Make Your Decision Right: Dr. Ellen Langer on Mindfulness; Ageing; Mind and Body Unity; and Smiling

This is Thank You, Mama, weekly lessons from mothers all around the world. My students already know my dirty little secret, and now you'll know it too, which is that I love reading about Harry and Meghan. And especially love reading about Harry and Meghan since I started teaching strategic communications because they provide me fantastic real-life current pop culture examples for my classes on persuasion, strategic communication, public relations, and others. So At one point last Christmas in New York, I remember I was sick at home reading gossip magazines, and somewhere I read a report by somebody who used to work for them and was complaining how difficult they were. And this person especially complained how they aren't able to make a decision, and even if they manage to make one, they go back and change it and keep changing it. And for me, this was a little personal epiphany because I've always had trouble making decisions. It's quite a difficult process for me, and I've been working on improving this for years. And it really, really struck a chord to read this statement. Somehow it was like, you know what, I'm gonna become better at this. I'll start making decisions and stick to them. And then shortly afterwards, Another little dirty secret. I was scrolling Instagram and I came across a snippet from an interview Dr. Ellen Langer gave to one of the huge podcasts. And in this interview or this snippet, she was talking about making decisions. And I remember her saying, it doesn't matter what you decide, what matters is what you do with your decision. Or to put it in her words, don't make the right decision, make the decision right. And this was so inspiring for me. I Googled Professor Langer and immediately bought her latest book, The Mindful Body: Thinking Your Way to Chronic Health. And the book opened with Dr. Langer writing about her mom and her mom's battle with cancer and how that influenced Dr. Langer's long, long extensive research on mind and body unity and mindfulness. I wished while I was reading to have Dr. Langer as my guest, and now you are my witness that my wishes do come true. And I'm very excited to invite you to listen to this deeply inspiring conversation with Dr. Ellen Langer, one of the most inspiring superstar Harvard psychologists. Hello and welcome to Thank You, Mama. My name is Anna Teiter, and my fabulous guest today is Dr. Ellen Langer. She is widely known as the mother of mindfulness, is a foundational figure in the study of mindfulness outside of meditation traditions. I can't wait to talk about this. Her work challenges the traditional mind-body dualism, emphasizing how mental states directly affect physical outcomes. Dr. Langer is the first woman to ever receive tenure in psychology at Harvard, where she has researched mindfulness in her own lab for over 40 years. Professor Langer has published well over 200 research articles and 13 bestselling books such as Mindfulness, The Mindful Body, The Art of Noticing, Counterclockwise, and The Power of Mindful Learning, in which she has written on the illusion of control, aging, stress, decision-making, and health without meditation. Again, I can't wait to talk about this with you. And she's also a gallery exhibiting artist. Which is fascinating. Dr. Langer, hello and welcome.

Thank you, Ellen. That was a lovely introduction. You said so much, it's not important for me to say anything now.

You know what? No, you will say the most important things. This was just introducing you, and then we'll dive deeper into important topics. Dr. Langer, I want to start a little, maybe rudely, with my own mom. Because in 2000, I was kind of burning out in my corporate job, which I had back then. And I started practicing Tai Chi, which led me to meditation, which I'm still, still doing and has been life-saving for me in any sense, mental and, and physical. And then I told my mom, I was so excited about it. And I would tell her, you should try this, you should try meditating. And my mom, the special person she was, she told me, but Anna, I am constantly in state of meditation. I don't need to practice meditation. And this is why when I read your book, I just clicked so many things with me.

This is the most recent book. Yes.

The Mindful Body. Because I love it that you approach it from my mom's point of view and not us woo-woo spiritual meditative people. I have my side of what she was talking about, but I think you can tell your version of what my mom was talking about.

Yeah. Well, you mentioned woo-woo, and people have to understand that there are many ways of getting to the same place. And meditation, which is wonderful, is very different from what I've been researching for close to 50 years now. Meditation is a practice that you engage in to result in post-meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness, as I study it, isn't a practice. And it's just a way of being that results from realizing you don't know. Now, the interesting thing about not knowing is people don't know that they don't know. So everybody, like your mother, thinks she knows and that she's always in the present. And you have lots of— it's a very sweet instruction when people say, be in the moment. But it's really empty because, again, as with your mother and all other people, when you're not there, you're not there to know you're not there.

But she really was in the moment.

And, oh, at that moment she was in—

she was always in the moment. And I want— I would like you to also talk about something else which I read or heard you say, which is— and when I teach persuasion at my university, this was very important for me to pass on from you to my students because my mom was really always in the moment, and somehow she was just wired that way. She was very liked by people.

Yes. Okay. So now I have a lot to say about that. Yes.

