fragmented day, part of it is the fact that we're not feeling in control.

What is the fact that we feel helplessly and hopelessly behind and my field. We have economics basically believe that it's very hard to change people and much easier to change environment. We also believe that the decisions people end up making our a function of the people, but mostly the function of the environment. And we have designed an environment that is just not good for us. And I'll give you a metaphor for this. Every year, cars get better. How does the car get better? Yeah, they get a little bit more efficient and so on. Mostly they get better by assuming correctly what shitty drivers we are. We used to think that if we had anti-lock brakes it will help, then we had a seatbelt, then

a rear view mirror, then side mirrors, then we have little lights, then we have all kinds of things. Every year the main advances is to realize the extent to which we're shitty drivers and to make it a little more difficult for us to kill ourselves. So if you think about the development, the development is accepting human nature and building around it. Nobody in the car industry says, oh, let's send people to a workshop on how to be a better driver.

No, no, no. It's hopeless. People are shitty drivers. Let's make cars. It will get people to have more difficult time to kill themselves and other people. In the world of information technology is the opposite. Every year, information technology is becoming less compatible with human nature, less comfortable,

less conforming to our limitation, more demanding and so on. It's kind of a shame, right? You could say, okay, what would IT, what would information, what would the calendar look like if it understood we can't just focus eight hours straight? What would the calendar look like if it understood that we need to pee between meetings? You don't have to go far. But it's not just a calendar, it's email and it's every different platform like this. So I think that our digital world eventually is very very badly designed for our health and our mental health. We'll see its effect on health in 30 years from now but we see the mental health effect very much now and people have to take control and I think people

who are high up in organization need to do it for themselves and they need to do it for the people who work with them. We need to control the flow of email and we need to control the what we do on social media and we need to figure out how we go to sleep without screens and all of those things. There's this term called structured procrastination. Structured procrastination is the idea that we do things that make us feel like we're making progress, but without actually making progress.

Like getting to inbox zero or making a to-do list and then checking things off. It's not really making progress, but there are a lot of things in the digital world that gives us a sense that we're making progress. And we gravitate to them and we do less. So here is one simple advice. I'll tell you what I do.

I go to the office every morning. I think about what is the task that I most want to have make progress by the end of the day? What is the thing that is actually the most important to me? That I want to make progress on today. I think of it while I make my espresso, then I sit back and I work on that task for at least 45 minutes. And you know, you might say, oh, you know, it's only 45 minutes. It's a big deal. B.F. Skinner, the famous psychologist, used to come to the office and not do anything else until he wrote 700 and a few words. I forgot the exact number. Let's say 738. And

you could say only 738? Really easy. Well, a book has 70,000 words. If you wrote 700 words a day in a year, you'll have three books. It's kind of an amazing unheard of The reality is that the issue with productivity is to carve the time and not wait For the moment of inspiration But most of us don't do it most of us come to the office Turn on email and once we turn on email We are preoccupied with what this we feel we're late and then once we turn on email, we are preoccupied with what this, we feel we're late and then if we turn email end.

So I would say look, we need to recognize how these systems are bad for us and we need to figure out where do we take control and the ideal thing to do is to create a ritual, a daily ritual that is working for us. So this is one that works for me. I love that. And we say that to our clients to do the most important thing first.

Otherwise you just continue to push it. And I think there's another element of self ownership of if you are pushing it, why? Because I push it sometimes because we all do. but then we need to reflect back and say, why am I actually pushing it? It's because I'm scared or I don't know what I don't want to and I don't feel like it. Like there's something holding me back and if we can actually move this away, we can actually move forward. Right. So I absolutely love that. We always end with an advice to your younger self and you had multiple younger selves along the journey. What would you say to yourself looking

back? You know, I told you that the people from the TV show asked me what have I gained with all of this thing and I wrote them a list of things that I think I gained. And one of the things that I gained and I now tell people with injuries, but I think it's correct for everybody, I say, your life will never be the same. You were not injured, you're injured now. Don't mourn the past, it's over. And there'll be things that you can never go back to.

There'll be things you can't do, that's done. And I say the question to figure out is where are your skills, where you can make a unique contribution that fits to you, and to try and not feel accountable for other people's rules and standards. And I think that's really hard. I'm an academic, academics have a very specific life, and that life doesn't work for me. I can't use my hands. I mean there's lots of things that I can't do and at the end of the day my disability allowed me to not feel beholden to these standards. I just can't do them. So it was

very good for me to say you know I can do what I can do. You can do what you can do. But I think in general, there's lots of rules from society, a lot of standards from society about how we behave. And I think an injury can be very liberating in terms of not looking at this too seriously. But I think it's also true for people without an injury. To basically look at where are our skills, what do we really want to do, and where are the rules of society not really playing for our strength? Is it the way we manage people? Is it the way we think about innovation?

Is it the way we spend our time? Is it in the way that we are parents or significant others, or it's in the variety of things that we do? At the end of the day, we really need to figure out our strength. It's so tempting to go into role playing for different things in society, but we each have unique strength. We need to figure those out and worry less about societal roles. And I think not worrying so much about what will people say and what does it look like and what should I take

to make my parents proud, but more of where do you actually want to be? And I think that makes all the difference. Dan, I could probably talk to you for like 12 more hours. Seriously, just such a big fan. I hope all the BS is going away very fast because it doesn't make any sense. And I think maybe you had to go through it to create something so powerful like misbelief and to start understanding what happens in our society

with all the stress and the mental health. And maybe that's why they unleashed it on you because they knew that you're the genius that can figure this out. So thank you for being on the show, Dan. Lovely to be here and happy to continue at some other point. you