9 Mindful Lessons on Goals, Burnout, and Self-Confidence - Dr. Ellen Langer

A goal should just guide. It's, it's a possibility. There's nothing wrong with changing your goals. That reason alone is why we should have all our goals as tentative, as maybes.

Hey, welcome back, or welcome if it's your first time here. I'm really glad to have you here. This is a space where we have honest conversations about ourselves and our lives, conversations that can help us see things a little bit clearer and maybe a little bit differently. So make sure that you subscribe. Also, if it resonates with you, share it with someone else who might need it too. All right, let's get into today's conversation. Hello, Dr. Ellen Langer. How are you today?

I'm good. How are you?

Perfect. I'm also doing great. And thank you again for this time and this conversation. Our today's episode is 2 parts. The first part is about answering a question from one of our viewers that was posted in the comments, and the second part is just moving forward with our today's topic, which is about goals and reaching goals and burnout. So the question— is that okay?

Sounds good.

Of course, I don't remember what I said last time, but I am going to remind you. I'm going to remind you, no worries. So in the last episode, you said something about about being more positive, positively talking to ourselves, and having a more positive inner voice and being more confident. And you said that for each and every negative description that we have about ourselves, there is an equally positive, powerful—

Yeah, this, Nisha, this is very, very important to me. After doing research for decades, I came up with this realization that changed everything and is more important than, in many ways, lots of the big studies that I did. So the idea is none of us go forward to do negative things. You don't wake up in the morning, say, today I'm going to be clumsy, nasty, aggressive, whatever. And so the point of that is that Everything we do makes sense from our perspective, or else we wouldn't do it. Now, when going forward, it makes sense. But if you do it reasonably mindlessly, you are oblivious to exactly why you did it. When you look back at your behavior, if you tend to be negative, you take a negative view. So, for example, I personally am very gullible. Now, nobody intends to be gullible, but that's because I'm very trusting. So going forward, I'm doing what I'm doing because I'm trusting. But looking back at what I did, I can take myself to task for being gullible, which is why I was taken by two psychopaths. Cost me a lot of money. So to realize every single negative adjective, description, adverb we use to describe ourselves has an equally strong but oppositely balanced alternative. For every negative, there is a positive. So for being gullible, it's because you're trusting. For being inconsistent, it's because you're flexible. For being boring, it's because you value being stable. Well, you know, so once we see why we actually did what we did, we no longer take ourselves to task. We no longer feel bad about ourselves. And we should do this with other people also. Because then it will improve all sorts of relationships. So, for instance, let's say my being gullible drives you crazy. Now, if you say to yourself, realize that no one intentionally is gullible. What am I intending? I'm intending to be trusting. Now you feel differently about it. And if you ever want to change anybody's behavior, your own or anybody else's, you have to change it from the perspective from which it's engaged. So if you want me to stop being gullible, you have to get me to stop valuing being trusting. If I want to stop you from being so damn inconsistent, I have to get you to stop valuing being flexible. And then life just takes on a whole different meaning. It turns out, and when we first meet people and we fall in love, We tend to see everything that they're doing in this positive light. And then sometimes things happen for whatever reasons. And then we take that very thing that we cherished and now we see it as negative. You know, it's wonderful that I'm trusted. Who wouldn't love that? And, you know, but— and so you fell in love with me. Then down the road, you look at my behavior. Oh, she's so gullible. And the relationship starts to sour. So this is probably the most important thing for our relationships to other people and our relationships to ourselves.

That's super interesting. So the question that arises is that what draws the line here between like describing more positively the things that we are thinking about ourselves and becoming maybe a narcissistic person?

No, no. To understand why you did something shouldn't make you narcissistic. You know, the opposite of taking yourself apart doesn't mean excessively loving yourself. It just means understanding yourself. And why should we ever opt for not understanding ourselves? I don't see why it would lead to anything narcissistic. You know, when people are narcissistic, um, it stems from an insecurity, and oddly, that insecurity stems from them not understanding why they did what they did going forward. So in fact, if you pay attention to what I'm saying, you'd become less narcissistic rather than more narcissistic, I believe.