Yes.

You know, certainly some of us are more mindful than others. Hopefully I'm very mindful given that I've been studying it for so many years. And so then your mother doesn't need meditation. Meditation is supposed to just put you in the moment, but the way it puts you in the moment, as I said, is very different from what we do. And it's not better or worse, it's just different. Meditation is wonderful. But again, as you've said, some people see it as too woo-woo. And it's also very time-consuming, you know, to take 20 minutes twice a day out of your day to get back to yourself. So mindfulness, as we study it, is the very simple process of noticing. Now, everybody thinks they notice, again, because they don't notice what they're not noticing. All right. There are two ways to become mindful in our— by our research. One is top-down, the other is bottom-up. Top-down means appreciating, understanding that everything is always changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives. So we can't know. So uncertainty is the rule, not the exception. Nobody knows. Now, many of us, most of us know we don't know a lot of the time, but we think we're supposed to know. Avoid the situation or genuflect to the person who's pretending they know, and so on. We can't know for sure. In fact, much of our knowing comes from science, but science only gives us probabilities. So let me tell you a fun story that I've told 1,000 times now, but still—

How do you not get bored of these stories? Because everybody always asks.

Yeah, no, each time I tell it, it's a little different. Each time I notice something different about the situation. And that makes it mindful. So I was at this horse event and this man asked me if I could watch his horse for him because he was going to get his horse a hot dog. Well, I'm a straight-A student, always was. It's ridiculous. Horses don't eat meat. He came back with the hot dog and the horse ate it. And that's when I knew everything I thought I knew could be wrong, which for me was wonderful because it opened up a world of possibilities. Now, science could not give you the statement, the absolute statement, horses don't eat meat. All science can give you is under these circumstances, these kinds of horses who are fed this amount of food typically don't eat meat. It's too much of a mouthful. So it's reported as horses don't eat meat. And that's the way we learn most things, as these absolutes rather than as probabilities. And when you know their probabilities, which means it's sometimes true, sometimes not, you pay attention to the ongoing situation to see, is this time it's true or not. Now, what I'm also fond of doing to show people that they don't know is to take the thing that everybody is so sure of. How much is 1 and 1?

I read your book, so I'm not a good person, but I will say 2, just to join the game.

Thank you for being helpful. Right. Okay. So we're all taught 1 and 1 is 2. That's the end. In fact, if somebody were to ask you how much is 1 and 1, you'd look at them sort of cross-eyed, but you know, it's ridiculous, right? But 1 and 1, the fact we're most sure of, is not always 2. If you're using a base-10 number system, which is what we're taught in elementary and high school and so on, written as 10, and most people don't care or need to care about number systems. If you take 1 pile of laundry and you add 1 pile of laundry, 1 1 1. You take 1 wad of chewing gum plus 1 wad of chewing gum, 1 1 1. You take 1 cloud plus 1 cloud, 1 1 1. Somebody sent me one the other day that if you take one galaxy plus one galaxy, 1 1 1. Somebody else sent me, if you take one pizza and you add one pizza put on top of it, you have two pizzas. However, if you take one lasagna and you put another lasagna on top of it, 1 1 1. It's just a much bigger lasagna. So my goodness, in the real world, 1 1 doesn't equal 2 as more often as it does. I must tell you, Anna, I was very pleased a while back, I asked chat, Okay. Artificial intelligence. How much is 1 1? And it said 2. Okay. So people aren't stupid for not knowing this. You know, this is what we're taught and we're taught absolutes. We learn them absolutely. And that leads us to be mindless. Now, imagine if somebody outside of this podcast in your real world says to you, Anna, it's unlikely, but how much is 1 1? All of a sudden you have choices. Choices. You can say 1, 10, 2. When you were taught 1 1 2, you have no choice. You're no different from a robot. It's very important because when you realize when you're mindless that you're no different from a robot, and you ask yourself, can robots be happy? Of course not. Robots don't experience positive and negative emotions and so on. So we give up a lot by this absolute learning that leads us to be mindless. Okay, so we can't know. That's top-down. You just accept you don't know, but nobody knows. You don't have to feel bad about not knowing. In fact, when you see somebody who's acting like they know, you know, without making them feel bad, you know, you should be realizing, gee, this person right now at least is being mindless. So the other way of being mindful is bottom-up, is actively notice new things about the things you think you know. So notice 3 new things about your mother. Notice 3 new things when you walk outside. Notice 3 new things about somebody at work, and so on. And as you do this, all of a sudden you see you didn't know it as well as you thought you did. And when you do this over and over again, you become persuaded, gee, everything is always changing. I really can't be sure of anything. So it takes you to the same place where you're going top-down, accepting you can't know, bottom-up where you're teaching yourself you don't know. Now, this knowing, this being mindful is so easy, but hard because of the way we've been taught to be mindless. But when you're mindful and you're actively knowing, the neurons are firing and it's literally and figuratively enlivening. And it's what you're doing whenever you're having fun. You can't have fun unless you're noticing new things, right? If you're doing a crossword puzzle where you already know the answers, it's not fun.

