6:00

a person in their late 80s,

6:02

90s having their hearing improved,

6:04

even with medical intervention, it's

6:06

a very rare thing. It wasn't until

6:09

after running the study that I realized

6:11

that even for the

6:13

comparison group, this was going

6:15

to be a very mindful

6:17

experience. Here were

6:19

people who as elderly men

6:21

were over cared for, not

6:25

in any way acting as

6:27

their younger selves, having given up much

6:29

of their vitality and so on, all

6:31

of a sudden were thrown into a

6:34

whole new environment where they

6:36

were in charge of their own lives, they were to

6:38

make their own meals and so on.

6:41

They went from being very cared for to now

6:43

being on their own. Had I

6:45

thought about that before the study, I

6:48

would have expected that they too would

6:50

improve just not as much as the

6:52

experimental group. So imagine we were colleagues

6:55

and we were having lunch before you did the

6:57

study. You told me you were planning to run

7:00

this experiment. Now let's assume that I

7:02

liked you and I wanted good things for your

7:04

career. I wouldn't be having lunch with you if

7:06

I didn't assume that. I

7:09

would have said, my God, do

7:11

not waste your time doing this

7:13

experiment. It is completely obvious that

7:15

you will find nothing. It

7:18

is preposterous to think

7:20

that listening to old radio shows

7:22

and watching old movies could possibly

7:25

impact anyone's eyesight. So save

7:27

your time and your research budget and

7:29

go do something worthwhile. I'm

7:31

sure plenty of other people must have said that to

7:33

you too, didn't they? No, I didn't talk to people

7:35

about it. So I didn't get to

7:38

hear their views. Otherwise, I might

7:40

have been discouraged. But you know, Steve,

7:42

I did research back in the 70s.

7:44

Judy Rodin and I did

7:46

research in nursing homes where

7:48

we gave people choices, encouraged

7:50

them to make decisions and

7:52

basically to come alive. In

7:55

retrospect, it was really teaching people

7:58

to be more mindful. And

8:00

18 months after the study, more

8:02

people in the experimental group were still

8:04

alive than in the group that was

8:06

just given tender loving care. So

8:09

I have a history of surprising

8:12

myself and people like you. I

8:15

guess it's because I start off with

8:17

less certainty than most people have.

8:21

I mark the edge of

8:23

the nurture part of the

8:25

nature-nurture continuum so that

8:27

my explanation for why this 90-year-old

8:30

seems to have more energy, let's say,

8:32

than this 40-year-old would not be because

8:34

of an assumption of a difference in

8:36

their genetic makeup. I

8:38

start off believing that so much

8:41

more is possible than most of

8:43

us realize. Now, my

8:45

first reaction to hearing the fine-gives-your-counterclockwise study

8:47

would have been, well, that

8:49

result will never be replicated. It has to

8:52

be a fluke. But it

8:54

actually has been replicated a number of

8:56

times, right? Yeah, and in different ways. I

8:58

mean, to me, the important thing was

9:01

the test of the mind-body

9:03

unity idea. The next

9:05

study in that series was a study

9:07

Ali Kraman and I did where we

9:09

took chambermades. And first

9:11

thing, we just asked them how much exercise

9:14

they get. And surprisingly, they don't think they

9:16

get any exercise because they think exercise is

9:18

what you're supposed to do after work. And

9:20

after work, they're just too tired. So

9:23

for the study, what we did was very simple.

9:26

We just taught half of them that their work

9:28

was exercise. Different things that

9:30

they're doing, making beds, cleaning the windows and

9:32

what have you, were likened to working in

9:34

different machines at the gym. And

9:37

so at the end of this, we

9:39

found that this group wasn't working any

9:42

harder, eating any differently. Everything

9:44

was basically the same as the

9:46

group that wasn't taught this change

9:48

in mindset. So there's no intervention

9:50

other than teaching? Exactly. Nothing can

9:52

possibly happen. But something happened. What

9:56

happened was by simply changing their

9:58

mindset, realizing that they were was

10:00

exercise. They lost weight. There was

10:02

a change in waist to hip

10:04

ratio, body mass index, and their

10:06

blood pressure came down. We

10:08

have such control, making ourselves

10:10

sick, making ourselves healthy, and

10:13

I think people are largely oblivious to this.

10:15

But let me tell you one more of

10:17

these mind-body studies. The most recent one I

10:20

did with my graduate student, Peter Ungle. So

10:22

we inflict a wound. Not a big wound

10:24

because we're not sadists. And even if we

10:26

were the powers that he would not let

10:28

us do it. So it's a

10:31

minor wound. And the people

10:33

who've got this wound are sitting

10:35

in front of a clock. Unbeknownst

10:37

to them, the clock is rigged.

10:39

So the clock is going twice as fast

10:42

as real time, half as fast

10:44

as real time, and in real

10:46

time. Now you would say, so what?