Could you give me an example that I can— that can help me differentiate between being narcissistic or— and not being narcissistic and narcissistic and applying what you're saying?

Um, okay, so let's take being gullible. So I go and I think I'm gullible and I feel bad about myself, I feel weak. Um, now being more mindful, I realize being gullible is being trusting. Why should being trusting lead you to be narcissistic? It just means that you're no longer taking yourself to task.

So what if I'm really doing something negatively?

Well, what does that mean? No, no, no.

You see, like I have some very negative characteristics and I just want to put a positive spin on it. Like what if I'm a mean person?

Oh, oh, oh, people. No, no, no, no, no. People, yeah, people aren't— don't start off being mean. What they're doing makes sense. And if you don't see the sense it makes, then perhaps you get angry and negative things happen. But for all of us, what we do is sensible or else we wouldn't do it. Right? Why would you wake up in the morning and say, today I'm going to be mean? Now, if being mean to you means being strong, then we just have a definitional problem. Okay.

Yeah, makes sense. Perfect. So moving on to the next topic, which is our today's topic, I want to start talking about goals, reaching goals, setting goals. So from mindfulness perspective, from Ellen Langer's perspective, what do we people usually misunderstand about goals? Like, for example, this year I want to have, I don't know, I want to gain a million dollars. So what do we misunderstand?

Yeah, okay, so I've got it. So many people say you should have goals. Goals should guide our behavior, not govern our behavior. So whenever you have a goal, you're talking about something in the future. Excuse me. We don't know what the future will bring. And so you don't want to mindlessly go forward with something that no longer makes sense to you. And, and that leads to a lot of unhappiness. So it's fine to say, you know, you're young, gee, it'd be fun to be a doctor. And so then you start to go to school and you see it's a lot of schooling and you like being an athlete or being a musician and there doesn't seem to be time for all of it. It's time to rethink. What it is you want. So again, the idea is a goal should just guide. It's, it's a possibility, um, for us. It's not something etched in stone because we don't know what tomorrow will bring.

So isn't it like being inconsistent sometimes? Like, uh, what if just the path We have this goal and the path, path toward our goal is becoming a little bit difficult and we lean to—

No, so remember, nobody is intentionally inconsistent. What they're being is flexible. Now, you know, there's nothing wrong with changing your goals. You know, you can, let's go back to this person who wanted to be a medical doctor and decides it got in the way with their music and then became the world's leading guitarist. What would be wrong with that?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Actually, that's better than being a medical doctor. But the thing is—

well, no, you know, one isn't better than the other. But the point is, the important point to realize is all of our goals are made at time one. About time 2, something in the future. We can't predict what life is going to be like at time 2. And so that reason alone is why we should have all our goals as tentative, as maybes, all right, to guide us. And then we get more information and we see the goal no longer made sense. And then you change your goal. To stick with something that doesn't make sense is mindless and leads to unhappiness.

Okay, so when life gets hard and we are moving toward our goal, we should just see if it makes sense to continue or not.

Yeah, but it doesn't— yeah, but what you're raising is you make it sound like I'm saying people should give up easily.

No, no, no, I'm not. I'm just trying No, I understand.