But maybe it's the other way around as well, Dr. Langer. Ellen Langer, because now I'm thinking of my mom again. And she lived across the street from this beautiful supermarket. And she would go every single day into this supermarket. And every single time she entered it, she would be like a child in a chocolate factory. You know, every day she was like, ah, let's see what we're gonna find. And that influenced me. This was one of the big lessons. And I wonder if it's the other way around as well, that if we, if you do allow yourself to notice new things, that will make you happy because you can—

Oh, without question. No, there's no question because you can't be happy as a robot.

Exactly.

And it's also all negative emotions are mindless. Events don't cause stress. Events aren't good. They're not bad. What makes them good or bad are the views we take of them. Now, if you're mindlessly taught that some particular thing is bad, of course, you're going to feel bad. But anything, everything plays in multiple ways. It itself is not good, it's bad, it's nothing. And so the more mindful you are, the more options you have as to how to understand what's going on. So let's say you're at a party, this is a silly example, but it comes to mind for some reason. And there's somebody there who you were going to talk to, but he seems to be a snob. So you feel belittled by it. And if instead of seeing him as a snob, you realized he could also be shy, because when you're acting like a snob and you're acting shy, it's basically the same action. Now, because you decide, well, you know, maybe he is being shy and you go over, and even if he had been a snob, now that you're being so nice to him, a nice friendship might ensue. So when we're mindful, we have multiple understandings of events, That gives us choice. That makes us feel good. So when you're being mindful, you're alive and people can see it. You know, that when we have hard data on this, that when you're mindful, people find you more attractive, more authentic, more charismatic. It's so easy to do. It's the essence of what you're doing when you're having fun. And eventually, you and I will probably talk about the health effects. The earliest studies, we made people more mindful and they live longer. So here, everything you do is improved and it's easy and it's fun. So once you recognize how mindless you've been, and it's very hard. Usually when I teach people to be mindful, the first thing they notice is how mindless everybody else is. Because again, you can't see it in yourself. But it is the one pursuit in which we should all be engaged.

Yeah. And I love it how you, with your work, you are bringing it close to people. We're coming back to the beginning, who are a little either scared or meditation is maybe not their thing. And we unfortunately too often combine these two things together and think you can't be mindful if you're not meditating. Meditation shouldn't be for everybody.

Let me interrupt you. Meditation isn't mindfulness. Meditation is a practice you undergo. Hopefully to become more mindful.

Exactly. But it's— but may— I'm saying maybe some people think without meditation you cannot achieve mindfulness, and it's beautiful that this is what you're doing. You're showing people and giving them practical tools on how to achieve mindfulness.

Yeah, and to understand that, um, that not only is it easy, it's very natural. If you were to come visit me, you've never been to my house, You don't have to practice anything. You'd walk in and you'd notice things. You'd say, oh, did she do those paintings? What is that thing over there? And what books are on the table? Then you would just naturally notice. People travel to see something new.

Exactly.

They spend a lot of money and they call it a vacation. But all they have to do is open up their eyes and be mindful and everything around them is already new.

Yeah, I don't mean to take profit away from the entertainment and travel industry, but, but I want to go back to my mom who was able to every day enter the same store and every single day it felt like something new and she had so much joy with it. And yeah, my husband goes shopping here in, in Vienna for us and he's very proud because he knows the store so well that he can do everything in 2 minutes, but he hates it. And then I'm like, Mom would do the opposite and she loved it.

Yeah, no, that's right. Whether we like or dislike something has nothing to do with the something. It's the way we approach it. So when you think about it, virtually anything you do, whether you're shopping, doing a podcast, reading, eating, playing golf, you can do it mindfully or mindlessly. And the consequences for yourself of doing it mindfully are enormous. And if you sort of ask yourself, if it's worth doing, it's worth showing up for. But the bigger problem, as I said before, is that people are oblivious to how mindless they are. When you're not there, you're not there to know you're not there. And 50 years of research says virtually all of us are not there almost all the time. But the solution is easy. In fact, I have a slide when I used to lecture a lot in person. I still do, but that says virtually all of our problems, whether they're personal, interpersonal, societal, professional, all of our problems are the direct or indirect effect of our mindlessness. Now, I say virtually on the slide because I've been trained as an academic, but really, just between us and the other 60 million people I've spoken to. I mean, all of our problems, which means that, you know, the solution to these problems is at hand.