10:48

Who cares about the clock, right? The

10:51

wound will heal when it heals. But

10:53

it turns out that the wound healed

10:55

based on perceived time. Wow. In the

10:57

medical world, you ask the doctor, how

11:00

long is it going to take for

11:02

me to heal from whatever the surgery,

11:04

for example. And typically they're

11:06

going to give the longer

11:09

part of that so you don't feel bad

11:11

that you didn't heal quickly or maybe the

11:13

average healing. Science, whether it's

11:15

medical science, psychological science, only

11:17

gives us probabilities. When you

11:20

believe something is absolute, your

11:22

expectations are sealed and it

11:24

becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It

11:27

might be better for people to

11:29

be told the quickest healing time

11:31

that's known. And see, some people

11:33

heal as quickly as, because

11:35

they can't know. You

11:45

have one other study I want to talk about before

11:47

we get into broader issues. Only one? It's

11:51

the study you did where you went into a

11:53

nursing home and you were working

11:56

on memory loss. And so you asked the

11:58

nursing home residents, different questions

12:01

over the course of three weeks to test

12:03

whether they could remember things better.

12:05

Things like how many nurses names do you

12:07

know or whatnot. And

12:09

there actually you found something that I

12:11

expected, which is that if you challenge

12:14

people's memory and they know you want

12:16

them to remember better, they actually started

12:18

remembering a bunch of things. Yeah,

12:20

it's not so much the challenge is

12:22

that if there's no reason to remember,

12:24

you're not going to remember. During the

12:26

summers, I'm not teaching, let's

12:28

assume I'm playing tennis at 10 in the

12:31

morning every day, then Tuesday is the same

12:33

as Thursday and so on. And

12:35

even a simple question, what day is

12:37

today, I wouldn't quickly know. And

12:40

it's not because I'm old, it's because

12:42

it doesn't matter. And so

12:44

all we did in the study was to make

12:46

remembering matter and when it

12:48

mattered, people remembered. What makes

12:50

it your study is

12:52

that you went back two and a half

12:55

years later and the people who you

12:57

had intervened with by asking a few

12:59

questions over the course of three weeks, 7%

13:02

of them had died two and a half years later, 33

13:05

and 27% of those comparison groups had died. You

13:10

had through this intervention, seemingly radically

13:12

changed mortality rates to a degree

13:15

that I think you would be

13:17

hard pressed to find any pharmaceutical

13:19

compound, which has had that kind

13:21

of effect in a controlled

13:23

study. There are several studies

13:26

starting with the first one in the

13:28

nursing home where we gave people control,

13:30

made people mindful. People need to understand

13:33

when I'm talking about mindfulness, it has

13:35

nothing to do with meditation. Meditation

13:38

is a practice that you engage

13:40

in, presumably to result

13:42

in post meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness

13:45

as I study it is more immediate.

13:48

It's the very simple process of

13:50

noticing. And as you notice,

13:52

the neurons are firing and the

13:55

study that you suggested and several

13:57

others shows that it's literally and

13:59

figurative. enlivening. And if

14:01

you ask somebody how much of the

14:04

day are you noticing aware of what's

14:06

around you and so on, people would

14:08

think virtually all the time. Sadly,

14:12

much of the research has shown me

14:14

that virtually all of us, much of

14:16

the time, are mindless. We're not there.

14:19

And Steve, when you're not there, you don't

14:21

know you're not there. And it's because of

14:23

those absolutes that I mentioned a moment ago

14:25

that leads us not to be there. If

14:27

you knew what I was going to say

14:29

next, why would you listen to me? And

14:32

we're not paying attention. The system more or

14:34

less is turning itself off. And

14:37

being there is so easy. You

14:40

sit up and you pay attention. And

14:42

when you do that, you're engaged. And

14:44

it's exciting. And we have

14:46

so many findings of the advantages

14:48

of being mindful. The neurons are

14:50

firing. You end up happier, healthier.

14:52

In some sense, you light up.

14:54

People find you more appealing, more

14:56

charismatic, more authentic and trustworthy. We

14:58

even find that it leaves its

15:00

imprint on the things that you're

15:02

doing. If you do something mindfully

15:04

versus mindlessly, people tend to

15:06

prefer the mindful version of it. Everything

15:09

seems to change. I've been doing this

15:11

for, gosh, 45 years. It's just better

15:16

for us. We come

15:18

alive when we're engaged.

15:20

And becoming engaged follows

15:23

from our knowing that we don't know

15:25

and the fun in finding

15:27

out. We'll

15:31

be right back with more of my conversation

15:33

with psychologist Ellen Langer after this short break.

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Comfort Meets Innovation. Hi,

16:55

I'm Josie. My daughter turns five today. I'm

16:57

also an Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper. When

16:59

you move over and slow down, you're making

17:01

sure I can get home to celebrate with

17:03

my daughter. When you see flashing lights, remember,

17:06

they're not just roadside workers. Thank you for

17:08

moving over and slowing down. I'd

17:13

love to spend a little

17:15

time diving into how you

17:17

define mindfulness because I've always

17:19

struggled a little bit at

17:22

understanding what people mean by

17:24

that. How does

17:26

your version of mindfulness differ from

17:28

the more spiritual version that comes

17:30

out of Eastern religion? To

17:33

become mindful from the Eastern perspective, you

17:35

have to meditate. My work

17:37

is all about mindfulness without meditation, although

17:40

I did some very early working 80s

17:42

on meditation. Years

17:45

and years ago when I started studying

17:47

this, I was studying mindlessness. And

17:49

I was studying mindlessness because I would

17:52

walk into a store and walk into

17:54

a mannequin and apologize. And I'd say,

17:56

wait a second. I

17:58

noticed things that I was doing. doing that didn't quite

18:01

make sense to me. I wish

18:03

I could remember who this person was, but

18:05

there was somebody, not such a nice person,

18:07

maybe it's good that I don't remember who it was,

18:10

who said to me, you know, you are what

18:12

you study. And I said, that's interesting. And then

18:14

I turned it around and I started studying mindfulness.

