Mindfulness, Aging, and the Power of Possibility with Dr. Ellen Langer
In this extensive interview, Harvard psychologist Dr. Ellen Langer discusses her lifelong work on mindfulness and mindlessness, illustrating how paying attention to the present moment reshapes health, behavior, and society. She contrasts mindfulness with meditation, explains the mind‑body unity theory, and shares findings from her Counterclockwise aging study and numerous field experiments (e.g., chambermaid exercise perception, orchestra performance, donut choice, wound‑healing clock manipulation). The conversation moves through practical applications: how to reframe everyday choices, the role of uncertainty, the impact of labels (remission vs cure, IQ cut‑offs), social media use, education, leadership, and chronic illness management. Langer emphasizes that most ills stem from mindlessness, that small shifts in perception can produce measurable physiological changes, and that fostering mindful awareness—by noticing new details, questioning assumptions, and encouraging others to do the same—can reduce stress, improve health, and create more compassionate societies. The interview also touches on personal anecdotes, gender dynamics in academia, the influence of money and power, and strategies for dealing with criticism and societal resistance.
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I am now sitting with the first tenured woman of psychology in Harvard. The mother of mindfulness, Dr. Ellen Langer.
Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer showed that mental attitude can reverse the effects of aging. The author of more than 200 research articles on human behavior. She's written 13 books including Mindfulness, On Becoming an Artist, and Counterclockwise. From a very early age, there'd be some little friend who was suffering from whatever little kids suffer from. I would step in and try to show her another way of looking at it and sort of became who I am, what I did.
This book, The Mindful Body.
The Mindful Body started off as a memoir. I believe that stress is the major source of our illness, over and above diet, genetics, even treatment. Decades ago, they didn't believe that psychology mattered at all. I made myself sick. My mother made herself well. This sowed the seeds for what was eventually going to be my mind-body unity theory. Since we're little kids, everything is conspiring against us. You're taught right and wrong as if these are completely different. This massive misunderstanding where people think they want complete success, not knowing that if they had complete success, life would be empty. And the problem is that we're all taught absolutes that we think are unchanging. When you're mindful, you have choices. When you're mindless, you don't. Everything looks different from different perspectives. Uncertainty is the rule, not the exception. And you don't have to feel bad about not knowing, because nobody knows.
All right everybody, welcome to another episode of Mislabeled. If you're watching this and you can please like, subscribe, and comment, that would mean the world. Specifically a subscription, as that very much helps the algorithm. We are putting in a lot, a lot of work, as you can see. The episode you're about to watch was shot this past week in Boston with the great Dr. Ellen Langer. Dr. Langer is the first female professor of psychology to be tenured at Harvard. She's been teaching there for over 40 years. She has 3 Distinguished Scientist Awards and was awarded the Liberty Genius Science Award, has authored 13+ books, and has written hundreds and hundreds of articles. Her most recent book, The Mindful Body, is incredible. I personally read it, off the hook amazing. She's commonly known as the mother of mindfulness and psychology. Learned a host of new things, has given me a tremendously new outlook on life and the way I've seen different scenarios. Highly, highly recommend everyone to watch this. Really, really helpful in going through difficult times, repositioning, reframing, reseeing your life in positive ways that really, really help you. So I encourage everyone to tune into this one. Going to drop the episode right now. It is a must-watch. I hope you all enjoy. So I want to just start, though, a little bit from the beginning because there's a lot of people watching this that probably don't know who you are. No, it is definitely possible that they don't because my audience is not necessarily the school type. And, you know, so either way, I want to start up. Where did you, uh, grow up?
I haven't—
you haven't?
No. Um, in New York. I was born in the Bronx and moved when I was very young to Westchester, Yonkers.
I had read somewhere that you're born in Brooklyn. False.
No, fake news.
Totally fake news.
Got it.
Um, you grew up in a Jewish home, correct?
Yes, I did.
How would you say that growing up in a Jewish home affected your— contributed, I should say, towards your work that you're doing now?
Yeah, that's an interesting question. People don't realize you only grow up in one place, so you don't have a basis of comparison. So you don't know if anything you're doing would have been different if it weren't a Jewish home. For example, my parents were not religious. Uh, we would, um, go to temple on the holidays. And I remember I'd be dressed in something brand new and basically sitting outside, you know. So I didn't have a very extensive Jewish education, but have always felt very Jewish in a non-religious way. And, you know, and I actually, that I have a dear friend when she was at Harvard who was very religious. And for the time she was at Harvard, then I too was religious. Really? But only meaning that I actually knew when the different holidays were taking place.
Got it. That's very, very cool. We have a big one coming up now, actually.
Yeah, I know that.
So that's exciting. And you told me you're giving me a gift after we leave.
That's right.
So I'm excited for this. We'll call it a Hanukkah gift. You're referred to commonly as the mother of mindfulness. You talk about how your mother was a big catalyst for how you got started on this journey.
Yeah.
What specifically?
Well, there are several things about that. The first is, and I don't know if this was typical of a Jewish household, but I grew up with enormously supportive parents. I think my mother would have had me laminated if she could have, you know. And so I was happy. And that— I certainly was not the only child that I spent time with that was happy, but I seemed to be happier. And so from a very early age, there'd be some little friend who was suffering from whatever little kids suffer from, and I would step in and try to show her another way of looking at it. And, you know, this sort of became who I am, what I did. But the more important part relative, relevant to The Mindful Body is my parents, my mother's episode with cancer. Now, this is interesting. There were two, first of all, The Mindful Body started off as a memoir. So there are lots of very personal stories in it. And there were two stories that I'll share with you now, one about my mother and one about a marriage that I had, that in some sense sowed the seeds for lots of the theory that I was going to study and do experiments regarding for the last several decades. So let me start with the one not about my mother. So I was secretly married when I was obscenely young. And we went to Paris on our honeymoon. And he, my ex-husband, was much more sophisticated than I. That's relevant to the story because we were out to dinner and I ordered the mixed grill. One of the items One of the items on the mixed grill was a pancreas. Gene, which of these is the pancreas? He pointed to it. I ate everything else. And this is probably Jewish. I'm a big eater. And now I eat everything on the plate. Now I eat the pancreas and I start getting sick, literally. He starts laughing. This was not appropriate for newlyweds. And I said, why are you laughing? And he was laughing because I was getting sick. Eating chicken, I had eaten the pancreas a long time ago and didn't realize it. So I had made myself sick. Now, and I've said this on other podcasts, I'm probably the only person who has two pancreas stories. So now the story with my mother. My mother had breast cancer and the cancer had metastasized to her pancreas and that's the endgame, right? The medical world just wrote her off. She was no longer getting any exercise or anything else that would be important, but not for someone who is very close to dying. And then magically it was gone. And the medical world couldn't explain it. So here we had, I made myself sick, my mother made herself well. And this sowed the seeds for what was eventually going to be my mind-body unity theory. Which is very simple. We talk mind and body, they're just words. And the problem by having a mind and a body is How do you get from the mind, something fuzzy, to the body, something material? Nobody can explain that. I thought, well, okay, let's not bother with explanations. They're just words again. Let's put the two together. And if we make the mind and body a single unit, then wherever you put the mind, you're necessarily putting the body, which gives us enormous control over our health. And also our well-being. And many of the studies, all of the studies to date are reported in The Mindful Body, which goes beyond mind-body unity. But an example of one, the first one we did is called the Counterclockwise Study. And I'm happy to tell you this is a famous study. It's not obnoxious to call my own study famous because if you watch The Simpsons Go to Havana, they actually talk about the study. So you know you've made it when The Simpsons want to talk about it.
I also know I've made it. I'm sitting here with you.
Okay, there you go.
I'm gonna run back to all my friends who are Harvard graduates and be like, listen, I never went to Harvard or any top college, but you have a tenured Harvard, you know.
Anyway, all right. So the study, what we did was we retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier. And we had elderly men, these are men around 80. But that was when 80 was 80, not the new 60. Right. They were old. Live there for a week as if they were their younger selves. So they would speak about past events as if they were just unfolding. They watched movies from the past, talked about current events, you know, Castro, Gorbachev, you know, whatever, as if it was just taking place. Just in a little less than a week, we found their vision improved, their hearing improved, their memory, their strength, and they looked noticeably younger. Without any medical intervention. And to this day, now this was done many decades ago, and still to this day I have not heard of hearing in an elderly person's, for an elderly person improving without medical intervention. So we put the mind back. Now, you know, some people have taken issue with this. You can't make people younger. I'm not turning the clock back in any literal way, but So much of what these people, what all of us think we can't do, we don't have evidence that in fact— in fact, you can never— science can never show that something can't be. What you can do is try something, and if it doesn't work, okay, so that isn't possible. But you can show that there's no possible answer to whatever the question is.
So my only question, you know, obviously this concept of mindfulness, you— It ties into a lot of different aspects. There's probably like 5 to 7 core themes that, from what I've read, that you really tie into mindfulness and how mindfulness affects things. But for people watching this, and I know this is what I thought originally, was that mindfulness was like meditation.
Meditation, yes. So could you just explain what mindfulness is? But then we should get back to the mind-body unit.
Yes, for sure.
Because that's— okay. All right, so mindfulness is the very simple process of actively noticing new things. Now when you think you know, you don't notice anything because why bother looking? You already know. And the bottom line is that uncertainty is the rule, not the exception. Everything is changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives, so you can't know, right? And once you realize that, You came to my house. This is the first time you've been here. You didn't have to meditate. You didn't have to practice. You didn't have to do anything. You walked in, it was all new. You notice the books and say, look what she's reading. There's a painting. Did she do that painting? What is that thing over there?
It's a beautiful house.
Thank you. Everything is new. So there are really two ways to become mindful. One is top-down. I'll explain what this means in a moment. The other is bottom-up. So the top-down is really once you accept you don't know and you don't feel bad about knowing, not knowing, because nobody knows. Nobody can know for sure. So you don't know, everything is new. Bottom-up is to take things that you think you know and notice new things about them. So walk outside and notice 3 new things and be surprised because you're walking outside every single day of, you know, as long as you've lived wherever you are. The person you live with, if you live with anybody, or a close friend, or somebody at work. Notice 3 new things about them. And things come alive again. And when you do that often enough, you see, you just don't know as often as you do. Now, I start lots of lectures on this by asking people to answer a question that everybody thinks they know. So let me ask you, and half of the people who are listening to us have probably heard this, Which is fine, but the other half haven't. How much is 1 1?
2.