But how does that lead us now to two topics I'd like us to talk about? Because most of my listeners are women and women who are facing aging and maybe health issues. How do we connect this now to—

well, okay, so health and aging. Yeah. So, you know, I'm 78, and I can tell you it is very exciting being 78, that all of the nonsense that bothered me when I was younger is just gone. I wrote a blog a while ago. I don't remember it completely, but it was sort of, remember you were 2 years old and you scraped your knee and you're crying bloody murder, and then you're 7 years old and Johnny or Janie doesn't send you a Valentine, and you're You're crushed and you're 14 years old and you have some pimples. Oh my God, it's happening. And then at some point you look back and realize these were nothing. And that when you become more mindful, you come to see the control you have over your world. Because once you realize that emotions are choices, emotions are a function of the way you're experiencing an event, you can change that experience. Now, as far as aging itself goes, you know, I was just doing— giving an interview yesterday, and the person says, all these people now, uh, the women you're talking about, are exercising more and buying all this different food and doing all of these things in the hope that is going to delay aging. And it's kind of interesting because to me it's very simple. Rather than spend your time trying to add more years to your life, all you really need to do, in my view, is add more life to your years. All right. And, you know, and there There are advantages wherever you saw disadvantages. You know, I experienced this, gosh, 20 years ago where I was playing tennis. So here I was, 58, and I'm playing tennis with these teenagers. Now, they were faster than I was, the boys. They were stronger than I was, but they weren't as wise as I was. So I didn't have to run around, you know, the whole court because the way they were standing and swinging the racket, told me where the ball was going to go. So, you know, in some sense, it's a glass half full or half empty. You can pay attention to things that seem not as good or you can take those very things and find the advantages in them. And I think the culture, you know, we grow up in a youth culture and I think, you know, everybody is spending great sums of money to to get rid of the wrinkles on their face. And I've done that as well. But I think we need to change, you know, the understanding of those wrinkles to marks of distinction. Yeah.

You know, and experiences.

Yeah, exactly.

If you haven't experienced anything in life, if you never smiled or cried, maybe you would have a smooth face.

No, exactly. Exactly. You know, that people think they want to be younger. And by that, what they really mean is they want the strength and some of the abilities that they had when they were younger. But nobody, if actually given the chance, would give it up, would give up the experiences and the wisdom they've acquired.

Yeah. I have to tell you, I'm only 51, but I'm going through this amazing phase or time. It feels—

I'm really looking forward to what's coming because I'm like, the new and better, if you're doing it the right way.

Because I'm, I've never been this fulfilled, self-assured, um, didn't have to— up and feeling too that I need to prove myself.

Exactly.

Anybody liked by other people.

So many things that you've said just now, Anna, before I forget them, let me, let me speak to them. That as you get older, you come to see that the things that worried you in the past just don't matter. But it's also the case that you have more options available to you. And hopefully you come to see that the game of life, winning the game of life, if there is such a thing, is not getting the best job, making the most money, having the biggest house or any of these things. That people want these things because they think if they have them, people will respect them more. And then they'll like themselves more because of other people's respect. Well, you can short-circuit all of that. You don't need, you know, in studies of billionaires, many, I would probably say most, are unhappy. So the things that you think— I think it's called the Texas curse, which is, I wish you— when you're wishing somebody evil, I wish you what you wish for yourself.

Oh, I know of that one.

Yeah. If you got the thing that you wanted, you'd see that's not what you want at all. And so an example— and this is a silly example, but let's say you're a golfer. And wouldn't it be wonderful if every time I swung that club, I got a hole-in-one? Well, no, it wouldn't be. It would be boring. Exactly.

We lived in Los Angeles for a long time. My husband was in the Hollywood industry, and that was really an eye-opener for me because I've never seen so many insecure, unhappy, unfulfilled people. No matter how successful, beautiful, and wealthy they were, because the more they reach, the more they see this is not actually what they were looking for. They don't understand what they are actually looking for.