18:17

One of the things I've heard you say about mindlessness

18:19

is that people, when they're in a mindless state, they're

18:22

typically in error, but rarely in

18:24

doubt. Yeah, no, that's very

18:26

important because when you're mindless, it's

18:29

not even that you're saying to yourself that

18:31

you're certain, you just proceed without

18:34

any doubt. And people

18:36

have run away from doubt without recognizing if

18:38

you don't have doubt, then you don't have

18:40

choice. People don't want doubt, but they want

18:42

choice. The most important

18:45

way from a top-down

18:47

perspective to become mindful is

18:49

to appreciate uncertainty, that

18:52

with everything changing, everything looking different

18:54

from different perspectives, you can't know.

18:57

Now, what happens is individually when we

19:00

don't know, sometimes we're afraid. I think

19:02

I'm supposed to know, I don't know,

19:04

I don't want anyone to know, I don't know, so

19:07

then I pretend or I avoid. And

19:09

I'm here to free everybody to say

19:11

nobody knows. I think

19:13

that the most powerful position one

19:16

should assume is one

19:18

of being confident, but

19:20

uncertain. Was there such

19:22

a word as mindfulness before you came

19:25

around? Did you invent it? It existed

19:27

in Buddhist literature, but in this country,

19:29

it was not on people's

19:31

tongues. Once I

19:33

started using the term mindfulness, I

19:35

started to become aware of Buddhism

19:38

and so on. And to me, it

19:40

was very exciting that things that

19:43

I had come to from this

19:45

Western scientific perspective were so in

19:48

line with that which had

19:50

been around for a very long

19:52

time from the more Eastern perspective.

19:55

I mean, now, every place you look, a while ago,

19:57

this was the funniest for me, I had to. I

20:00

just given a talk on mindfulness in

20:02

Chicago, and I go outside and around

20:04

the block end, there's a

20:06

restaurant, the Mindful Burger. You know?

20:09

Somebody once called me. It was

20:11

somebody doing your PhD, and

20:14

wanted to know was mindfulness a fad? And

20:16

I was a little offended, but I thought

20:19

about it for a moment. And

20:21

I said, okay, let's say you

20:23

burn your toast every morning, and

20:26

then somebody comes along and shows you all you

20:28

need to do is turn the dial down a

20:30

slight bit, and then the toast

20:32

is no longer going to burn. Is

20:34

it a fad? I mean, you're not gonna go back

20:37

eventually to burning your toast unless you preferred it

20:39

that way. It's not

20:41

just paying attention, because,

20:44

well, attention is necessary, it's

20:46

not sufficient. There has to

20:48

be the activity of coming

20:51

to understand something that was novel,

20:53

something that's new. When I

20:55

started to paint, I'm 50 years

20:57

old, and prior to that, if you

20:59

had asked me what color are leaves, I

21:02

would have said, mindlessly forgetting about the fall

21:04

when the leaves change color, I would have

21:06

said they're green. Then I

21:08

start painting, and I start seeing more.

21:11

You look at trees, and there are

21:13

hundreds of different colored greens that

21:16

change as the sun changes in the

21:18

sky, changes in the seasons,

21:20

and so on. Once you

21:22

wake up, there's just so much more. Everything

21:25

feels new and potentially

21:28

exciting. In

21:30

your studies, you teach people to

21:32

have a mindful approach. What's

21:35

the process of opening people up

21:37

to that state of being? There

21:39

are three things. The first was

21:42

for people to respect uncertainty and

21:44

to make a universal attribution for not

21:46

knowing rather than a personal attribution. Nobody

21:49

knows, so then everything is there to

21:51

be found out, and

21:53

that will necessarily make you mindful.

21:55

So the respect for uncertainty. The

21:57

second is ask yourself,

22:00

and you walk out your door and notice three

22:02

new things. Notice three new things about the person

22:04

you may be living with. Three different

22:06

ways of doing whatever you're doing. Look

22:09

for multiple answers to any question that

22:11

you're asked and so on. And

22:14

the third way is when

22:16

we're learning something, not to learn

22:18

it the way most of us

22:20

have sadly learned most of the

22:22

things we know with

22:24

absolutes. The best way

22:26

to learn is to learn conditionally.

22:29

Rather than is, you should learn

22:31

could be, would be, possibly, it

22:33

would seem that, might be. And

22:36

when you know that it could be,

22:38

you're open to possibilities that

22:40

otherwise won't occur to you. Right

22:43

now, we get our As in

22:46

school by memorizing facts, but these

22:48

facts are context dependent. The one

22:50

thing everybody knows is

22:52

how much is one in one. So

22:54

Steve, how much is one plus one?

22:57

One in one may be two, but if you're

22:59

using a base two number system, one plus one

23:02

is written as 10. If

23:04

you add one watt of chewing gum plus one

23:06

watt of chewing gum, one plus one equals one.

23:09

So now you have one plus one can be one, can

23:11

be two, can be 10. It's

23:13

a very different world that we create for

23:15

ourselves. Imagine a teacher asks young

23:17

students, how much is one plus one?