Okay. Now, it is the case that there are times 1 1 is 2, but 1 1 is not always 2. 1 1 is 2 if you're using a base 10 number system. If you're using a base 2 number system, 1 1 is written as 10. Now, nobody cares about number systems, so let's get down to it. If you take 1 pile of laundry and you add 1 pile of laundry, 1 1 is 1. You take 1 watt of chewing gum, you add 1 watt of chewing gum, 1 1 is 1. You take 1 drop of water, you add 1 drop of water, 1 1 is 1. The most recent one that somebody sent to me was you take 1 pizza and you add 1 pizza, you have 2 pizzas. 1 1 is 2. But if you take 1 lasagna and you add 1 lasagna, 1 1 is 1. It's just a bigger lasagna. So the point is, in the real world, 1 1 doesn't equal 2. As or more often as it does. Now, so who cares? Well, here's the point. Now that you know that you didn't know before, you have choices. Somebody says to you, like, how much is 1 1? You say, wait a second, let me see, let me look at the context. It can be 1, it can be 2, it can be 10, and perhaps there are other answers as well. So when you're mindful, you have choices. When you're mindless, you don't. And you know, when you ask people, I gave a talk the other day to the World Happiness Fest. And so I was focused on happiness and raised the question that I was surprised I hadn't thought to say this 40 years ago, 50 years ago. But can robots be happy? No, it doesn't make any sense. Well, when we're mindless, we're like robots. We're not there. And also, as I'm fond of saying, when you're not there, you're not there to know you're not there. And almost 50 years of research has shown me that virtually all of us are not there almost all of the time. And you want to be there. Now, meditation is a practice you engage in to result in post-meditative mindfulness. Okay, so when you're meditating, you're leading up to something. It's a practice. Mindfulness, as we study it, is not a practice. It's a way of being that follows from an appreciation of uncertainty.
How would— so going back to the mind-body connection, how is it—
It's not a connection. So it's interesting. So I've been talking about mind-body unity since, well, I guess since '79 or so, 1979, a long time. And at that point, most people were just talking about mind-body dualism. And then, you know, perhaps I had some influence on it. One never knows these things. Then all of a sudden, people start talking about connection. But you're talking about connection, you have the same problem. How are they connected? How is a thought, something immaterial, connected to the body, something material? So I want to talk about unity, because then the power that we have over our health and well-being becomes much more apparent. If it's one thing, you and your body, you and your soul, any way you want to understand yourself is one thing. All just you, you can accomplish things that most of us wouldn't even consider possible.
Right. How would the way you see mindfulness intersect with the mind-body unity component?
Okay. That's actually a very good question. They appear to be two different things.
That's why I—
Right. You know, well, mindfulness, I I did in the past, and now I'm talking about mind-body unit. No, no, I'm joking. That, okay, we have one thing, the mind and body. It's a single unit. That single unit can be mindless or mindful. When you're mindful, the neurons are firing, and all of our research shows that it's literally and figuratively enlivening. When you're being mindless, The body, the mind is shutting down, turning off, dying.
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Everybody— no, you would. Most people think they're mindful.
No, I'm an honest person. I'm definitely mindless. I'm self-aware. Given that we could just talk about me, okay, it feels like it would be exhausting No, no, no, I understand.
Yeah, I've been asked this before. It keeps coming up. When you're happy, when you're engaged, the only way you can be engaged is to be mindful. The engagement is a function of noticing. When you think you know, you know, it's you're not happy. We find that being mindful, this act of noticing, is energy begetting, not consuming. You know, when you're happy, you have more energy. And when you're depressed, you sort of turn the world off. It's interesting because people think that being, you should be mindless some of the time, 'cause so many people are, maybe there's an advantage. And I argue strongly against this. I think that if you're gonna show up, if you're gonna do something, show up for it. Now, people think being mindless allows you— mindless of these things over here means I can attend to these things over here. All right. But the problem is that once you deal with something mindlessly, you can't return to it and see it anew. So in sports, let's say, or playing a musical instrument, people are taught, learn the basics so well that you don't have to think about them.
Right.
Now, you know, they become second nature. And when you say that to yourself now, let a little bell go off in your head. They're telling you to be mindless. So there are several things about that. The first is who decided what the basics are? Whose basics are there? You know, if I were doing this in a large audience, I'd ask somebody very tall to join me on stage. And there's always somebody 6'5" there for some bizarre reason. He'd come up and, you know, we look funny. I'm 5'3", he's 6'5". I'd ask him to put his hand up. I put my hand next to his. His hand is 3 inches larger than mine. And I'd simply raise the question, should we do anything physical the same way? Now, if he wrote the rules for the basics, it's not going to serve me well. In fact, the more different you are from the person who wrote the rules, the more important it is for you not to mindlessly follow the rules. So you're learning some activity. It doesn't matter what it is. You learn how to Well, it doesn't matter, any sport, any musical instrument. Let's say you're learning it when you're 15 years old. You're locking yourself into how you're going to do it. Now, surely there are going to be things that you know more, experience, your body is going to be better suited for certain activities in 5 years. But you're still going to be doing it the way you did it when you first learned it. Once you do things mindlessly, you're freezing your behavior. So you never want to be mindless. But let me give you another example. Some people think when you're mindless, you can do things quicker. And sometimes speed is of the essence. Well, I don't believe that being mindless is quicker than being mindful. But even if it is, it's only nanoseconds. I use the example, you're at a park and you're watching a 3-year-old. All right. And now the 3-year-old wanders into the street. Shouldn't you just mindlessly grab that child so you can get him out of— get her out of harm's way? And I say, no. First of all, if you were mindful, the child wouldn't have ended up in the street in the first place. Secondly, you want to be there because if, you know, there's a lot of information to be obtained by looking at the person who's driving that car, even if only quickly. And if the driver is turning this way, you don't want to pull the child, you know, you're not pulling them to safety by going in the direction the car is aiming. So no, I feel very strongly about this, that there's no advantage to be mindless. Now, you might say, if everybody around you is mindless, isn't it better just to be like everybody else? No, because you can fake it if you want.
So you're saying there's no scenarios. Let's just— the question is, when certain things become the assumed best way to do something, yeah, the question is, who did choose that? I think there are things that probably exist.
No, but let me, let me— I'll just cap it by saying the only time you should be mindless, I believe, is if you found the best way of doing something and nothing changes. And I don't know how you—
What do you mean by nothing changes?
You know, there's no new information, everything is exactly the same, which of course it's never going to be. And how can you ever be sure you found the best way? And what does it mean, the best way? You know, if you hold a tennis racket a certain way, and that's the way you've learn it and you keep practicing that way, but then you don't sleep well, you hurt your arm, you shouldn't hold the racket the same way. If you're playing against a lefty, you should hold the racket slightly differently if you're playing against a righty. You change the racket, depend, you know, very subtle ways depending on whether you're gonna slam the ball, you know, or a lob, you know, that, and these things come with experience. And we have You know, we have a notion that practice makes perfect, not the way most people practice. The way most people practice, where what they're trying to do is learn it so well that they don't have to think about it, that practice is making imperfect. If the practice is engaged each time to become more aware of the subtle ways everything is different, then that practice is going to be good.
Do you not lose bandwidth? To be able to proceed with other greater things at a certain point?
No, you're not. To be mindful means to be open. It means mostly, you can't attend to everything at the same time, if that's what you mean, of course. But you don't want to ever think you know some part of it so well that you never go back to it.
Right. Okay. No, that— you have to be open.
So, yeah. So essentially, you want to be either mindful or potentially You never want to be mindless, as far as I understand. People confuse the certainty of their mindsets with the underlying phenomenon. Things are changing, but they're holding them still. Now, we want certainty so we can have control, right? We can avoid the dangers, take care of, you know, search for all the benefits and what have you. But by confusing the certainty By presuming that things themselves are still, we actually are giving up the control. You know, we do this with people, we do this with things, not just, you know, the way you're going to swing the tennis racket. You know, you figure, oh, he's a nice guy. Okay, whatever that means to you. Or this other person is not particularly nice. You freeze that understanding. And what that means is that then you're examining hypotheses through a very narrow lens. And so if I am looking at you now as somebody, let's say you're wonderful, and let's make you not wonderful. What do you want? Not wonderful for the moment. There's a way that our hypotheses are almost always confirmed. So no matter how I see you, I'm going to find evidence for it. Now, what happens then is that by having this narrow view, I'm missing the fullness of you. Other perspectives. And the way in which that thing you did. So let's say, because I don't like you, I see you as a snob. All right. And if I did like you, I could just as easily see you as shy in any particular circumstance. All right. So the main thing, you know, I have a one-liner, predict today and lose tomorrow, which people can't decode quickly. But what I mean by that is that every prediction we make leads us to seek confirmation for that hypothesis, for that prediction. Do you not feel that the same thing in studies? What?
In studies, do you not think that's the same thing? Let's say if you're doing a study based on something that you think is going to lead to a certain result because you're trying to test something, would that not exist in each study?
No, no, no. Because in a study, you're setting it up You have to give people an option to conform or not conform to what you're expecting. You know, the point is that— so my example generator isn't working right now to give you an example of this. But as an indi— you know, people don't understand that prediction is an illusion. People think they can predict. What am I saying? How can you not predict? Well, you can predict to the group. But you can't predict the individual behavior. So for example, let's say, I don't know, Michael Jordan and I are going to have a foul shooting contest and we each shoot one basket. Now, can you predict with great certainty that he's going to win? You shouldn't because on occasion he loses, misses, and on occasion I make it. And he's a nice guy, I presume. Is a prediction something that guarantees certainty or is it based on what's No, what I'm saying— no, either way, you can't predict. If you want to predict that he's going— you have to predict— if you're asked, "Who's gonna win?" The correct answer should be, "Who knows?" Because we can generate many reasons why he might miss the shot, even if only because he's let the older woman win. You know, we can't know with one basket. But if we were each shooting 100 baskets, Certainly he'd win. Let me use a different example. Would you wager all of the money you own now and all your future earnings on this wager where we're going to go to a Mercedes parking lot and you're going to randomly choose a car? Okay, hundreds of cars. You're going to randomly choose one. And we're going to start the car. If the car starts, I'll give you $1 million. If the car doesn't start, you give me all that you own now and all your future earnings. You'd be foolish to take the bet because there are always lemons. Even the best of us on occasion don't succeed. But if we were to start all the Mercedes cars, most of them are going to start right up. So group data is different from individual data. The bottom line, Leibla, is that all we really care about most of the time for most of us is what's it going to be like for me? You know, you're told the surgery is successful for 80% of the people. That's good, but should I have the surgery? Is it going to work for me? And nobody can tell you that. No doctor worth anything would say to you, yes, we're sure this is going to be successful. You go to take a test. If I took a psychology test— now I know a lot of psychology, I've been doing this for a long time— and if you were allowed, you know, if I were going to take the test, I would wager a lot of money that I'm going to get most of the answers right. But am I going to get every single answer? I wouldn't risk it.
You know, there's some hard to understand that, I guess, what prediction is, right? You're saying on an individual case, you can't predict the an individual case.
You can predict the group, perhaps. And so when you're asking me about research, we're trying to predict the group. And this is very important in ways that go beyond our discussion.
Here's my only question. So I'm just trying to understand one thing. If you could predict off a group base, right off a group, would that not lead me to, if I had to choose something in an individual setting, to at least choose—
Yeah, that's fine. No, sure.
So the answer is you can't predict with certainty.
Yeah, yeah, you can predict, but that's with certainty.
You know, it doesn't—
you only have one option. You're only going to do it once, right?
So which one would I choose? Well, the one that has the best odds.
But it doesn't— yeah, it has the best odds, but those odds still say, let's say, 75% of the time it works means 25% of the time it doesn't. So you don't know in the individual case.
What would you choose in the individual case? If you had a gun to your head, choice.