Okay, so let me, let Well, let me tell you something. I have many, many findings that are really big, people living, chronic illnesses being healed and so on. But the thing that I came to many decades ago, excuse me, that has stayed with me as more important than any of the rest is the very simple understanding that behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective, or else the actor wouldn't do it. Every time we We do something. There's a reason. Now, if we're doing it mindlessly, we're oblivious to the reason. And when you recognize that, then you end up with more— and I'll give examples in a moment— you end up with more self-respect. And then the big house, a lot of money, and all these things become unnecessary. All right. So people are constantly trying to change each other and change themselves because they don't appreciate that they're doing what they're for some sensible reason or else they wouldn't do it. So let's take me. So I am sadly gullible. I mark the edge of the gullible continuum. I believe everybody. Okay. So let's say my relationship and person says to me, you know, Ellen, it's driving me crazy. You're just too gullible. So I'm going to try to change, but I'm never going to succeed. And the reason I'm not going to succeed is because going forward, my intention is not to be gullible. My intention is to be trusting. And as long as I'm trusting, I'm going at times to be gullible. You are so inconsistent, it probably drives your husband crazy.

You—

nobody intends— you don't wake up in the morning, today I'm going to be gullible, inconsistent, obnoxious, whatever, whatever we think we are. Right. So what is your intention? What did I say? You were inconsistent.

Inconsistent.

You value being flexible. So as long as you value being flexible, you're going to at times seem inconsistent. All right. So the point is, every negative attribution we make for ourselves or for other people has an equally strong but oppositely balanced alternative. For every negative there's a very good positive. So what we did years ago, we gave people 200 of these behavior descriptions and we said, circle those things you keep trying to change about yourself, but you fail. So for me, I'd circle impulsive, gullible, and whatever else. Then you turn the page over and in a mixed-up order are the positive versions of these. Now people are asked, circle those things you really value about yourself. For me, my spontaneity and my being trusting. And that is virtually always going to be the case. Now, so then once you realize this for yourself, you like yourself more. You forgive. You don't come down harshly on yourself as often. And you also understand the relationship. It's funny because people They marry somebody or get involved because the person is all these wonderful things. And then after a while, wait a second, they're all these terrible things. And it's often the same thing. You fell in love with me because I'm so spontaneous, because I'm so flexible, because I'm so trusting. You can't stand me because I'm so inconsistent, impulsive, and gullible, and so on.

Dr. Langer, let's go towards mammoths. The main topic of our podcast. And let's talk about Mama Sylvia. And Mama Sylvia is going to also answer my question about mindfulness and health.

Yes.

Let's start with her life a little bit so we can understand who she was. If you would tell me her life story.

She grew up, grew up middle class. She was pretty.

Was she from New York City like you?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, she was born in Rhode Island.

Okay.

But then ended up in New York. Met my father when she was 13, and they were together from when she was 13, he was 15, until she died. She was not college-educated, but very street-smart, so to speak. And that was the bane of her existence in some sense, because my father was college-educated, and his family, family was critical because she was not. But then she went on to be a very successful person in business, all at their own level, and made a lot of money again, not really, but from where she started. And the whole dynamic in that family changed. She became a big shot after at first they were demeaning her.

What business did she run?

She was a banquet manager, which today is called a party planner.

That's amazing. So she created her own business with that that was successful?

No, no, somebody invited her into their business and then she just made it bigger and better.

How many children did she have?

Two. I have an older sister.

And did she support you going into college after all these experiences?

Oh yeah. No, no, it was— there was never any discussion.

Okay.

I mean, it was just sort of expected, but that was like every other middle-class kid at the time. In fact, I don't think in the first, I don't know, 30 years of my life I ever made a decision. It was all sort of—

it just happened.

Yeah.

And did she work until she retired? She worked her whole life?

Well, she didn't start until I was 13.

Okay.

And she died very young at 57. And she had retired a few years before that.

I'm sorry about that.

No, but you see, even that, even that. So, you know, I've been studying aging for decades. And the advantage of my mother dying young was that the image I have of her is always of a very vital, beautiful woman. And didn't have to go through some of the degradation that elderly people are put through. And it's also the case we only know people in our minds. And so in some ways she's still very much alive and always will be. Yeah.

Do you also notice that your relationship goes on? Because I do with my mom and I spoke to so many women who lost their mothers. And it's interesting that the relationship keeps evolving and changing even though they're not here? No.

Yeah. No. But I'm a little older than you. I think that once I became older than she ever was, it always seemed a little strange to be thinking of her and realizing I'm 20 years older than she was. Yeah. But the seeds that were sown when I was a child, I think, have continued to have a force in my life.

Now we have to decide, do we— because you're talking about the seeds, do we want to go into lessons?

Well, we can talk about lessons because I don't have a whole lot to say about that. My parents were not terribly educated. They weren't extraordinary on any dimension except being extraordinarily supportive and loving.

But that's the most important thing you can get from a parent.

And so it wasn't that they gave me advice. I mean, my mother, I remember her telling me everything can't be in the front when I would be looking in my closet or the refrigerator. And that stayed with me because still I get frustrated. Where is the mustard?