23:20

And little Steve says one,

23:22

what's going to happen? In most classrooms, a teacher

23:25

is going to try not to look at you

23:27

like you're stupid. You're going

23:29

to feel uncomfortable and possibly set

23:31

the stage for a lifetime

23:34

of feeling stupid. Where

23:36

if the teacher were mindful, the

23:38

teacher would say, little Stevie, how did you come

23:41

to that? And then you'd say,

23:43

if you add one pile of sand to one

23:45

pile of sand, one plus one is one. And

23:48

now everybody would have learned something.

23:50

So everything we're learning is absolutes,

23:53

makes us think we know and we don't know.

23:55

And when you think you know, you no longer pay

23:58

any attention. It makes us a value. of

24:00

other people who may see a different world.

24:03

I wouldn't have called it mindful when I was

24:05

a young academic doing my PhD,

24:07

but it was how I lived my

24:10

life because it was a

24:12

new adventure. I was trying to

24:14

find ways to say new things about the

24:17

world and I looked around with an open-minded

24:20

curiosity, unsure

24:22

what was true or untrue, willing

24:24

to challenge in a friendly sort

24:26

of way every piece of conventional

24:29

wisdom and any interesting research I

24:31

ever did was because somebody

24:33

said something and I thought, that doesn't

24:36

seem right. A lot of

24:38

times, turns out people were right, but sometimes

24:41

things people believe didn't turn out to be

24:43

true in the data. I just stopped

24:45

being an interesting academic because as I got

24:48

older, I became more and

24:50

more internally focused, not necessarily sure I

24:52

know the answers. I just found my

24:55

center was inside of me instead of

24:57

outside of me and that wasn't good

24:59

for making discoveries. Or

25:01

good for your health, probably. For me,

25:04

I know exactly what it is that

25:06

is in the way of

25:08

me being in a mindful state and that is that

25:10

my natural resting state

25:13

is a very active dialogue inside

25:16

my head and that dialogue takes up, I

25:19

don't know, 80% of all

25:21

of my attention and brain power. As

25:24

soon as I pause that dialogue, it is

25:26

like I flip a switch and

25:28

suddenly I'm noticing things around me and

25:30

I'm more playful. Is there

25:32

some evolutionary things in any way or

25:34

why is it so difficult for me,

25:36

even when I appreciate mindfulness, to

25:39

unlock it from this natural

25:42

state? So basically, really the question you're

25:44

asking is, why are you

25:47

so stressed? And we have a

25:49

culture that says, well, everybody's stressed,

25:51

work has to be stressful. I don't agree with

25:53

any of that. What people

25:55

need to understand is that

25:57

events don't cause stress, what causes stress.

26:00

of the views you take of the event.

26:02

If you open it up and take

26:04

a more mindful view, knowing that things

26:06

can be understood in multiple ways, you're

26:09

not likely to choose the one that's driving

26:12

you crazy. This is one

26:14

thing I say frequently now for which

26:16

I don't have data, but I believe

26:18

that stress is our biggest

26:20

killer. If you

26:22

took people who are given some

26:25

dread diagnosis and you let

26:27

them get used to it after a few

26:29

weeks, and then you start measuring their level

26:31

of stress, that would predict the

26:33

course of the disease over

26:35

and above genetics, nutrition, and dare

26:38

I say even treatment. That's how

26:40

important I think stress is to

26:42

our well-being. And again,

26:44

given that stress is psychological, that suggests

26:47

that we can control it. And I

26:49

think that there are lots of ways

26:51

that are not very hard for people

26:53

to do. Ask yourself the next time

26:56

you're stressed, is it a tragedy or

26:58

an inconvenience? I missed the

27:00

bus or I burnt the roast or I

27:02

didn't finish the project, so what? You

27:04

become wiser to these as you get older,

27:06

but this is the sort of thing I

27:09

try to teach my students in their early

27:11

years in college. Why do we

27:13

have to wait to learn this? Another

27:15

thing we might recognize is that most

27:17

of the things we're stressed about never

27:19

occur. So we should use

27:21

the rule, no stress before it's time. We

27:24

should not accept that things

27:26

have to be stressful. And

27:28

again, an example I've probably overused, but Steve,

27:31

you and I go out to dinner and

27:33

the food is great, wonderful, it's a win.

27:35

You and I go out to dinner and

27:37

the food is awful, wonderful. I'll eat less,

27:39

that'll be better for my waistline. For

27:41

me, I have a very clear

27:44

understanding that events are neither

27:46

good nor bad, but that the way

27:48

I understand them will make them so. It's

27:51

just a matter of recognizing that nothing

27:53

is important in and of itself. We

27:55

give it the importance, and

27:58

sometimes that works to our disadvantage. One

28:01

thing that's really helped me in that domain is

28:03

if I'm very agitated about

28:05

something angry or upset, I

28:08

pause and I think, let

28:11

me just focus on what I'm feeling in my

28:13

body. And when I do that,

28:15

I'm like, wait, is that anger or is

28:18

that hunger or tired? And

28:20

it's funny, you can't even tell the actual feelings in

28:22

the body, at least someone like me who's not very

28:24

attuned to my body. They all feel

28:26

the same. And once you pause and say, wait

28:28

a second, without the story, it doesn't

28:31

feel so bad. Exactly. Steve,

28:33

you mentioned the longevity

28:36

findings and the counterclockwise study.