It would depend on the circumstances. And I'm not suggesting that it's mindless to make the choice that would be true for the group. What I'm saying is it's mindless to presume that it's going to be successful. This is much deeper and more important than we've touched on so far because virtually All of the facts that we have, one way or the other, would derive from science. Science only gives us probabilities. There is no science, there's no experiment that gives you an absolute.
Right.
What science says, if we were to do the exact same study again, which you can never do exactly the same.
Yeah.
We're likely to get the same findings. Those are translated, those probabilities are translated as absolutes. Absolute facts. Let me give an example. My life changed, and I've said this over and over again, and I'm just, you know, it was such an important moment for me.
The horse story?
The horse story, right. I'm at this horse event. This man asked me, will I watch his horse for him because he wants to get his horse a hot dog? I'm the student you hated in school. I was the A++ student. You know, it's hard for me. I mean, I'm trying not to look at him as if he's an idiot, but that's what I'm thinking. I was young. And I said, sure, I'll watch your horse, knowing horses are herbivorous, they don't eat meat. He comes back with the horse, with the hot dog rather, and the horse ate it. And that's when I realized everything I thought I knew could be wrong. Now, let's think, what is the science behind that? So you take horses, not all horses are the same. So these small horses, big horses, heavy horses, Clydesdales, you know, Fox trotters, you know, it depends on the kind of horse. Okay, so we take a group of horses and then we're going to give them meat. But what meat are we giving them? How much meat? How much meat is— all of these things are knowable to the person who's doing the study.
Medium steak.
But not to— exactly, not to the person who's reading the research. Now what you're going to find is that most of the horses don't eat it. Now it's much too complicated to imagine if every time you were given a fact you were told, these kind of horses were given this kind of meat when the temperature outside was what, and they had this kind of exercise. And then most of them didn't eat the meat. It's too cumbersome. So instead you're told horses don't eat meat. And that's 1 and 1 is 2. All of the absolutes we're given lead us to be mindless, which leads me to the belief that the, major cause of our mindlessness is our education. Schools and then our parents who are telling us. You know, I had this experience. Many of my ideas come from the strangest places, but I was at a friend's house for dinner and the fork was on the right side of the plate. I felt like some natural law was being violated. And it was all I could do to move the fork to where it belonged. It belonged. Now I'm a thinking person most of the time. And so I said to myself, why do I care where the stupid fork— I mean, I can generate a lot of reasons why it would be better for the fork to be on the right side of the plate. Right. Nevertheless, it makes more sense if you think about it. Yeah, exactly. And if you're wearing something like this and you won't dip it in the— right. And so then I thought about it. I thought, you know, where did this come from? Now I grew up in, as I told you, a lovely family. But we did not discuss philosophical issues about fork placement. In fact, we really didn't discuss philosophical issues about anything. They were just very loving people. All that happened was my mother said, "The fork goes over here." Now, I mean, and that was a long time ago. And her just telling me the fork goes here in this absolute way means that 20, 30 years later, I'm feeling uncomfortable for the fork to be, you know—
Well, someone probably told her also that the fork goes there.
So the point is, the way we learn is people tell us these absolutes. These absolutes lead us not to do any further thinking and limit us enormously. So that's what, you know, so if we were to change education, which I would like to, and have thought about mindful schools, There's so many things that would be different. The first thing is we would teach mindfully. What does that mean?
I have a good question though, I need to ask before we go to this.
All right, but then you'll have to remind me. I'm older and less likely to remember.
You talk a lot about how mindfulness is not going towards the future, not setting goals necessarily for the future and to live in the moment. Right? How would you say to live still in like an intention-based thinking life? Let's say regarding this particular example with the forks, but also not, you know, live a thinking life towards the future? Okay, as far as—
your question is much too complicated because to arrive at the answer that you would like to get to, uh, where, um, whatever thoughts are in your head now, mine is very simple. All we need to do is say the fork could go here. Some of us like to put the fork over here. You might want to consider putting the fork over there rather than the fork goes over here. One and one could be two, not one and one is two. Many horses don't eat meat. All right. You know, and so what happens is you learn a place to put the fork. You learn an answer to how much is one and one. You know something about horses. But you don't know it in the way that freezes future learning. You don't know it where you think, well, got that mastered.
This is definitive now.
Yeah. Now, you know, it's interesting because people who are wonderful at whatever they do, whether they're podcasters, professors, athletes, those who are the best are still learners. Yeah. You know, they— Things are changing. You want to be there, you know, and notice the changes so you could take advantage of them. When you're mindful, you can take advantage of opportunities to which other people are blind and avoid dangers before they arise. When you're mindless, you just go forward as a robot. And again, I go back to what I was saying before. If you realize you're behaving like a robot, and a robot's life Is that the life you want? It's not a life where you're excited, you're happy, you're engaged.
Yeah, I totally hear that. So regarding the mindful school, I know you've spoken about this.
Yeah, okay. So, you know, the most important thing would be to teach conditionally. Instead of absolutes, it would be conditional. Could be, it would seem that, maybe, perhaps, one way of. Another is that, you know, some of these ideas are very simple, but I think would have an enormous impact on students. Another would be rather than ask for single answers, to ask for multiple answers, no matter what the question is. You know, just sort of imagine the classroom, the way teachers teach now. We'll use the simplest example, but this goes straight through to graduate school. If the teacher asks, how much is 1 1? And little Ible says, 1. The teacher looks at you askance. The other students now decide, you know, you're one of these losers, so on and so forth. In the mindful classroom, the teacher would say, "Well, how did you come up with that?" And then you'd say, "You take 1 watt of chewing gum, and we have 1 watt of chewing gum, and 1 plus 1." And everybody would learn something. So let me just— an important part of all of this is that the world as it's now arranged is full of winners and losers.
Yeah.
And I'll tell you something that happened, um, not that long ago that to me it was so poignant. So we were getting this delivery, giant truck, that's gonna— stuff that's gonna be stored in the basement. Um, I look at the truck, I see all the stuff, I know the basement. I said, there is no way it's going to fit there. It's just not going to. I'm a genius. I have a genius award. I've been declared a genius. Good. The person who was going to take the furniture out of the truck and store it downstairs was somebody who is uneducated, who sees himself, I'm pretty sure, as a loser.
Okay.
He not only gets all of it in the space, but makes it so everything is accessible. And the moment that happened, I said, it's just not fair. You know, here people keep assuming I can do all these things. People praise me enormously. You know, he was so clearly superior to me at this point. And so then I wrote this little song based on this, a ditty, as I'd call it, for my grandkids. They were 5 at the time.
I saw you even sing it on the Jordan Peterson.
I sang it.
That was amazing.
I tried not to sing it. You know, the whole point of this, I should sing it, but I don't think I'm going to now.
It's okay.
Okay. Was that everybody knows something and everybody doesn't know something else. Everybody can do something and everybody can't do something else. You know, it was to the tune of the old Sara Lee commercial. Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee. Okay, so this was, and it, to me, it's such a small thing, But to me, it would change the world if people recognize this.
That you can't blame anyone.
Well, yeah, that, you know, all of the people who get D's and even C's and fail courses, you know, from a very early age come to see themselves in a negative light. And it's very hard to get past that. Very few people do. When if it were a different teacher asking a different question, you might have had a different ordering of who's best in the class.
Why do you think the education system is built this way?
Well, I think that people do believe that there are these absolutes. They believe that 1 and 1 is 2.
I know you mentioned in your book, you know, that there's a— I wasn't sure if you were saying it in a conspiratorial way.
I don't think you were. No, but let me say something. This is very important because the whole point of this is that I can sing. I'm aware that I can sing. I have a dear friend and I say, I can't carry a tune. She says, yes, you can, just not very far. But, you know, I love singing. Why shouldn't I sing? Yeah, there are so many things that I can do. So why should I hesitate with the things that I can't do? And, and if you don't do them, then you're going to stay not being able to do them. I was at this I was giving a lecture in South Africa. And I had a day off. It was several lectures. And I was down at the pool. And I noticed there was a tremendous amount— a very expensive hotel that they put me up in— lots of real estate, hotel real estate that was not being used. And the only person who knew about it other than me was the cabana boy. And who would think, you know, to ask the cabana boy? Because we think so clearly, we have our talents, our knowledge, and everything else exists on a normal distribution. Some of us, oh, we know it all. Some we know nothing. Most in the middle.
What? How would you say humility ties into that?
Well, once you recognize the uncertain, you know, the ubiquity of uncertainty, that would lead you to be humble. You know, when you really believe that horses don't eat meat, 1 and 1 is 2, I got all the A's, it becomes a little harder to be humble. Right. You know, I think that humility follows naturally from an appreciation of uncertainty.
Right. Yeah, that makes sense. It's like you're not— you don't have the ability to be arrogant anymore because you don't know as much.
Yeah, yeah. And the important thing about uncertainty is right now people think they should know. And so if they don't know and they think they should, yeah, you know, then they pretend or they avoid the situation. They're uncomfortable. And because they're making a personal attribution for uncertainty. I don't know, but it's knowable. We need to make a universal attribute. I don't know. You don't. Nobody knows.
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Well, what I suggest, what I suggest, you know, I have— there are those things that I'm reasonably confident about because of all the research that I or others have done. There are other things that just follow from thinking through the problem where I don't have data. But, and this is one of them, you know, that whose purposes are served by the certainty? The certainty maintains the status quo, right? I'm the boss because I know more. If we reveal, you know, what is it? The emperor has no clothes, then things, you know, so how do you apply this?
You know, you're obviously one of the most you know, famous college professor. The most famous.
Yeah, in the whole world.
In the whole world.
Forever.
How do you make sense of that given your—
Make sense of what?
Like, your problems with the education system. And I'm sure you're giving this class, which is kind of— I could see them not being, you know, potentially super happy with the idea that, you know, they're coming across with a certain education system, you're coming here and sort of challenging that education system.
No, I think— no, on the contrary. I think, you know, I had this issue with the medical world. I was given this talk, I think there were about 5,000 women with breast cancer, and it turned out that there were several men there, and also many of the audience were doctors, and I didn't know this. And, you know, when I get started, I thought, you know, what was I appropriately respectful while still taking them to task? And then I spoke to many of the physicians afterwards, and they were thrilled. They know they don't know. You know, the teachers know they don't know. The CEOs know they don't know. And so it's a relief to know that you don't have to know. And I mean, of course, and then there are some people who think they do know until, you know, something happens that makes them aware. Right.
Okay. So as far as the medical health, you know, component of this. I really actually wanted to discuss that because I have Crohn's. So I have a chronic illness. I have a sibling also with Crohn's as well that is much more severe than me. And, you know, for the last 7, 8 years, she's been, you know, going to one doctor after the next, and they're all pushing medication. And there's a contingency of people that are doctors, but mainly I would say nutritionists, let's call it dietitians, that propose that you should go on a diet and stop, you know, drugging yourself up in order to solve a symptom and actually go on a diet and solve the problem. Majority of the medical field is very, very anti-this. She decided she's going to go on this diet, the sibling of mine. So I put her on the phone with a different friend that I have that did this diet, cured his Crohn's. He gets on the phone and the first thing he says is, you need to believe if you want this to work that you can cure your Crohn's. If you walk into this believing that you cannot cure it, it's not going to work. He's like, take it from me, I'm not— I can't claim I have the exact reason why, but I'm just telling you, if you don't buy it— and the response was, the doctors say though that it's not curable, so what are you talking about? He's like, that's the point. You need to— so my question is regarding, you know, you talk about self-fulfilled prophecy and mind-body unity in the medical field, like, what is there to make of all this as far as like the medical field being so entrenched, especially when they know, I should add, that placebos Work to a degree.