I understand. But it sounds like you're not making it sound like— So I'm not saying we should give up easily or we should march through whatever the difficulty is. We should evaluate it at the time we're experiencing it. And very often you give up because what you do is imagine it's going to continue being awful. And it's not that right now I can't take it. You know, it's just that thinking my life is going to be like this, you know, forever makes it hard. So let's go back to our doctor. And he's got to do a lot of reading. And if he believes that he's never going to get a chance to do anything else, that's all about the future, not about now, not about this week. And so if he says, well, this week is kind of fun, I don't have a whole lot to do yet anyway, I haven't fallen in love, I'm away from my parents, so I have the time and nobody is bothering me, you're more likely to go forward towards that goal. But remember, there, there's no endpoint that's necessarily better than any other endpoint. You know, it's interesting. So I just wrote a book. It's a children's book, but I actually wrote it for adults and it's called Finding Happy. Let me tell you the story behind this. I was at a cocktail party, at a dinner party, actually, with very high-status, powerful, affluent people. Right. And the conversation got around to antidepressants. And I was shocked that I was the only person there who had never taken antidepressants. And then I thought, oh my goodness, what chance do kids have in this world if all their parents are depressed? Now, people think in order to be happy, you need money, power, status. And here I had the example of all these people who had money, status, and power and being miserable. So those things don't lead us to be happy. What actually leads us to be happy, you know, one of several things, is what we were just talking about. If you know why you're doing what you're doing, you don't come down hard on yourself. If you extend that to other people as well, you end up with friends, you feel cared for, and you're doing a lot of caring. That's the path to being happy. So people, you know, want money and status so other people will respect them. Why do you give a damn about other people respecting you? Because presumably then you're going to respect yourself. And what I'm suggesting is there's a much easier way to get to this. So when you get to this, you realize you don't have to be that famous artist, that famous athlete, that rich businessperson, because all they're doing is keeping themselves busy with the intention of, I'll like myself better if I have more money than the person next to me, which tends out to be a fallacy by and large.

So can I translate what you're saying to this example that I am, let's say I have a goal for 2026 to earn $1 million and Halfway around the way, I lose my motivation. Yeah.

So, you know, if the loss of motivation is at least 5 minutes, it passes. It's not a problem. But if you find you're pursuing something that's no longer interesting to you, you have, to my mind, only 2 choices. One is to do something else, or two is to find a way for it to be interesting. What people need to understand is that things in and of themselves are neither interesting, boring, exciting, frightening. Things are nothing until we make them so. It's the way we understand events. And so if you found a way to do something and it's no longer pleasing, find another way of doing it, or do something else. You know, I used to tell my students— this is before everybody had these giant TVs and everybody was always going to the movies— and there would be people who I'd see, they'd leave the movie and all they would do is take it apart. That was the stupidest, the most boring, you know, whatever film I've ever seen. Now, for some people that's fun, but for those who really were bored You know, life is precious. All we have are moments. And to waste 2 hours, an hour and 45, however long the film is, being bored or unhappy seems to me silly. Only 2 choices: leave the theater and do something else that's fun, or find a way of enjoying what it is you're watching. You know, I've enjoyed the most ridiculous performances. I was, when I was young, I was living in Augusta, Georgia for a short while in a trailer. And they didn't have anything on television. And so I was watching the Beverly Hillbillies. And, you know, this was kind of moronic. But the way I watched it was not the way I would watch something you know, of superior quality. I asked myself questions. Who finds this interesting? Why do they find it interesting? Why did they do it this way rather than that way? You know, and so on. And the more questions I asked of what was happening, the more I ended up enjoying it. I don't mean to disparage the Beverly Hills. The point of it is that anything can be made interesting or boring. I might have told you this already. Years and years ago, when hitchhiking was still not to be feared, you know, the way it is today, I was driving in Italy and we saw these two young people with t-shirts and the t-shirt said New York on it. Did I tell you this? Okay, well, nobody from New York would wear a t-shirt that says New York. So we picked up the kids who are hitchhiking, and I asked the question, so how did you like New York? Now, New York might be the most exciting city in the world, or at least up there with Paris and name 3. All right. This young man said he didn't like it because it was boring. Boring. There are lots of reasons not to like it, but not because it's boring. Okay. Is he took something that was, you know, to so many minds, fabulously exciting, reduced it to nothing, didn't engage it. The alternative is, you know, imagine there's a— you're at a farm and you have all this wheat. And to the farmer, they notice the tiny differences, you know, in different parts of the field and so on. But to me, from New York, it was just a lot of wheat. Okay? So it, whatever the it is, itself isn't exciting or boring. The way we understand it makes it exciting or boring. So if you're at that movie and you're bored, make it exciting. If you can't figure out how to make it exciting, leave and go do something else that's more to your liking.