28:38

And all of these were

28:40

obviously meaningful to me. But

28:43

there's something that I came up with

28:45

that doesn't sound as big,

28:47

but that was probably, for me,

28:49

the most important thing that I

28:51

came to in my career. And

28:54

that was the very simple understanding

28:57

that behavior makes sense from the actor's

28:59

perspective or else the actor wouldn't do it.

29:02

So for example, I'm very

29:04

gullible. I am. If

29:07

you say to me, Ellen, for a woman of

29:09

your age and your experience, it's pathetic. And

29:11

so I look back at my behavior and I

29:14

say, you're right, I'm going to try to not

29:16

be so gullible, but I'm always going to fail.

29:19

Because from my perspective, I'm not

29:21

intending to be gullible. I'm trusting.

29:24

And as long as I'm trusting, I'm going to

29:26

be gullible. So then I

29:28

realize that every single negative

29:30

characteristic we have to describe

29:32

ourselves or anybody else has

29:35

an equally strong but oppositely valenced

29:37

alternative. For every negative thing, there's

29:40

a positive version of it. And

29:43

that if you want to change people,

29:45

what you need to do is speak

29:48

to them from the perspective from which

29:50

the action is originating. You

29:52

want me to stop being gullible. You

29:55

have to get me to stop valuing being

29:58

trusting. And my guess is

30:00

you would probably like the fact that

30:02

I'm trusting now that you see it that way. Or try

30:05

to get me not to value it, in which case I'd

30:07

be able to change. But as long as I

30:09

value being trusting, I'm going to be gullible. We

30:12

did this in a study forever ago where we

30:14

had people, we gave them behavior

30:16

descriptions and said, circle those things

30:19

that you keep trying to change

30:21

about yourself and you fail. So

30:23

for me, I'd circle gullible, I'd

30:25

circle impetuous, impulsive, I

30:27

won't tell you the others.

30:29

And then you turn the

30:31

page over and in a mixed up

30:34

order of the positive versions of each

30:36

of these. And then we say to

30:38

people, circle those things you really value

30:40

about yourself. I value my being trusting

30:42

and spontaneous. Well, as long as

30:44

I do, I'm going to be vulnerable

30:47

to the insults on

30:49

the other side of the page. I

30:51

suspect that when people, the addicts

30:53

say, from the external perspective, people

30:55

think, well, it's horrible to be an addict, no one

30:57

would want to be an addict. But I

31:00

suspect what you've just described is

31:02

a good characterization of many addicts. There's

31:05

all sorts of positives that are coming

31:07

from the addictive behavior that probably if

31:09

you can get inside their head, they

31:11

don't want to let go of. And

31:13

of course, it's impossibly difficult to quit

31:15

something when you don't want to quit

31:17

it because it's working for you in

31:19

some way, shape or form. Exactly.

31:22

In one of my books, maybe several

31:24

of my books, I asked

31:26

the question, let's say, you're very anxious

31:28

and you do X and now you're

31:30

no longer anxious. Is it good to

31:32

do X? And every reason says, sure. And

31:36

then you add, take a drink or

31:38

whatever. If we didn't punish people for

31:41

the behaviors that make sense and

31:43

rather point out that it's successfully

31:46

achieving what they want, they'd be

31:48

stronger in finding alternative ways to

31:51

produce that outcome. You

31:53

don't say to somebody who's a heavy

31:55

drinker, you have to stop drinking because

31:57

it's hurting your liver. Nobody is drinking.

32:00

to hurt their liver. Their liver

32:02

is inconsequential the moment they're taking

32:05

the drink. This idea leads

32:07

to a very different

32:09

understanding of people, a very different

32:11

way of relating. If

32:13

you were involved with me and I

32:15

did something and you forgave me, I

32:18

don't want your forgiveness. What

32:20

I want is for you to understand why

32:22

I did what I did. And

32:24

then forgiveness becomes irrelevant.

32:27

I was asked many years ago to

32:30

give a sermon in one of the Harvard

32:32

churches, which was a bizarre thing for me

32:34

because I hadn't spent any time

32:36

in a church. I am Jewish. I don't

32:38

even know a whole lot about Judaism. But I

32:41

say yes. And now I'm trying to figure out

32:43

what am I gonna talk about? Forgiveness

32:45

sounds sort of religious. So

32:48

maybe I can build something around forgiveness. And

32:51

it was amazing, Steve, because as I

32:53

started thinking about this, what I came

32:55

up with was almost sacrilegious. So

32:58

if you ask 10 people, is forgiveness

33:00

good or bad? What are they gonna tell you?

33:03

It's good. It's good, right? Now,

33:05

if you ask 10 people, is blame good

33:07

or bad? What are they gonna tell you?