Placebos may be our strongest medicine. Let's just think for a minute about a placebo. Everybody knows you take this nothing, a sugar pill, all right, or whatever it's composed of in a particular pill, and you get better. It's not the pill that's making you better. So what's making you better? You're making yourself better. Now, you know, if we think about pharmaceutical companies, placebo I mean, placebo should be applauded. Everybody should be excited, right? But the only way a pharmaceutical company can make—
BlackRock to make money.
Vast amounts of money is if in a clinical trial, the drug that they're going to want to bring to market outperforms the placebo. Right. So every time the placebo works, that means, you know, there's a problem. Yeah.
There's less chance of them making money.
But, you know, for the rest of us, the placebos are incredible. And placebos work, I think, through mind-body unity, you know, that— and in several ways also.
What's the other answer? What's the other way it would work?
Well, just coincidence. What?
Coincidence?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But essentially it's through our expectations for sure. But what happens? But what could happen with a placebo is that you take this nothing, but you think it's something. So now you start paying attention to the ways you're better, right? Because you didn't expect to be better. And that itself is informative.
People don't know they're taking a placebo.
Right, exactly. You take medicine, you're expecting you're going to feel better. You notice the times you're better. The placebo seems to be working.
And that, um, uh, but that would be direct proof, so to speak, to all the research you've done about—
Oh, yes. Oh, for sure.
My question is, why are they— why are doctors so—
I don't like that—
willfully ignoring?
No, no, I don't think they are. I mean, I think you have, um, doctors with very different beliefs. You have those who are fully on board those who are fully off board.
I, I've done a significant amount of research on this. I promise you, I've paid for a lot, a lot of money and a lot.
And you're saying no doctors agree with this?
I'm not saying zero because there's no certainties, okay? But I would say the overwhelming majority of doctors, when it comes to, let's say, Crohn's for sure and colitis, sure, are like— you come to them, you're telling them you're doing a diet for it, they laugh you out of the room.
No, of course. Yeah, well, Well, look at the education that physicians go through. It's very, very long and it's very absolute, right? It's, you know, this bone is this, this happens with this, the medication, you know, so on and so forth. It's very hard to undo all of that, you know, quickly. And I don't think that things should be undone quickly, you know, that it took them a long while to realize the efficacy of whatever the treatment was. Treatment they're using. And, you know, sometimes things do work for snake oil reasons, right? You know that. So you have— people tend not to seek medical care until the problem is big. So let's say you've got a little pain, you ignore it. But then, oh, it's terrible, right? So then You take some medication now and the pain is lessened. So you attribute it to the medication. But that, uh, might have been the unusual circumstance and left alone might have been better. An example, I hit a spectacular serve in tennis and the crowd's just standing and cheering me right now. The next time I hit the serve, what is it going to be? Well, there's a tendency for things to regress to the norm, to the mean, right? So everything, you know, imagine you have a normal distribution. Sometimes at your own level, you're not so good. Sometimes you're— most of the times you're medium. Sometimes you're great. And the times you're great, the next time you're likely to be not so great. And if you're awful, the next time you're likely to be better. So you take the medication when you're awful. Oh, it really hurts. And there are occasions where it gets worse and worse. But typically it's the case that that's the outlier. The, ah! You take the medication, attribute so that you take the snake oil and you assume it worked when in fact it might not have.
Yeah, it's very interesting. You talk about regret and—
Oh, there's so much, you know, I mean, it's sort of interesting to me when I look back on these things. How I disagree with almost everything that almost everybody has said. Yeah. But I'm such a good student.
So, you know, how does that work?
How did that happen? Yeah. We take— well, we're jumping around all over the place now, but so be it. You know, regret. Well, first of all, regret has built into it a feeling of helplessness. Because the assumption— because if you did something and it didn't work, You know, well, if you do it again and you believe it will work, there's nothing to regret, right? Envy, the same thing. Envy has built into it helplessness. I don't have to envy that you can do something. You know, just show me how to do it. Right. But for regret, okay, let's take half a step or 3 steps back. People don't understand typically that outcomes, the availance of an outcome, whether it's good or bad, is in our heads. It's not in events. Okay, so anything that you regret doing had another whole way of being understood. Yeah. And so, and there were two parts about regret. The first is the assumption is the thing that you regret not doing, that that would have worked out better. How do you know? Could have been worse. But the more important thing is it's better, worseness, or Anything in between is a function of the way you view it. I was explaining this in a Zoom podcast I was doing the other day. And I said to them, look, the internet could go out right now. And some people will say, oh, that's awful. It's in the middle of the podcast. To me, you know, I'll go have lunch. You know, it wasn't bad at all.
Maybe there's some sort of advantage to it. You could have an enjoyable cigarette.
Well, the funny thing is, then the internet went out. Almost as if I had willed it. And I did indeed have lunch and all was fine. You know, that most of the time, so when we regret something, we're acting as if something terrible is going to happen. When we're stressed, we're presuming something's going to happen. And when it happens, it's going to be awful. And all of those predictions leave us feeling bad and tend over time to add to our physical health. So stress, I have a few one-liners that are useful. And if people don't take anything away from what I've said except this, this should be good for you. Next time you're stressed, ask yourself, is it a tragedy or inconvenience? It's almost never a tragedy, right? And if it were a tragedy and you're thinking about this new thing, somehow you managed to get through it anyway. And to quote Mark Twain, most of the things we worry about never happen. So just ask yourself, did it happen? Probably not. Will this thing that you're worried about now happen? If you say to yourself, okay, so let's say you're stressed about something. So again, stress requires a belief that something's going to happen. Remember we talked about things being unpredictable. And two, if it happens, it's going to be awful. Okay, so ask yourself, what are 3, 5, as many as you can come up with reasons it won't happen. So you started off thinking it's definitely gonna— she's gonna leave me, he's gonna leave me. You know, I'm gonna be all alone for life. It's gonna be terrible. I'm gonna fail the test. You know, whatever it is that you're worried about. And so you're stressed. Now, if you give yourself 3 or 5 reasons why it won't happen, your stress has to be diminished. Because you thought it was death. Okay, now the harder part, which is the part I prefer, I enjoy the most, is it happens, right? And say to yourself, how is that actually an advantage?
Right. I really love that. It changed my entire perspective. And I was using— I told you earlier, I got some, like, unfortunately not great news. And I decided, I'm like, after studying this for the last 2 weeks, I'm like, okay, so what would you say about this? This is what I was thinking. And I'm like, okay, what are the good outcomes that could come from this? Like, and I, you know, I'm like, well, first of all, I could get more guests on the next time I want to do this trip. I have more time. Like there were just a variety of different outcomes, like, you know, and advantages to what happened that I was able to implement that 2 weeks ago I would've been much, much more disappointed. Again, it's, it still takes work.
Don't get me wrong. So here's something that, that sort of, um, um, I'm gonna say Jewish, not by religious, but in practice. So many, many years ago, we did a study with people who are about to undergo major surgery. And so I'm teaching them the strategy we were just describing, you know, that it's not events, they call, you know, so on. Okay, now to test this, I said to them, okay, so the surgeon says, "Your surgery has to be postponed, so you're gonna be in the hospital another 3 days." "Okay, what will you do?" She says, "All right, I'll cope with it." "No, you didn't understand what I said. It's not that you'll tolerate this bad thing." So for me, at the time when I did this study, that, and people were in the hospital a lot longer, they don't keep you there these days. But that for me in the hospital, that meant that I'd lose weight.
Right.
I'd have time to actually read and think and not be bothered by, you know. And so if my time there were extended, I'd lose more weight. I'd have more time to relax and so on. So the person who would answer this in saying, all right, it won't be so terrible, or I'll cope with it, you know, I'll accept the bad, in other words, was not learning because it wasn't accepting the bad.
It's seeing it as how good.
It's understanding exactly how it's good. And, you know, everybody teaches us, parents, television, movies, schools. These events are bad. These events are good. These outcomes, getting an A is good. Failing is bad, but not necessarily. You know, in some sense, there's a lot of pressure on kids who get A's. Because they don't know how they got them. And they know that maybe everybody's expecting that they'll be just getting A's and, you know.
So it's almost like if he gets B's, like, who cares? Sort of like, it's fine. There's a pro to that as well.
Yeah.
We can look at it.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, the example I used in the book was very important to me because I could imagine when I talk like this, there are people who say, you from your ivory tower, You know, what do you know about hardship? Oh, let me tell you. I mean, I can go through, you know, I lost my mother when I was very young. I was divorced when I was very young. I got taken by two psychopaths.
I saw that.
That's crazy. I mean, you know, I've had lots of things, but the one that I talk about more in the book to make this point was I went out to dinner, I came back, and all of my neighbors were outside because my house had burned. So I lost 80% of what I owned. I, next day I called the insurance agent and he came and he said this was the first time, it sounds like I'm bragging, but I'd rather see myself as sharing. He said this was the first time in the 25 years he's been doing this work where the damage was worse than the coal. Most, oh my God, oh my God. And he gets, it's not so bad. This was, you know, but I thought I had already lost whatever was in the fire. Why throw my sanity away at it? How did you handle that?
Did you look for ways right at that moment?
No, you see, I'm glad you asked me that, Lyle. That this is the way I've lived so much of my life that it comes quite naturally. You know, to learn how to do this, you have to actually reframe things. You say, oh, this feels bad. What is the advantage to it? But I start off just noticing the advantage.
Yeah.
So I don't have to do any reframing. It's just—
we not consider that as mindless?
No.
Catch. It's like—
and no, I know that I could also tell you, you know, how people would see it as negative. But, you know, I'm not saying that with any of these things, it is this particular way.
Right.
I'm saying that my experience of it, I will feel better about it recognizing it from this perspective rather than, you know, once you build in this way of thinking, you're effectively mindful always. Yeah, I think, I think so. Yeah, that's—
I think why— what makes the question a stupid question to begin with, if I'm being honest.
It's like, um, yeah, but if you evaluate all of your questions, we're not gonna have anything to talk about.
Oh, that's true. Fair enough. Do people's personalities affect their, uh, ability to be mindful or be mindless?