You know, but I read this lesson and I tried to find a deeper message in it. And I wanted to ask you about it. I don't think there must be a deeper philosophy. I want to understand this. Yeah, maybe there is.

Yeah. Well, I would say the deeper lesson was that, you know, maybe it was a mindful lesson because why would one think that everything is going to be easy to find when you're putting stuff away and there's so, so much of it? I don't know. But another thing that she did tell me was that the more you give, the more you get. Not in a, you know, I give you $10, you give me $12 back or whatever. But, and she was very generous. And then the unwritten, that she was always smiling. And that's been, you know, I get photographed a lot for different articles and books and what have you. And this photographer said something to me and said, this is the first time he's had to say that. He said, said, can you stop smiling in some of these pictures? You know, and I remember that my father once said to me when I was a little kid, you know, cheer down, you know, rather than cheer up. You know, so however I was, I attributed basically to them, but not to the explicit. And then a lot of my recent work, and when I say recent now, it's decades, came from my mother. In the book, The Mindful Body, it started, you know, as a memoir. So there are a lot of very personal stories there, and then became a book of stories with lots and lots of research.

But if I may interrupt you, what's beautiful about the book is you don't realize when you start reading it, it's actually full of life wisdom. You are sharing life lessons in it. You're expecting— yeah, it's great. It's— I love that. Surprise element. Sorry, I interrupted you.

No, no, that's good. You can interrupt me anytime to say something nice. At any rate, so my mother, as I said— oh, I didn't say she had breast cancer, and the cancer had metastasized to her pancreas. And that's the endgame, pancreatic cancer. And so the medical world stopped exercising her limbs and basically just assumed she was going to And then magically it was gone. And the medical world couldn't explain it. The psychological world, I thought, could. And that was going to set the stage for my research for the next few decades. And the research is all about, as you suggested in your introduction, mind-body unity. So to make this make sense to people, most people are not thinking mind-body. They, you know, but you grow up in a world of mind-body dualism, where you think you have a mind and you think you have a body and somehow these are separate. Okay. And so the problem had always been in thinking about it, how do you get from the mind, a thought, something fuzzy, to something real, material, the body? And the world couldn't answer that question. And so lots of advancements that might have been made were not made because you couldn't answer that question. And I said, well, mind-body, these are just words. You know, we could have grown up with mind-body and elbows and conceive of people in a very different way. I said, let's— when we recognize they're just words, let's put the mind and body back together as one thing. Now, if it's one thing, the question of how you get from one to the other goes away. Right? Because it's one thing. How do you get from shoulder to shoulder? It doesn't make sense. Right? Then if the mind and body are one thing, wherever you put your mind, you're necessarily putting your body. Now, I've been talking about this since the counterclockwise study, which was the first test of this that I'll explain in a moment. That study was conducted in 1979, written up in 1981. A long time ago. I'm talking about mind-body unity at a time when the culture talks about implicitly mind-body dualism. So then people, you know, it has some influence and people start talking about mind-body connection. I'm not talking about a connection because you have a connection, how are they connected? The same problem still presents itself. The unity idea is the one that's important. So the first test of this was we took a retreat and retrofitted it to 20 years earlier and had old men live there as if they were their younger selves. So they spoke about the past in the present tense. It was sort of like a low-budget Hollywood set. Everything was to bring them back in time. In 5 days of living there, their vision improved. These are men, old, right? Their vision improved, their hearing improved, their memory, their strength, and they looked noticeably younger. It was astonishing. So then we have many studies all now reported in the Mindful Body. The next one, women will enjoy this one. We take chambermaids. This is Ali Smith, who is my student, who is now a professor at Stanford. We ask the chambermaids, how much exercise are you getting? They say they're not getting any exercise. Bizarre, right? But that's because They think of exercise as a surgeon general. What are you doing after work? And after work, they're too tired. We divide them into two groups. It's so simple. We teach one of the groups their work is exercise. We show them making the bed is like working on this or that machine at the gym and so on. So now we have two groups. One group doesn't realize their work is exercise. One group now sees their work as exercise. They weren't working any differently, any harder, less hard, one group or the other. They weren't eating any differently. The only difference, as far as we could tell, was one believed they were— was exercise. As a result of this change in their minds, they lost weight. There was a change in waist-to-hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure, all by changing their mind. We have many of these studies. Let me give you— go to one of the last ones. But they're really— they're fun and powerful, I think. This last one was done more recently with my student, Peter Ungar. So we inflict a wound, a minor wound, because we couldn't— we didn't want to hurt people, but it won't. Individually, a person is in front of a clock. Unbeknownst to that, the clock is rigged. So for a third of the people, the clock is going twice as fast as real time. For a third of the people, the clock is going half as fast as real time. For a third of the people, the clock is real Now, most people would assume that wound is gonna heal whenever that wound heals. What difference does the clock make? But the clock made all the difference in the world. The perception of time determined their healing rather than real time. We have people in a lab, they wake up. I'm big on clock changing. They see the clock, the clock tells them they got 2 hours more sleep than they got, 2 hours fewer, or the amount of sleep they got, biological and cognitive function following perceived amount. To sleep. So we have many, many of these studies that one after the other shows us with all sorts of diseases how powerful our minds are.