33:10

It's bad. It's bad, right. So

33:13

what that means is our forgivers

33:15

are our blamers. Now,

33:18

do you blame people for good things or

33:20

bad things? Bad things. Bad things. But things

33:22

in and of themselves are neither good nor

33:24

bad. So what do we have? We have

33:26

people who see the world negatively, who blame

33:28

and then forgive, which to me

33:31

seemed hardly divine. If

33:33

you blame, you certainly should learn

33:35

how to forgive. But as I

33:37

talk about in the mindful body,

33:39

if you understand it, it obviates

33:41

the necessity for blame. And

33:44

if you don't blame, then you don't need

33:46

to forgive. So we have lots of things

33:48

that sound good that have another

33:50

side to them. When you say to somebody,

33:52

try. You don't try to eat

33:55

an ice cream cone, you just eat it. Now,

33:58

trying is better than giving up. but

34:00

there's an even better way of being,

34:02

which is just to presume everything is

34:04

going to be fine. Presume you can

34:07

do it and go forward and don't

34:09

waste your time. We did a little

34:11

research on trying versus doing and

34:14

even with the doing of things,

34:16

people get themselves crazed. People think

34:18

they want perfection and

34:20

you can either do things perfectly

34:23

mindlessly or imperfectly

34:25

mindfully. Let's say

34:27

you're a golfer and oh, wouldn't it

34:29

be wonderful if you could get a hole in one

34:32

each time you swung the club? Well, no. After

34:34

the first couple of times, you'd see there's no

34:36

game there. What makes

34:39

the game is the imperfect performance.

34:42

If we recognize that it's

34:44

the challenge that's exciting for

34:46

us, we'd possibly enjoy

34:48

the so-called challenges more. I was

34:51

literally just now thinking

34:53

about golf as you brought it up

34:55

because my approach to golf

34:57

as an adult was, along with my

34:59

academic career, one of my most mindful

35:01

peers. I played a lot of golf

35:03

as a kid and I was completely

35:05

mindless in the way I did it.

35:07

I believed what the experts told me

35:09

and I followed religiously what

35:12

I was supposed to do and I really wasn't

35:14

very good. I went away from golf for maybe

35:17

25 years and then I came back to it with

35:19

a different perspective, which is, look, I figured out

35:22

all sorts of things in academics. Why shouldn't I

35:24

be able to figure out golf? I threw out

35:26

all of the rules and I approached it very

35:28

differently and I had an

35:31

amazingly joyful time. It was so

35:33

much fun to be

35:35

improving and learning. I

35:37

made one really important

35:40

miscalculation. The entire time

35:42

I was playing golf, I had this vision

35:44

that the better I got at golf, the

35:46

more fun it would be. Eventually,

35:49

I got pretty good. What was

35:51

interesting is that the better I

35:53

got, the less fun golf was

35:55

because there was less room for

35:57

error, there's less room for creativity.

36:00

the expectations of how good I

36:02

could be, maybe rose faster

36:04

than my physical and mental

36:06

limitations. I really wanted to

36:08

be a professional golfer on the senior golf

36:10

tour. And what was most interesting

36:13

and really lucky for me, and I've described

36:15

it before on this show, is

36:17

I actually went out and I was playing in a

36:19

pro-am with Steve Stricker, and I actually

36:21

played incredibly well and I shot two or three

36:23

under par on the front nine and I was

36:25

getting all sorts of attention. I almost had a

36:27

hole in one in a par four. And

36:30

I realized as I was standing there, this

36:32

is what I had always dreamed of doing

36:35

and I hated it. I didn't want

36:37

that dream at all. That one day

36:39

changed completely my relationship to golf and

36:42

actually for the better because then I stepped

36:44

back from this idea of improving and

36:47

I accepted golf as something

36:49

which was for me meditative

36:51

and fun and intensely personal.

36:54

And golf then became more fun again. I

36:59

played golf only a few times when I would

37:01

get to Florida and visit my father. We'd

37:03

go out to the course and I'd get a hole in

37:05

one. Well, this was outrageous because I don't know what I'm

37:07

doing. We spent a lot of time, where's

37:10

the ball? Only eventually

37:12

to see that it's in the cup. I always look

37:14

in the hole right away. I never find it there, but

37:16

I always look there first. That may be a gender difference,

37:18

I don't know. But what was

37:20

interesting is that it spoiled the game

37:22

for me. Every time I swung

37:25

the club, I was expecting a hole in

37:27

one. I do something when

37:29

I'm lecturing in person, look in the

37:31

audience for a very tall person and

37:33

there's almost always some guy who's six

37:35

five or so. And I asked him

37:37

to come to the stage. There

37:40

I am at five, three, he's six five.

37:42

We look silly together. And then all I do

37:44

is raise the question, should we do anything

37:47

physical the same way? It seems

37:49

ridiculous. Should we hold

37:51

the golf club, the tennis racket, anything?

37:54

And the rule that follows from

37:56

that for me goes well beyond

37:59

physical activities. which is the more

38:01

different you are from the person

38:03

who created the rule, the

38:06

more important it is for you to

38:08

basically ignore the rule or amend the

38:10

rule and do it your own way.

38:13

We don't realize that in some sense

38:16

everything that is was

38:18

at one point a decision. Somebody had

38:20

to decide how it should be and

38:23

if it were a decision that means initially

38:25

there was uncertainty and

38:27

then as soon as we make the decision we

38:29

forget all the uncertainty and act as if that's

38:32

the way it should be. An

38:34

example I use in the book is

38:36

imagine you want to know if a particular

38:39

drug is going to

38:41

be covered by your insurance. Now

38:44

how are these decisions made? Should

38:47

people be reimbursed for

38:49

Cialis? Okay, Viagra.