I don't know. Um, I know that social psychology has always differentiated itself from personality psychology. Psychology by saying that behavior was context-dependent. You know, so rather than I am who I am wherever I am, I am who I am based on, you know, the social setting. Right. So everybody more or less is quiet in libraries, is cheering at football games. That's the context, a library or football game. It's to me an interesting question because led me to think, well, if your behavior is context-dependent, who determines the context? And the more mindful you are, the more choices of context, then in some sense, the more stable your personality. Let me give an example. So I adored my mother and we were very, very close. She's in the hospital, the hospital context. Now, the rule in the hospital was that you have to leave at— I'm making this up— 7 o'clock in the evening. And I said to them, because I had— here's the hospital context— but I had my relationship with my— and concern for my mother context. And so I said to them right at the beginning, I will leave when my mother wants me to leave. Could be at 6 o'clock. It might not be until 9 o'clock. And I'll do this every day. We can fight about it every day. Day. You can look the other way, or you can just understand it and perhaps even make that available to other people as well. So the point was that there were two contexts. My behavior, most people's behavior, the rule is you leave at 7, they leave at 7. Now, the way I was able to, in some sense, violate that rule was by invoking another context. Whatever is good for my mother is what I'm going to do.
Interesting.
So back to personality, that people tend to stay within particular contexts. So that would make them behave in that same way repeatedly and seem to have personalities. There's, you know, I'm not really sure these days what people mean by personality. There are certainly behavioral tendencies that we're likely to engage in. You know, that if you're scared of talking to people, you're unlikely when you're in a party to be talking to people. If you're not afraid, but it's also the case that I teach my students this. It's interesting because I'll ask them, how many of you are afraid of public speaking? I say, stand up. So 200 kids stand up. Everybody's afraid. And then I'll start talking to them. And so now they're talking in front of 200 people.
Yeah.
But they're not afraid, you know. And it's because people are so worried about being evaluated by others. And so you want to find a way to be able to do something that you're afraid of doing. Change the circumstance for you. Imagine in the public speaking, for instance, that you're talking to 10-year-olds, would you be afraid? You know, let's make them now 15. At what point and why? And so we're so afraid of being negatively evaluated. And the younger you are, the worse this is. I do this thing with my students. They love this. You can't come to class next week unless you're wearing two different shoes. All right, now the ones who want to comply but are afraid, they'll wear two black shoes where you can barely tell that they're different. The ones that are really bold will wear a white sneaker and a red sneaker, you know, whatever. But they all do it. And I say to them, did anybody notice? The first, no, nobody even noticed. Secondly, if somebody notices, If it's someone you know, they know you don't typically wear two different shoes. So what are they going to think of you? And if it's someone you don't know, why do you care? Well, the best thing happened. I did this in a small seminar. One of my students, wonderful young woman, she comes in there and she says, Professor Langer, you won't believe what happened. I said, what happened? She says, I'm in the elevator with this guy. He looks at my feet. He looks at my face. He looks at my feet. He looks at my face. He points to my shoe. And he says, was that intentional? You know what I did? I said, no, what did you do? She said, I looked at his shoes. I looked at his face. I looked at his shoes. I looked at his face. I pointed to his shoes. I said, was that? You know, which is, you know, who decided? You know, I mean, it's interesting because it seems that dryers seem to eat socks. I don't know where they go.
Absolutely.
And, you know, And who decided that your socks have to match? You know, so when you—
Mine don't, so no one cares.
But when you realize how silly some of these things are, it becomes very freeing. And I find one of the keys to success is so simple. It's to be confident but uncertain. So you stand tall.
I was going to take a question out of my— How do you see confidence?
Well, you're—
interacting with?
You know, because the confidence for me—
what's the confidence?
For many people now, confidence comes from asking themselves, do I know it? And, you know, you don't know it, then you lack the confidence. If you ask even, can I know it fully? The answer is no. So you can become more confident. You know, do I know something about it is different from I know all about it.
Right. I think if you define confidence as one's belief to be able to walk through whatever the difficulty is coming through. Then they could stay on, they could still look at everything and be uncertain about it, but have the confidence that they could get through that thing.
Yeah, I think if you give it an honest try, whatever you're doing, and you know that there's no natural endpoint, you know, if it doesn't work, try it again, do it differently. I think the natural posture for people should be be to be confident. I think you start out being happy and confident and the world takes it away from you.
Yeah, I was just talking obviously about confidence and the way you look at that word and define it. So I want to talk about— I know you've spoken about the way we use terminology and what the world has—
Well, a lot of our— I'm very sensitive to language. Yeah. And we have— I talk in the book about better than better. What I mean by that, I have lots of colleagues that I have great respect for, and they get you from this bad place, teach you something better, and then we just stop. And, you know, I like looking for, you know, why stop there? There's always a better way. And a lot of it is in the language that we use. So I actually, I did a study, the first study I think I did on mindlessness. So I was studying mindlessness. This is fun. I was studying mindlessness before I started talking about mindfulness. And somebody said to me, you know, you are what you study. I said, okay, so then I'm studying mindfulness. I just turned it around. But at any rate, we had people make a request that was nonsensical. And the request then— the request was fine. Can I get ahead of you at the Xerox machine? The question then was the Excuse me. They then gave a reason, and the reason made no sense, or it made sense. Because I want to make copies. What else are you going to do with a copying machine except make copies? And as long as you gave a reason, everything was fine. So that word because was picked up in business schools and whatever. The words that I discuss in The Mindful Body are more interesting. To me. Hope. Hope sounds like something good, right? And it's certainly better than being hopeless. But hope has built into it an expectation for failure. When I get up in the morning and I come to the kitchen to have coffee, I don't hope there'll be coffee.
You assume there will be.
Expect, yeah. The word try. Trying is better than giving up, not thinking you could do it at all. But would you try to eat an ice cream cone? Right. No. So trying has built into it an expectation for failure. Remember, you usually get what you expect. The one that was the funniest for me, and apropos of what we were talking about before, religion. I was asked to give a sermon in one of the Harvard churches. As we know, I'm Jewish. And I know very little about religion. But I tend to say yes to everything. Everything, because I feel better saying yes. Okay, so I agreed to do it. Getting along better with the microphone now.
I agree.
So now I've got to figure out what is this going to be about. Remember, I don't know very much about religion, so I'm thinking about forgiveness. Now, forgiveness isn't religion, but it sounds religiousy, right? I could probably get away with it. Yeah. So I start thinking about forgiveness, and come up with something and actually gave this, and it was sacrilegious. It was wonderful, I thought. If you ask 10 people, is forgiveness good or bad, what are they going to tell you?
It's good.
It's good. If you ask 10 people, is blame good or bad, what are they going to tell you? But you know, you can't forgive unless you first blame. Oh, that's interesting. Our forgivers are our blamers.
Yeah.
Now, do you blame people for good things or bad things? Bad things. But things in and of themselves, as we've already established, are neither good nor bad. So what do we have here? We have people who see the world negatively, who blame and then forgive. Hardly divine. All right. If you blame, it's better to forgive than not, but there's a better than better way of doing things.
Is there a point that that ends?
No.
What do you mean ends? So say the Nazis in 19—
Well, no, let's—
Where does this concept end?
Let's go there after I have people with us. Yeah. And still, you know, there may be exceptions to most of the things that we talk about, but in the lives most of us are living, those extreme examples are not the most relevant.
Right. I just brought one out just to try to tease it out.
And I'll talk, I'll speak to that. We'll get to it in a moment. Okay, so what is the alternative? The alternative is to understand behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective, or else the actor wouldn't do it. Nobody wakes up, nobody I know at least, or can imagine, wakes up in the morning and says, "Today I'm going to be obnoxious, aggressive, and stubborn." Yeah. All right. So when we cast aspersions at people, what is it that they were intending from their perspective? Well, it turns out, that each and every, each and every behavior description that's negative has an equally strong positive alternative. So I can come to you and say, well, I'm driving everybody crazy. I am so gullible. As I told you, I was taken by two psychopaths. I mean, I am really gullible. And I don't want to be gullible.
You have to tell people that story, by the way, because—
What?
You're gonna have to I don't have to tell people that.
No, no, no, no, they can read.
They can read it in the book.
And part of it is that. But the point is that I mark the edge of the gullible continuum. Okay, that's good. We tried to change me. You know, I'm going to constantly fail. Why? Because going forward, my intention is not to be gullible. I'm trusting.
Yeah.
You know, and once I realize that as long as I'm trusting, I'm going to at times seem gullible. So be it. I value being trusting. You, for example, are so impulsive that it probably drives your friends crazy. So I'm going to help you not be impulsive. But as long as you value being spontaneous, you're going to be impulsive. You're inconsistent. That's because you're flexible.
Is there a way to—
You're boring. Which is why. You value being stable. Let me just give the bottom line here, which is, so we did this study on this many, many years ago. We give people 200, 300, I don't remember, behavior descriptions. Circle those things you keep trying to change about yourself and you fail. So for me, impulsive, gullible, doesn't matter the rest. Then they turn the page over and in a random order are the positive versions. And now the instruction for people: Circle those things you really value about yourself. My spontaneity and my being trusting. All right. So now just think for a moment how that changes your view of yourself. I don't take myself to task for these negative things. How it changes my feelings about other people. I'm not judgmental because I know that the one judgment, the aspersions I'm casting could be understood very differently. And when in a relationship, somebody says, you know, whatever, I don't fall apart because of it.
It's funny because I was just telling someone that I kind of, I used to say, and I'm honored because about like 5, 6 years ago, I came to this realization. That you were saying that no one would actively do something that's stupid. It doesn't make sense. So our natural inclination is when someone does do something that doesn't make any sense, we get angry. If you take a second to realize that from their perspective, it makes sense, whether or not it therefore is true or not or whatever. I mean, we could talk about that, but the person didn't do it on purpose. That's the main thing, right? They didn't do it.
No, they did it on purpose, but the it it that they did was not the it that you're accusing them. I was trusting on purpose.
Yeah, but I mean to say is that if they knew it would get you upset, let's just say they likely would not have done it, right? If you're married, right, and your spouse does something and they're a well-intentioned person and they knew that it would get you upset, the odds are they would not do it, right? And knowing that, it gives you the ability, at least from my perspective, that to not get angry and to be much more understanding.
Yeah, no, I think anger is a tactic of the powerless.
A tactic of the powerless.
I mean, okay, or the anxious, or the mindless, really.
Are you saying that there's no ability to, uh, curb the downsides, or just, I mean, the negatives of that double-edged sword, let's call it? Um, should no one attempt to do that?
Uh, yeah, it's interesting. No, I think that, um, we certainly can grow, we certainly can and promote growth in the people we care about. But we do it differently from this perspective of not being sure the view we have is the only view or that they, you know, a different way of understanding whatever the person is doing. And as long as you don't come in from on high, but rather talk about difference, the person is going to grow. If I tell you that, Yes, I appreciate that you're gullible. Or you say to me, yeah, that you're gullible. You certainly can choose to be less gullible. I can choose to not be bothered by when you're gullible. But it all follows very differently when I talk about it resulting from you being trusting. Right. You know, I lost part of the question.
And I mean, effectively, you're not saying that someone shouldn't try to— No, you're reaching.
No, well, we don't. We have to understand that the evaluation, whether negative or positive, is not real. It's in our heads. And it has very different ramifications. If you're seeing the world negatively, you're going to end up stressed, you're going to end up suffering psychologically and physically.
Let's say a kid's impulsive behavior is landing him in trouble consistently, right?
Okay. Yeah.
But obviously that impulsivity has great potential for great success in the future. Spontaneity, creativity, and all those things. Would you say to not work at all and try to teach that kid to at least choose his spots better?