And you talk a lot about labeling, which I think is so, so, so important because this is so connected to this. If we label a certain thing one way, one thing or the other, it directly influences.

Yeah, but go back to what you're saying before where I said you see somebody, you can see them as a snob or shy. That label then determines your reaction to him, and his reaction to you is a function not of his being shy or a snob, but, you know, however you're behaving towards him. Yes. Now, we need labels and we need categories, but we have to be careful. How much? Yeah, exactly. So much information out there, we just shouldn't take the categories too seriously. Yeah. And that's what happens, that, you know, we buy into it and Bad things happen.

But Dr. Langer, I think we have to go back to Mom Sylvia because we only told half of the story, because her cancer magically disappeared, but we didn't say what happened next, which is how you started working with mindfulness and labels. Yeah.

Oh, I can't believe I left out the most important part. Okay, so she has cancer, it metastasizes to her pancreas, the medical world writes her off. And then one day it was totally gone. Just totally gone. So somehow she had made herself well. And, you know, we have this thing, people, everybody has heard about spontaneous remissions. In fact, we all know people who the medical world, and, you know, they're very smart, caring people, but wrong a lot. You know, where they say you have 3 months to live and 4 years later you're still breathing and enjoying life. And go back to science, that science only gives us probabilities. You cannot know how long somebody is going to live. You cannot know if a medicine is going to be good for you. It can be good for most people, but not everybody. And you don't know if you're more similar to the ones for whom it's good or for the— that's why you have to tune in. You have to recognize how you feel. And the fact that if you feel good and the medical world or your friends are telling you no, you're not good, I think that we should question the data. So anyway, there was another study.

But wait, we still didn't finish mom's story.

Now what's the rest of the mom?

So now she's still in remission, but then—

Well, okay, so yes. You read the book carefully.

No, but this is so important.

No, it is right now. It is because she leaves the hospital now cancer-free, but everybody around her is expecting the cancer to come back. And eventually cancer came back, and that led to another set of studies on the difference between remission and cure. And there's a lot that I have in the book where we go from bad to good, but there's a better than better way that most people don't even get to. So let's take remission cure. And I discovered this. My friend Eva had a bad set of bad bat with cancer, very unusual cancer, right? And I went to see her and I said, so how are you? And she said she just came back from Mass General. And her cancer's in remission. And for whatever reason, at that moment it struck me, wait a second, if I went and had the very same tests, my guess is they'd tell me I don't have cancer. Why is it I don't have it, but she has it in remission? Now, remission is better than having an active cancer, but it's not nearly as good as seeing yourself as cured. I spent a lot of time thinking about that, that if you have cancer and the cancer is gone, if cancer comes back, it's not going to be the same cancer in many ways. It will be in some ways the same and why we call it cancer, but in some ways different. If you want to see all cancers as the same, then you'd see yourself as in remission. If you notice the differences, and the example I use is if you did, have you ever had a cold? Anna?

Oh, yes, many times.

Okay. Now, but the cold is now in remission. Well, you don't see the cold is in remission.

You don't see— no.

And when you get another cold, it's a different cold. And in fact, you become less afraid of colds because, you know, you've handled many of them.

It comes and goes. Yeah.

If you go to women on a breast cancer awareness walk and simply find out if they see their cancer is in remission or cured, cured. And then what we do is follow up and, you know, 6 months later, and those who saw it cured as in remission, as, as opposed to in remission, were happier and healthier on every measure that we took.

Yeah. And it's just the labels. We are coming back to the labels.

Exactly. Exactly.

But also, I just had my friends over who are both doctors, medical doctors, and it was in, we talked about all these things and they said, you We all have cancer cells in our bodies. And this is something I keep reading, and it's just a question to when and with whom and why. Will it grow or not?

Well, you see, it's interesting that a lot— some of the things that the medical world has been inadvertently forced to do is to take measures to protect themselves from lawsuits. All right. So they used to call it the hanging crate philosophy back centuries go. You know, somebody is dying, they hang black crepe. That's where the expression comes from. Now, if the doctor says the person is going to die and the person lives, everybody is thrilled.

Yeah.