38:52

And the committee making this decision

38:54

were a group of lusty 50-year-old

38:57

men. versus a

38:59

group of nuns. When

39:02

you know there's some set of people

39:04

deciding this who may or may not be like

39:06

you or have the same values and

39:08

so on would make you

39:10

more likely to fight for what's good

39:12

for you. Not accept the

39:15

status quo because the status quo is

39:17

just one of many

39:19

potential ways things can be. That's

39:21

the piece with all of my work

39:23

that I think is important

39:26

for people to recognize whatever

39:28

is is only one way

39:31

it could be and if it

39:33

doesn't work then change it. You're

39:38

listening to People I Mostly

39:40

Admire with Steve Levitt and

39:43

his conversation with Ellen Langer.

39:45

After this short break they'll

39:47

return to talk about how

39:49

Langer hopes mindfulness could change

39:51

the medical system. Can

39:59

I cut 5% out of the of the budget and still have

40:01

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40:03

me. Co-Pilot for Microsoft 365

40:06

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40:14

Hey there, I'm Brad. I'm about to win

40:16

the Tuesday Night Bowling League Championship. I'm also

40:18

a highway worker for the Ohio Department of

40:20

Transportation. When you move over and slow down,

40:22

you're making sure I can bowl the winning

40:24

strike with my buddies. Remember, they're not just

40:26

roadside workers. Thank you for moving over and

40:28

slowing down. I'd

40:36

like to finish our conversation by focusing

40:38

on what seems to me to be

40:40

the most radical implication of Ellen Langer's

40:43

research, that the mind is

40:45

so powerful that just through belief we

40:47

can dramatically alter our physical state. As

40:54

I've read your body of research, one thing that I've

40:56

struggled with... You've read all of it? Oh

40:58

no, no one can read all of it. It's almost endless.

41:00

No, because I was going to ask you to remind me

41:03

of some of the errors. There's

41:06

a concept of mindfulness, and we've

41:08

talked about that. That can

41:10

exist completely absent from

41:13

the second strand of research,

41:15

which is this mind-bodied link. What

41:18

surprises me in every study is that

41:21

I'm very open, attuned, in agreement

41:23

with the idea that mindfulness is

41:25

valuable and powerful. What's

41:27

a bigger reach for me is that

41:30

I've really been indoctrinated into

41:32

the current state of medical

41:36

wisdom, which says that

41:39

mind and body are very different.

41:41

It's completely implausible that simply by

41:43

thinking or believing something different, you

41:45

could make pain go away. It's

41:48

interesting that for you, those two are the same

41:50

thing, but for me they're completely different. The

41:53

mind-body unity idea is

41:56

based on, and sometimes,

41:58

mindlessness. And if we

42:01

can do it mindlessly, chances are we

42:03

can do it better, faster, more efficiently,

42:06

mindfully. Let me give you an example.

42:08

So you take a placebo, and what

42:10

is a placebo? A sugar pill, something

42:12

that's inert by definition. But

42:14

you have a doctor give you this nothing that

42:17

you believe is something, and then you heal.

42:19

And we have people healing from all sorts

42:21

of things from the sugar pill. Well, if

42:24

it's not the pill that's making

42:26

you heal, what's making you heal? You're doing it

42:28

yourself. So part of my

42:30

work is, can we get rid of

42:32

the whole charade and help ourselves more

42:35

immediately without taking a nothing

42:37

pill, without somebody else giving it to

42:39

us? If I'm controlling my own health,

42:41

let me just control it. Let's

42:43

look at the medical world. It was not

42:46

that many decades ago that the

42:48

medical world believed that

42:50

one's psychology was totally

42:52

irrelevant to health. I'm sure doctors always

42:55

want you to be happy. But

42:57

they did not think that psychological

42:59

state has anything to do with illness.

43:01

The only way you were going to

43:04

become ill was if there was

43:06

an antigen present. Now, most

43:08

medical people have moved to the

43:10

point where people talk about a

43:13

biosocial model, where they know that

43:16

stress and these things matter. I don't

43:18

think they realize that it matters quite

43:20

as much as it does. When

43:23

I started writing The Mindful Body, it

43:25

was first going to be a memoir. So I have

43:27

a lot of personal stories in there. And

43:30

there was one experience that I had that stayed

43:32

with me all my life. I was

43:34

married when I was really, really

43:36

young. So I was 19. And

43:39

we went to Paris for a honeymoon.

43:42

And now you have to appreciate that for

43:44

me, I was now all grown up. It

43:46

was very important that everything I did revealed

43:48

that I was a mature woman of

43:51

the world, because after all, I was married. We're

43:53

in this restaurant. I order a mixed

43:55

grill. And on the

43:57

mixed grill was pancreas. my

44:00

then husband, which of these things is the

44:02

pancreas? He was more sophisticated than I,

44:04

he points to something. I eat

44:06

everything. I'm a big eater. I love food. I eat

44:09

with gusto, but moment of decision.