Yeah.
You come from it from a—
Yeah, no, I think that, um, look, uh, a friend of mine's, um, uh, son was going to, uh, one of these, an interview. At one of these very, very schools as a kid. And the person who was interviewing him, because he knew my work and was a lovely kid, asked him something and he answered, "It could be a pretzel," excuse me, "a pencil," rather than, "It is a pencil." I don't remember, you know. And the particular interviewer thought it was bizarre and he didn't get points for this and so on. So you can learn, And if you're teaching somebody, you say, most of the world sees it this way. It could also be understood in this other way. Some people are going to be upset about knowing there's another view to it. You know, you have choices. You don't have to— you have choices that you don't have available to you when you're mindless. Right. And making yourself, other people aware of those choices, I think, is typically a good thing. A good thing.
Going back a little bit, just because regarding regret, I did have a question.
When you say that you regret not having remembered earlier—
exactly. When you say that you never know how it would turn out, you never know the outcome, so regret is pointless—
well, it's not that you don't know how it would turn out, it's that— I mean, the, the second part of what I said was stronger than— more important than the first, was that it doesn't yield anything. It yields something that you're going to act on frame and then experience it based on the way you framed it. If you frame it as a tragedy, you're going to experience it as a tragedy. If you frame it as an inconvenience, you're going to get past it.
Are you just referring to that with regards to events or also with choices that you make?
With everything.
No, meaning let's say I do something that's morally incorrect. Should I have no regret about that?
It's not that you should have no regret. It's that Why did you do it in the first place? And if you understand why you did it in the first place, that's going to, in some sense, obviate the necessity for the regret.
Is that always a good thing?
It doesn't mean you can't learn from it. You know, I did this because I believed that. Now that I understand that I could have understood it differently, I have choices that I didn't have before. So now I'm aware of the other way to be. I stole the candy bar. All right. Why did I steal the candy bar? Because I wanted candy. Now you make me aware that somebody actually paid for that, that what I'm doing is not respecting the owners of the store and, you know, so on and so forth. And so forth, you know, I will behave differently and not steal the candy bar. But I can, so you can, I can say, oh my gosh, I'm a miserable person because I did this negative thing. Or I can say I did this negative thing because of this biased view I was taking. And neither one of those means that I can't than— or the latter, when I have respect why I did it, gives me more choices to do it again or not do it again in the future.
So it's interesting. I feel like this a little coincides with Brené Brown's work of like shame and like this particular piece and like guilt. Like it's not to look at yourself as a bad person versus understanding the choice you made.
If you understand why you did what you did, then you won't feel guilty.
And you think that's a good thing?
Yeah, basically, I think that, well, guilt can be a motivator. There are many other ways to learn proper behavior, so to speak. You know, I mean, if we— it's hard to have the discussion and stay away from the biggies. You know, you kill somebody.
Yeah.
Talk about that, no? Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't think I have any special expertise to talk about that. But if you killed somebody, why did you kill that person? You know, it changes our whole system of law because we want to have good people and bad people and then punish the bad people. And I don't see people that way.
It's not about good or bad. Why can't we say that?
If you do this thing, Even if you did it for— and it's a terrible thing— it's fine to, to, for a society to decide you should be punished.
I'm just saying, why is it a problem? Even if the person goes and does the back-end work and figures out what motivated them, maybe they had a difficult childhood, who knows, maybe they were abused, whatever the reason is, why should they not still have regret for the action that they did, that they took someone else's life?
Okay, you know, If you truly understand why you did it, you shouldn't have any regret. Are we ever that certain about why we did anything? Probably not. So, you know, it'll mitigate the regret. You know, we don't have to live in a world of you experience extreme regret or no regret. There are gradations. And the more we know why we did what we did, the less likely— first of all, if you know why you're doing what you're doing, at the time you're doing it, you're not likely to do, um, the terrible things you have in mind.
Well, for sure, but let's say it already happened and now you— and now the treatment, and you figure out why you did what you did, whatever the reason is. Why is it, uh, not plausible to say that it's okay to have regret for the action committed, for the, the pain that was still caused, that you caused to someone else? Um, I, I feel bad that I caused someone else pain.
Sure, I am not against that.
But I'm saying that would be the concept of regret. I wish I had not done that. Not the action.
Not—
I understand. Why can't both things coexist at the same time?
Of course they can.
Yeah, of course.
But that's not the way regret typically plays out. So how does regret play out? You know, who knows? Now we're both guessing. But, you know, my guess would be that you say to yourself, you should have known. And when you should have, then you experience regret. And why, you know, So when I give these talks on health, and we'll get to health soon, I hope. Yes, please. That this one person, you know, was saying to me, are you saying that my wife, that I'm blaming, I was accused of blaming the victim? Because if you can control the cancer, then those who didn't control it are at fault. And my response to that was no, that if the culture teaches that we have no control over these major diseases, we can't fault ourselves for not knowing.
There's a lot of that, that when we just in general pay attention to and try to get an understanding of why we did something in the first place, it makes it much more easy to be more compassionate on ourselves. Sure.
But even as simple— we can use a simple example. It doesn't have to be big, heavily emotionally laden. You know, if You thought 1 and 1 was always 2. And now you find out it isn't always 2. How do you feel about that? You probably don't feel stupid. You probably are not angry. You know, you simply feel that you came to that because that's what you were taught. And now you're going to rise above it in some sense.
Yeah, right. I know, I agree. But there's no— that's why I was asking the question of events versus like, personal choice. Like, let's say when something happens that I don't like, but I have the ability to look at it from a different perspective, like, to me that's great. And as opposed to when something that I personally choose to do, whether or not I know beforehand I shouldn't be doing it, or whether or not—
the action I'm referring to, like, yeah, when you, you know, so, um, you take the donut, you have the donut and you regret having eaten it, I think is not the best way of living one's life. I think you should be mindful, decide why you want that donut, it's worth it to have that donut, and then you eat the donut and you don't need to regret not having it.
Right, but I would say the difference there is from what I'm saying is that that's— you're not hurting a donut. You'd be hurting someone else. So there's no moral conversation there. That's just an action. Yeah, I, I don't see why it would be helpful, let's say, to, you know, sorry for my French, but shit on yourself for making a mistake. There's many ways you can look at it. Maybe tomorrow I'll have a better day because of the fact that I had the donut, and now it'll give me 3 more days of not, you know, eating, and therefore I don't have any shame regarding it. As opposed to a moral situation which is causing someone else pain, that's really where we're tuning in.
But you have 2 different, uh, at least 2 different possible scenarios. One where you it's causing them pain, which is a whole different situation from one where you didn't know it was causing pain. And if you don't know that it's causing pain, I don't know that you should suffer for it. You learn from it at every turn. But, and I don't think we would knowingly cause pain if we were mindful. I, you know, I'll tell you something. This is a a very extreme statement. I have a slide when I used to present this, right? Say all. And then I say, you can't say all because I'm an academic. I really mean all. Virtually all of the ills we experience, whether personal, interpersonal, professional, global, are the direct or indirect effect of our mindlessness. And I truly believe that. And so that if we were able to, and I try to get close to that in The Mindful Body. If we lived in a more mindful world, mindful utopia, so to speak, it would just be an easier place. We'd respect ourselves, we'd respect each other. Things like rape are a function of feeling powerless. Most of what happens comes from feeling powerless, but we'd be growing up in a culture where everybody doesn't know something, everybody knows something else, you know, someone's valued. Yeah. Um, and I, I think they were on our way to that, uh, as miserable as things seem right at the moment.
Yeah.
And I think that it's within— it's more than—
how do you see social media?
You know, it's okay, it's interesting. Social media, technology, all of these things people want to know, you know, are they mindless, are they mind There is nothing that we do that has to be done mindlessly or mindfully. You know, that you can be on social media mindlessly, you can be on social media mindfully. You can read a book mindlessly, you can read a book mindfully.
But would you say that sent us in the right direction?
Well, no, I think so. I don't— I— So there's a lot of evidence now that social media leads to self-esteem problems for young people. And you know, when I present this stuff to my students, I said, look, I know it's unlikely that you're gonna hear these data and you're gonna get off Facebook, Instagram, you know, whatever. I said, but there's nothing that dictates how you are on it. You're Harvard students, for God's sakes. Don't present photos of yourself and stories about what you did that are all glorified. Glorious. None of you have lived that life, you know, every single day. Some days you have a bad hair day. Post that. Have the guts and change the norms. Because it's not the media that's creating the problem. It's the mindless way the media is being used. So, and it, every comparison we make runs the risk of causing harm or bad feelings. You have students, so they're doing their PhD. So what they do is look at other people's dissertations and they panic.
Yeah.
Without realizing this is your first step. That's their last step.
Yeah.
Theirs has been gone over by several faculty, revised and revised, you know, and so on. That we have to make appropriate comparisons and we make mindless comparisons. All too frequently, even a thing, you know, an agency deciding should they let these two gay men, for instance, adopt a young child. You know, well, the comparison they're making is a white picket fence, a man and a woman, white picket fence in a community that's a white picket fence community versus, you know, two men men.
Yeah.
And which— but the kid wouldn't be up for adoption if that were the alternative. Yeah. And, um, and I'm not sure the white picket fence where many people came from, um, and many of these people suffered terrible depression and stress, that we should try to simulate that for most people.
I wanted to get into health.
Let's get into health.
Everything is affected by this concept. And after reading, you know, through the book, mindfulness and mindlessness, everything is really— does— is affected. But I feel like with health, it's so, so— sure, so correlated directly.
Sure. Well, I mean, in the, in the simplest way, that when you're mindful, the neurons are firing, and that's literally, um, health-producing, and, uh, people live longer, you know, straightforwardly. But as far as mindlessness goes, like, I'll give you an example, and these are You know, nobody is going to disagree with this. Yeah. But it's pervasive. So you're 20 years old, you hurt your wrist. You're not likely to believe that your wrist should hurt at 20 years old. So you do things about it. You're 70 years old and you were brought up in a world that says as you get older, you start to fall apart.
Yeah.
You hurt your wrist. You say, well, what do you expect? I'm 70 years old. You don't do anything about it. You know, and down the road, the young girl is healed and the older woman not, having nothing to do with the faith. Possibilities. Yeah.
So what you said, there was a point that you mentioned, which I thought beyond fascinating as far as things being in remission versus cured.
Oh, yes.
I mean, that was so powerful to me.
Yeah. I mean, that's my— the remission work exemplifies the Better than better. And also, well, okay. There's a lot that gets lost in language.
Yes.
I go to see my friend Eva, who was suffering from a very unusual kind of cancer. She had just come back from Mass General or Dana-Farber. I don't know where she was getting her treatments. I said, so Eva, how are you? And she She said, I'm thrilled, I'm in remission. And then all of a sudden something went off in my head. I said, wait a second. If I took the very same tests, they'd tell me presumably I don't have cancer. Yeah. Why is that? I don't have it, but you have it in remission. Okay. Now remission is certainly better than having the active case, but not nearly as good as cure. And with breast cancer, this is the one that I find the most irritating that, and I've searched for the answer for this for years and nobody has given me one that is satisfying. They have a 5-year rule. If you're cured, if you're in remission for 5 years, then they'll give you a clean bill of health. Yeah. Where does the 5 years come from?