Exactly. Then it begs another question. What do you think about burnout?

Burnout is mindless. Okay, so you have a lot of burnout in the medical world. And, you know, so what happens is if every time as a nurse, doctor, whomever, you see Mrs. Jones and you expect Mrs. Jones to be exactly the way she was the last time you saw her yesterday, and you don't notice anything new about her, it's boring. And that's really, in essence, all burnout is. So if each time you saw Mrs. Jones, you noticed the way she was different— different today, different this afternoon from the way she was in the morning— that noticing leads the neurons to fire, and it's literally and figuratively enlivening for the person who's being mindful. Though it's interesting because you have on the one end people who are stressed, on the other end people who are bored or burnt out. And the stress is, you know, one way of dealing with that stress is to recognize the way the situation is like all other situations you've been in, not this totally unknown, scary thing. And the way to make the boring thing more exciting is to notice the ways it's different. Right. So an example I've used, I've been at Harvard a long time, and I've taught a version of the same course for a long time. It's always different, but the shell of it is more or less the same. I could go in September before classes begin and get myself stressed. Here I go. I don't know who these kids are. I don't know if they're going to like me, if they're going to understand what I'm saying, and work myself up and be stressed. Or I could say, well, I've taught this course so many times. They're all around 20 years old. They don't know what I'm saying. Then they learn what I'm saying. So I could take the same situation, make it same old, same old, and be stressed. Make it brand new and be same old, same old and be bored. Brand new and make it best, or mix and match in some more meaningful way. It's not— it's our emotions are not a function of the situation. Situations and people don't make us feel any particular way. Our feelings stem from the way we understand the situation. So if you understand it as same old, same old, nothing new here, you're going to be bored. If you understand it as, oh my God, everything about this is new and unfamiliar, you may very well be stressed.

Interesting. I have another question about reaching goals, which is more related to age. So for example, right now I'm 33, and I sometimes, I think that maybe I should go back to the university, but I I can't stop thinking that I'm too old to go back to the university and it's too late. So I put off a lot of goals just because I think it's too late for me. What do you think about goals and age?

Yeah. Well, okay. So if you want to feel a particular way, then you have to ask yourself different questions. You know, if you say, what are all the reasons at my age I shouldn't go back to school? Let's— you generate those reasons, you're not going to want to go back to school. If you say, what are all the reasons going back to school would be wonderful, you're going to feel differently. Your feelings result from your views. Take a different view, you'll have a different feeling. I think it's all— wait, it's also, um, find instances of people. There are many people who go back to school later in life. They have programs for, you know, for older people to promote this. So find those people. And so you don't feel, you know, like a duck out of water or a fish out of water, whatever's out of water.

So would you say the same thing for every goal at any age?

Yeah, I think so. I went to the dentist yesterday and we discussed a choice of different procedures and we both settled on one of them. And then I asked him, I said, if I were 50 years old, would you recommend the same thing? And because, you know, why? Nobody knows how long they're going to live or what tomorrow is going to feel like. So yeah, I think using age as a determinant of what we do within reason is, is not the best criteria. You know, on the other hand, I use this as an example of age-related cues out there. If I were in a fancy store and I go to buy a miniskirt, Hopefully they won't let me walk out of the store with it because it's age inappropriate. But, you know, I could say, who the hell cares? You know, so it's, you know, is an awareness is fine that most people of my age, 78, are not wearing miniskirts. And if I want not to to feel odd in this way, then I don't wear the miniskirt. But I could also say, who says what's age-appropriate, you know, and then do what I want.

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