44:12

Can I eat the pancreas? Now,

44:15

I don't know why when I tell this

44:17

story, it doesn't follow naturally that if

44:19

I were a woman of the world, I

44:21

would have to eat pancreas. But to my

44:23

mind, as that young person, I believe that,

44:25

you know, it was a do or die

44:27

moment. So I started eating

44:29

the pancreas. He, in the meantime, starts

44:32

laughing. I'm getting

44:34

sick, literally sick. He's

44:36

laughing. Not nice, right? And I look at him

44:38

and say, why are you laughing? He

44:40

said, because that's chicken. You ate the

44:42

pancreas a while ago. So

44:45

I had literally made myself sick. And

44:48

that set me off on a career where

44:50

if I can literally make myself sick, maybe

44:52

I can literally make myself well. We

45:06

have some research on what I

45:08

call the borderline effect. So

45:11

if you give people medical

45:13

tests, there are some people

45:15

who fall right above the

45:17

line that would say that they have

45:19

it, right? There's always some

45:22

point where you have it and you

45:24

don't. If you liken it to when

45:26

a donut expires, you can

45:28

eat it until March 1st.

45:31

So now it's February 28th.

45:34

And it's 10 o'clock at night. You

45:36

have two more hours to eat the

45:38

donut. And it's ridiculous, right? So

45:41

the point of that being that the

45:43

person right above that cutoff point

45:45

and the person right below are

45:48

the same in all

45:50

meaningful ways. However, one is

45:52

going to get the diagnosis and one isn't.

45:55

And then if you watch them over time,

45:57

what tends to happen is the person who's

45:59

given the diagnosis becomes ill.

46:02

Which is interesting and surprising because

46:05

you'd expect the opposite because a

46:07

person who gets the diagnosis has

46:09

more reason to seek treatment and

46:12

is part of the system. I

46:14

mean, there are two possible explanations. One

46:16

is that when you're above that borderline,

46:19

the body-mind continuum leads you into sickness. The

46:21

other is that our health system just makes

46:23

you sicker and once you interact more with

46:25

it, you become sicker too. And

46:28

those aren't mutually exclusive. I

46:30

have been approached to build the Mindful

46:32

Hospital, which is very exciting for me.

46:35

And you just think of a hospital

46:37

that in essence it hasn't been redesigned

46:39

since it was first invented. You

46:41

have machinery that's updated and so

46:43

on. But when you go

46:45

to the hospital, you walk through the doors and

46:47

now you're stressed. And again, I told you

46:50

that I think stress makes you sicker.

46:52

In this Mindful Hospital, almost everything about

46:55

it would be quite different from the

46:57

experience we have right now. Who would

46:59

design a hospital where you get woken

47:01

up 17 times a night when

47:04

you're trying to sleep? But that's the

47:06

experience I've had with hospitals. Sometimes

47:08

you're awakened so that you can be given a

47:10

sleeping pill.

47:12

One of the things that I

47:14

find most distressing is the whole

47:16

notion of chronic illnesses. When

47:19

you're given a diagnosis that you have

47:21

a chronic illness, most people see that

47:23

as something that's uncontrollable.

47:25

There's nothing that can be done about it. And

47:28

all it really means is that the medical

47:30

world has not yet figured out a way

47:32

to handle it. It certainly doesn't

47:34

mean there's nothing that you can do for

47:37

it. So I started thinking about all

47:39

of the things we can do when we

47:41

have an illness where the medical world can't

47:43

help us. I don't think

47:46

people have a notion of body unity.

47:49

And what I mean by that is that

47:51

anything that affects any part of your body

47:53

is simultaneously affecting

47:56

every part of your body. So

47:58

doing some research now. let's say

48:00

lifting weights. All right,

48:02

so you're lifting weights and you expect

48:05

your triceps, your abs, whatever parts of

48:07

the body are going to prosper from

48:09

this. If you're aware that the

48:11

whole body is one, my

48:13

prediction is that your

48:15

stomach will be stronger and it will

48:18

be measurable down to your calves, your

48:20

toes, and so on. If

48:22

you don't have that belief, then you're not

48:24

going to get the benefit from it. So

48:26

you're doing that study right now? Yeah,

48:28

and when I get the results, I'm going to mail

48:30

them to you right away so you can say, can't

48:33

be. But if

48:35

we go back to chronic illnesses, mindfulness

48:37

is the best thing for our health.

48:39

And so all the while we have

48:41

this chronic illness, we increase our mindfulness,

48:44

our enjoyment, our engagement with the world we're

48:46

going to be affecting our health. Then

48:49

the last thing in this, I call

48:51

it attention to symptom variability. So

48:53

when you are diagnosed with a chronic

48:55

illness, people think that your symptoms are

48:57

going to stay the same or just get

48:59

worse. But it turns out

49:01

nothing moves in only one direction. There

49:04

are always little blips. Imagine the

49:06

stock market is increasing. It doesn't go

49:08

up in a straight line, it'll go

49:10

up, it'll go down a tiny bit, go up. So

49:12

when it's a little better, what's

49:15

happening? Why is it? So all

49:17

we do is we have people,

49:19

we call them periodically throughout the day, throughout

49:21

the week, and we ask them, how is

49:23

the symptom now? Is it better or worse

49:25

than the last time we called and why?

49:28

The and why is the important question. Well,

49:31

this procedure works. There are

49:33

four things that happen. The first,

49:36

when many people have chronic illnesses, they

49:38

feel helpless, which is bad for their health

49:40

and certainly for their happiness. So now you're

49:43

doing something for yourself. Second,

49:45

as soon as you notice that there are times

49:47

where you feel a little better, wow, that's good

49:49

because I thought I was always in maximum pain.

49:51

Third, when you ask the

49:53

question why and you start paying attention to when

49:56

it hurts, when it doesn't, what might be different

49:58

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