Arbitrary random number.
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and it's not a neutral thing. To be in remission. In remission, you think it's there, it's active, it can come, you know, you're stressed.
I'm so anxious though.
Exactly. I think you're stressed and stress, as you know, I think is probably the major killer. And stress is psychological, which again shows us that we can heal even possibly the worst of the disorders we suffer from. But anyway, so We did this thing where we take people who, we looked at people who are on a breast cancer awareness walk and we simply divided them, the groups, those who saw themselves as in remission, those who saw themselves as cured. We checked back 6 months later. Those who saw themselves in remission were better on every measure we took. You know, you think about it.
So, cured or on remission?
No, those who saw themselves as cured. Themselves as cured. Did I say it wrong?
Yeah, I believe you did.
Okay, my loss.
So I was just like, did I miss something?
That would pass.
It makes sense.
No, you know that when you have a cold and the cold goes away, you don't see yourself as in remission, right? And it's very important because when you get your next cold, you know you built the last cold, so you beat the last cold, so you're a little stronger, better able to cope and so on. It's a very important difference. And you can, you see, what I argue more persuasively in the book than I am at this moment, you can always see yourself as cured rather than in remission, where the idea would be, look, if you have cancer, the cancer goes away. If another cancer comes back, you can see it as the same cancer. In which case you were in remission, or you can see it as a different cancer. It's never going to be exactly the same. It's never exactly the same.
And even if it's in the same area of the body, it doesn't matter. It's not the same thing.
Exactly. And but when you see it as different, then seeing yourself as having been cured from the first one makes you stronger and better equipped to deal with anything down the road.
It's such a game changer. Also, the stress.
You know, there are words. I mean, you know, you can be a victim. A victim or a survivor. Yeah, very different.
Are you familiar with the—
probably not—
The Body Keeps the Score?
No.
Bessel van der Kolk. Like, it's a very— it's a trauma-based, uh, book about how we hold on to our trauma based on our mind a lot of times.
Yeah, well, you know, our bodies— if our minds and bodies are one thing, then quite naturally, and people talk about muscle memory, um, which is more evidence for mind-body unity. And we have so much evidence. You know, do you remember the borderline effect in the book? So imagine—
Oh, the 5.9 or 6. Yes, I do.
You know, the borderline effect, there's always a point where right below it is problems, right above it. But at that point, there's no difference. So the example, let's use IQ. So we take an IQ test, you get a 70. I get a 69.
That's terrible.
No, Seth, well—
Why do we have to be upset?
It's better than 69 because I'm below the cutoff.
I understand.
All right. So I am cognitively challenged.
You're right.
You're not. But nobody in their right mind, you don't have to know anything about statistics, would think there's a meaningful difference between the score of 69 and 70. I could have sneezed, misread the question. I didn't sleep so well, but we're in two different groups now. You're in the normal group and you progress. I'm in the challenge group. The expectations everybody around me has for me, my expectations for myself are quite different. And I think the moment we're given those labels, if we say 3 months out, 6 months out for sure, there'd be very real differences between us.
How important do you think parenting is to this?
What is the this?
To teaching kids to effectively be mindful and not like show them that, oh, if you got the 69, now you're—
Sure. No, I think people— I think the more people that are aware that everything they're taught is a probability, not an absolute, parents would naturally gravitate to telling the child, well, we don't know. You know, that looks that way for some people, but it might mean something very different from you. You have ADHD, for example. Well, it's a strange diagnosis in the first place, but people who have ADHD are more mindful. Yeah, people who are dyslexic are more mindful. There are many big upsides, you know, to these things, and just to focus on the downside is a mistake.
Yeah, no, that's— there are so many famous people that— yeah, Richard Branson is dyslexic. I mean, there's a lot of very you know, I think most of the actually very, very successful people have some sort of, yeah, one of these, you know, one of the typical, you know, uh, labels, right, of being, right, you know, ADHD or, you know, etc. As far as someone who wants to take practical steps about being mindful, like, there are no— like you're saying at the same time, there's no practicing it. Meditation is a practice.
No, it's appreciating the power of uncertainty and exploiting the power of uncertainty.
So how would you implement that in a very real life?
I think that every time you disagree with somebody, realize you're being mindless.
Could it be that you thought it through and now, and you've come to a conclusion, even if it's not certainty?
No, certainly you can come to a conclusion, but the whole interaction goes very differently when you respect the other person's position.
The opposing viewpoint, right?
Yeah. All right. You know, so you hear you say, of course, obviously, nothing is of course or obvious when you understand it can mean so many different things from different perspectives. If you seek multiple answers to whatever the problem is, if you— every time you're upset. Okay, so when you're happy, you could be, you know, oblivious. And mindless. Okay, you can't do anything in those moments. But most people, sadly, are not happy. Yeah. Most people are miserable and stressed and depressed and feeling lonely, bored, whatever, most of their days, which is very sad to me. So when you're going through all the reasons that you're stressed, then is the time to look at all of the things that I'm saying about how to reverse all of that. You know, I want to do this study. I haven't, but it's so simple. You know, let's say you're lonely, you're bored, you're stressed, you're depressed. Okay. And I'll ask you to thread a needle. Just thread a needle. Now, and if you're older and you can, so it could be a bigger hole in the needle. It could be thread a bead. It doesn't matter. But it's got to be something that requires you to be there. And so you just do it. And 5 minutes later, and I would say to you, how did you feel while you were doing it? You didn't feel bored, lonely, depressed, stressed, or any of those things because you were actively attending to something else. So this active engagement, which is the act of noticing, is the panacea, almost a cure-all to almost all that ails us, certainly all that You know, I want to do the study. I haven't. But it's so simple, you know, let's say you're lonely, you're bored, you're stressed, you're depressed. Okay. And I'll ask you to thread a needle. Just thread a needle now. And if you're older and so it could be a bigger hole in But that's a pretty fair one. That it's so easy to turn it inside out and make it, you know. But I do think that when you've experienced trauma, it's because you're seeing the event freezing your understanding of the event. And understanding it differently has got to be helpful. You know, so that's the way I would deal with, with people who've been traumatized.
I mean, that's effectively what cognitive behavioral therapy is.
The breathwork was important in the beginning. Yes, that is right.
Also, EMDR, I think, is very, very powerful towards this. I mean, again, the mind-body connection, unity. I am sorry, I will not say connection ever again. The mind-body unity.
I doubt that.
Right?
Ever.
Certainty. The mind-body unity.
It is hard to have a conversation.
It is, by the way. It is challenging, but it is good to be challenged in this way because it makes you start thinking about things. Like, I was reading your stuff and I was just like, hmm. You know, this is all true. You know, the mind-body unity piece.
Let me tell people a couple of the studies there just so they can appreciate this. All right. So this is beyond the eating the pancreas making me sick. Okay. So the next study we did in the series I did with Ali Krumm, who's a professor at Stanford right now, we take chambermaids and we ask the chambermaids How much exercise do you get? Now, these women think they don't get any exercise because they see exercise according to the Surgeon General is what you do after work. Because the Surgeon General sits at a desk all day. So they're too tired. It's a very simple study. We divide them into 2 groups. We teach one group that their work is exercise. Making the bed is like working at this machine at the gym and so on. So now we have 2 groups, very simple. One knows their work is exercise, the other group doesn't. Okay. 3 weeks later, we want to find— I think it's 3 weeks— we want to find out, are they eating any differently? One group, no, no differences there. Are they working any harder? No, no. Then the important measures. Simply by changing their mindset, seeing their work as exercise, they lost weight, there was a change in waist-to-hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure came down. Now, the way, you know, which is kind of remarkable, right? This is really a study on the nocebo effect. So placebo, you take nothing and you think it's something and it does its work. And nocebo, you're doing something but you think it's nothing and it eliminates the advantage to it. So imagine now, You go to the doctor, you're given medication, you take the medication, and it doesn't work. So what is the doctor likely to do? Up the medication rather than enlist your support in it. We shouldn't be passive with respect to our own health. Our mindsets, our beliefs are stronger than most of us have to think.
So this goes back to it. If you're someone that has built in the belief that you cannot heal from, let's say, an autoimmune disease, then you're probably not going to heal from an autoimmune disease. Yeah, I happen to believe— but the problem, what makes it so difficult is that there's no certainty and definitive data that shows, like, that shows this outright. Meaning, to me, I agree with you, there definitely is data. I mean, you've done this. But when I go tell someone this, and I've done this, they're like, that's just crazy. Like, you're right, I mean, mindless, probably.
Well, you know, we have—
How do you explain, let's just say, losing weight for those chambermaids? Like, what would you tell someone of why they lost weight?
Because the mind was now in a different place. And if the mind and body are one, then all of a sudden, in some sense, there's a release on the ability to lose the weight that exercise is— if you don't believe that exercise results in weight loss, then I don't think, you know, if there's a society or a person somewhere, then I don't think we would have gotten that effect. Let me tell you a couple of more of the studies so people get a better idea. There are many and they're all in the Mindful Body. But the most recent was a study I did with my graduate student Peter Ungl where we inflict a wound. It's a minor wound because I'm not a sadist. And even if I were, The powers that be wouldn't let me do the study. It's a minor wound. Each person individually is in front of a clock. Unbeknownst to them, 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, it's real time. Most people would assume the wound is going to heal when the wound heals. But no, the wound heals based on clock time. Our perceptions. Now let's put it all together. We have the medical world. So let's say you broke your leg, and now I'm making up the numbers because I don't know.
Yeah.
And, you know, uh, you ask the doctor, how long is it going to take me to heal? And then the doctor says 6 months.
Yeah.
What does that mean? The— there's no study that can say your leg is going to heal in 6 months. All we have are probabilities and averages.
So let's pick up to your point. There are some famous running backs in the NFL that, uh, tore their ACL, which is officially like a 12-month recovery time. I forgot his name. He's a very famous running back. I'm not gonna even try to figure out his name and remember it offhand right now, but he came back after like 6 months and had the greatest, uh, running season of— yeah, ever. He ran for over 2,000 yards, I believe. So they could choose to point to that and say there are people that have done this in 6 months and you'll walk into your recovery.
Exactly. And but there's no reason to think 6 months is So that's what I'm saying.
Where does that end? If I told someone one day.
Yeah.
Well, we all know that wouldn't happen in one day.
We don't know. No. You say we all know. Then nobody would believe me. But I said to— So I used to be on this committee on aging at Harvard Medical School. And Jack Rowe, my friend, was in charge of the committee. Dr. Rowe. And I called Jack one day and I said, Jack, how long does it take for a broken finger to heal? He says, I don't know. A week. I said, what would you say if I could heal it with psychological means in 5 days? He said, all right. I said, what about 4 days? He's, all right. What about 3 days? He said no. I said, okay, what about 3 days and 23 hours?
I mean, but this is—
what is the point? I agree. Here you can't and here you can.
I, I agree, but I'm with you, of course, and that's really my question effectively. But there has to be a point No, there doesn't. It can't be a second.
We don't know.
You think it could be a second?
I don't know. I don't know. I think that in some ways it's healthier from a research perspective, at least, to presume unlimited and then, you know, sure.