If the doctor says the person is going to live and then the person dies, everybody blames the doctor. And so there was a way that the medical profession was inadvertently forced to be more pessimistic. Now, Now, before we knew that one's attitudes affected one's health, that was fine. You know, that doesn't matter if you think you're going to live, you're going to die, it's going to happen no matter what. Once we realize, no, it's not going to happen no matter what, your thoughts and attitudes, your mindfulness have a very great effect on your health. It's no longer appropriate. And so they had come up with a 5-year rule, say, for breast cancer, that if a woman is free of cancer for 5 years, then finally she's cancer-free. Yes, but exactly. But the 5 years is not based on anything. And even if it were, which it's not, but even if it were, it's not going to be true for everybody. Nevertheless, the worry about it is bad for your health.

It's terrible for your health. And then they send you my— unfortunately, so many cancers in my family, and my husband had testicular cancer. And the constant— they oversent people to tests and CT scans and everything. And my father also had bladder and later kidney cancer. And I watched him and I started telling him, please don't go to these exams anymore. You're 80, you know, I'm sorry to be brutal. It's a better life quality for you to not go through these awful exams and sit in these waiting rooms and be labeled as cancer patient.

I agree with everything you're saying, except we have to give them their due, that these tests are often very important in finding tumors and what have you. So it's not so clear-cut, but it is the case that a friend of mine, for example, had these tests recently and found out she had a spot on her liver and her vagina. A spot. Now, I don't know what a spot means, but the point of my statement is that without a baseline, we don't know if those spots had gotten smaller over time, if those spots had been there for 50 years, We can't assess this. And so I think basically if everyone became more mindful, more aware that everything we know is a maybe, that would cut through a lot of the fear and negative effects of this information. It's a best guess, sometimes not a good guess.

But the best guess. Dr. Langer, I think this is a beautiful place for us to wrap it up.

Wrap it up.

Wrap it up. I could talk to you for another 2 hours, but I don't want to steal more of your time. I really want to leave this hanging that we don't actually know.

Yeah, we don't. We can't be sure of it. That makes everything That makes everything new, everything exciting. Yes, the way it was when we were little kids, except with the wisdom of knowing that the things we're afraid of are usually not worthy of that fear.

I want to go back to Mom Sylvia and something that I skipped while we were talking about her lessons. You were talking about her smiling, but what you wrote to me is how to be assertive while smiling.

Yeah. Well, you know, when you're mindful, you know why you're doing what you're doing. You don't think that you're the best at doing it. You don't think there aren't other ways. You know, in some sense, there's no reason not to smile. You know, so when I was a little kid and I was smiling all the time, and this adult once said to me, why are you always smiling? So I stopped smiling. Why aren't you smiling? Because it was clear you weren't supposed to be smiling. I mean, it wasn't a funeral. It was just a normal day. And then I got a little older, not much older. And when asked not the same question, but the implication was the same, my response now was very different. Why aren't you smiling? And it turns out that there's data, not from our lab, but that smiling is highly correlated with longevity, as you can imagine, for a million reasons. When you smile, people approach you. When they approach you, you're being nurtured. Not only that, there are material changes, right? People like people who are smiling, so they're going to hire you, be nicer to you, trust you, all of the things that lead to our personal success.

But we also know that when we smile, it does something. I don't know exactly.

Oh, yes. Well, it's highly important. No, you see, it's so hard for people to fully understand mind-body unity.

Okay.

It's all happening simultaneously. Of course, when you're smiling, your brain is different, your toes are different from when you're not smiling. We just don't look at the subtle differences in our— it's all one thing. I'm not suggesting that there's nothing going on under the skin. Of course there is. We have a very intricate psychophysiology. However, everything that's happening on any level is happening simultaneously on every level. You lift your arm, that's going to make you feel slightly different. Your brain is going to— everything is more or less coordinated. So there.

Yeah. So there. Thank you so much.

My pleasure.

How endlessly inspiring. And thank you for all this work and all your years that you've invested into this. Because you've really, you're changing the world one person at a time.

Oh, if there are many people listening, maybe more than one. That would be the hope.

Yes, yes, yes. And reading, you know, I want people to read your books and think about all these topics and change, little change by little change. And we can really, and we, if we all become mindful and if we all start smiling, imagine what the world would be like.

Place to end. Thank you.

Thank you so much again for being my guest. If you enjoy Thank You Mama and want to help it grow, please take the 2 seconds to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps. If you'd like to get in touch, you can send me a mail at info@thankyoumama.net. You can also find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter under Anna Tijder. That's T-A-J-D-E-R. This was Thank You Mama. Come back next week, subscribe, and tell your friends.