And then go from there. Of course. But there still has to be a—
there doesn't—
you're saying it doesn't have to be a point one way, but you would— I assume you would agree that at that point I could go to one second. The second that is one second.
The second you think it. Yeah, but I—
but, but you can't heal a clear wound in 1 second, no matter— the universe wasn't— it wouldn't allow for it, I would think.
Yeah, no, I, um, you know, there is a point. Our laws, our laws of biology and physics would suggest otherwise, but our laws of biology and physics will certainly change over time. Yeah, new information leads to new theories, you know, One of these studies speaks to what you're saying now. So we had people in a sleep lab. They wake up, the clock has been moved without them knowing. So they got either 2 hours more sleep, 2 hours fewer, the amount, you know, and biological and cognitive function follow perceived amount of sleep. Now, I do a lot of work with this and on the notion of fatigue, which I see largely as a psychological construct. Please tell me about that because I struggle with this. I ask my students, how far is it humanly possible to run? So these are Harvard kids. They know a marathon is 26 miles. They start, they know it. I wouldn't ask the question, right, if it were 26 miles. So they usually start at 30. Someone else yells out 35, and it's like an auction. Excuse me. And then somebody says something like 50, and everybody groans. Okay, so it just seems, how could you run 50 miles? Then I turn on a YouTube of the Tarahumara, which is a tribe in Copper Canyon, Mexico, who can run 200 miles without stopping. And to my mind, and I've said this many times before, that the difference between what people now believe we can do and what we probably are able to do, or at least in this case are able to do— Exponential. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Worlds.
Who's the one, uh, I— there was— was it David Goggins? I think his name is. He runs 100 miles all like routinely.
Yeah.
Um, he's an intense fellow to say the least, but I think it's him who says that on a typical— in a typical situation where we think we've maxed out our body, we truthfully have only maxed out 40%.
Yeah.
From a physical nature.
Yeah. I don't know.
I don't know.
Percentage, right? You know how he comes up with that, but, but You know, it's still— there's no reason to believe that we're as good as, you know, as we can be.
I mean, in general, we always see that if we give ourselves a further goal— yeah, it's like Elon Musk's— I mean, all the time, right? It's— he used to give someone— if he gives somebody— says, if you— I give you 30 days to clean your house, it'll take you 30 days. If I give you 3 days, you'll get it done in 3 days. It's a similar idea. All right, guys, sorry, we just took a quick second break, so the dog could use the restroom and all that stuff. But there's still a little bit more to get to. So I wanted to ask you about, let's say, the mindlessness component of— we talked a little bit about it, but I wanted to ask more on the education system and the difficulties that authority makes on trying to succeed, the box that they put things in. And then you want to go outside that box, just in general, right?
And of course, So let me tell you a fun study that we did that speaks to leadership, the person in charge and what have you. So this was a study where we used different orchestras. Now, as you may know, many people who are in orchestras are bored to death because they're playing the same pieces over and over and over again, right? So we take several orchestras and we have one of, One set of them, they're going to be in the mindless group where they're told, remember a time— this is going to be relevant. It's just going to take a while to get there. Remember a time you played this piece where you enjoyed your performance and try to replicate it. The mindful orchestras were told, when you play this piece, make it new in very subtle ways that only you would know. Now, it has to be subtle because they're playing classical music, not jazz, right? Okay. The pieces are taped and then played for an audience that has no idea what the instructions were. People overwhelmingly prefer the mindfully played piece, and the orchestras overwhelmingly prefer playing them that way. You can't enjoy it when you're a robot. You can only enjoy it when you're mindfully engaged. Okay. So I start writing this up. And I realized that this speaks to leadership in a way that I had no idea going into the whole thing, which is here we have a situation where we have superior coordinated performance with everybody doing their own thing. But they're all drawing from the same ongoing situation, which led me to believe that the role for the leader is to provoke the mindfulness in those being led, which you're more likely to do when you realize everybody doesn't know something.
Yeah.
You know, you have respect for other people when we don't have good, bad out there, but rather people with diverse talents.
So again, you would say true leadership is the— you would define that as— how would you put that into words?
You know, um, I would say that, uh, the best leader is one who is going to provoke the mindfulness in other people. The best leader is a person who knows he or she doesn't know. You know, there's another one-liner I have that speaks to a lot of business leadership, which is right now we tend to use yesterday's solutions to solve today's problems. And that the good leader is aware of that. And so the good leader knows that what worked yesterday may not work right now. And so you're attentive in ways that them's that know to know.
Yeah. I'm just trying from a practical application, because that's always how my brain goes in that one. How am I going to do that? Especially with leadership, because—
Well, one of the things that we found consistently with leadership is that people who are mindful are seen as charismatic, trustworthy, and authentic. So another reason to— okay, so the leader to be mindful.
Very, very interesting. It does really affect every single component.
Everything. Yeah. Yeah.
And it's—
I mean, you know, we've been doing this for such a long time, close to 50 years. So plenty of opportunity to plug in different measures. So we find that when we make people more mindful or encourage people to be more mindful, They're healthier, they're happier, they live longer, they're more innovative, their relationships are better, their memory is better.
You name it. Just on the stress component, it makes total sense.
It's less stress. Yeah.
Because I mean, stress weighs people down.
It really does.
It causes so many issues that, again, I don't know how proven they are. I'm sure there's research that is done, but that are— that's clear that stress really weighs on the mind and breaks people down.
I was going to do this work during COVID and it came to nothing with people in China. I wanted to get— because there's so many people over there— I wanted to get people who were just diagnosed with one of 4 or 5 different kinds of cancer, large numbers, right? And measure them, their stress level. Well, first, anybody finds out they have a dread disease, nobody's going to be happy. So get people a little while to deal with it. We give them 3 weeks. Then after that, we measure the level of stress every 3, 4 weeks. I believe the level of stress will predict the course of the disease over and above genetics, nutrition, even treatment.
Yeah.
And, you know, and little by little, the medical world is coming around to this every day.
You know, if you read some of the medical journals, we see I mean, unfortunately, I think there might be a strong conflict with Big Pharma and the medical world that's always going to make it difficult to really focus in on what—
Well, no, because then Big Pharma will come up with anti-stress medicine.
But the point is you don't need the anti-stress medicine.
Exactly.
But, you know, and they'll never let that be fully— I mean, that's— I'm not— I wasn't— What are your thoughts on, let's say, RFK and his—
No, I'm not going to get into that. I think like everybody else, some of the things I think the— what he says about processed food is probably right.
Right.
That's all I'm asking about. And the rest of it probably very wrong.
Okay. No, I'm not. But I think it's good. Like, honestly, I'm like, there's a certain point, especially with my illness and knowing a lot of people who have the same illness because I have it.
Oh, we have to talk about the attention to variability.
Yes. Yes. Yes. 100%. But I was just like, it became so clear to me that the processed food processed food and chronic illness situation is so interlinked.
But, you know, it's also— we don't want to do that mindlessly because whatever the data are that are anti-processed food are still also probabilities. Not everybody is going to be affected negatively. And how much processed food, you know, certainly— I mean, I like potato chips, among other things, and I like a hot dog in the summer or whatever. And I can't imagine that there's research that's going to be found that's going to say, but that's bad for me. If all I'm eating are potato chips and hot dogs, you know, yes, but is that because of the potato chips and hot dogs or is it because I'm not having the broccoli and tomatoes and—
So how do we make a decision in a society as to what to implement and not implement? Given that you're right, there's never going to be 100% certainty on cases.
Yeah. You know, if you have a school menu, you know, I think that we should— the foods that have been shown to be good for most people should be on the menu. But I don't think we need to scare parents or kids, you know, parents who can't afford all of the fresh food, that they're causing terrible illness in a child by on occasion giving them whatever sweet thing or processed food they give them. I mean, I think we just need, you know, we just need to be a little more sensible. And I don't think any— if you said to anybody, is all processed food in any quantity bad? That nobody is going to say yes. But still, when we promote things, we act as if horses don't eat meat, one and one is two. Is too, rather than most of the time this may be the case.
Yeah, yeah. I was just wondering, because on the— like, from that, like, that's really what I've been tuned in on and like what opened my eyes, just because the processed food component. I think really my question would be is that when you're trying to make groups like, uh, laws and rules, right? Well, I think it's hard to like—
no, it is. But, you know, so it should be given as, um, suggestions rather than law, you know, and that with alternative ways of dealing with things. So this is going to seem a silly example, but I remember— What about when money's involved?
That's my only question.
Yeah. Because that's the difficulty. That if I wanted to tell these young women these very high heels are not good for them. Now, I know they're going to wear them anyway. So instead of saying they're not good for them, Let's figure out if you wear them, what things you might do to counteract the negative effect.
Yeah.
Right. So that if you're eating, as the potato chips is on his list, I don't know, you're eating potato chips, the times you're eating potato chips, then have some more broccoli. I don't know what the particular formula is. And that gives people more control.
I'm so with you for sure in individual cases because you know, you're able to have a rational discussion with whatever it is. But when there's money involved and it's on a bigger level, like let's just say in this case, right, BlackRock owns every single big Pepsi, Coke, you name it, all these big companies right there, like kind of with the medical situation we were talking about before, it's all driven by money. So the minute you have something that is allowed, they're going to exploit the heck out of that. And now the ability to like— it's also in every single thing we eat. So it's like Yeah, it's obviously how good, you know, is it 100%? No.
No, but you see, part of the problem is that we have a sense that you can only enjoy yourself when you're doing A, B, and C. That's, you know, eat the potatoes because you can't have a good time without that. Yeah. We haven't taught people how to have fun. So this is, I don't know if you've ever seen the video on piano stairs.
Yes.
Okay, so it's wonderful. So to describe it for your audience. So you go to a subway, any place in the world, probably, and you have an escalator next to stairs. Everybody is taking the escalator. So then these people lay down piano keys on the stairs. So they do, do, do it as you go up the stairs. And now in a very short time, everybody is now enjoying the stairs. And I say to my students, why wait for somebody to lay down the piano keys? You can do, do, do it up the stairs anyway. You know that the idea of there are these things that just can't be enjoyed. Everything can be made into fun or at least interesting. If we don't teach people these are the bad things, these are the good things, you know, that if you say to your child, yes, you can have the ice cream after you eat your vegetables, you're saying the vegetables are bad, right? That's why I'm going to pay you in some way, you know, to eat them.
Would you give your child ice cream at the same time?
I think some ice cream is always fun, but what I'm saying is that we make many of the problems for ourselves that don't need to be there by our own views of this is bad versus this is good, when anything, when engaged mindfully, becomes fun. We had this study, a fun study, where we take things that people hate. So we have women watching football, People listening to classical music who don't like classical music. People listening to that metal, heavy metal, whatever, don't like that. People looking at paintings in one of a few ways. The first is they just do it. The second, they notice one new thing about it. The next condition, they notice 3 new things. The next, 6 new things. The more you notice, the more you like the thing you're noticing. So if you're watching football, even if all you're watching noticing are the rear ends of the football players. You're getting engaged. And that engagement, that's the essence of, you know, of all the fun we have is feeling engaged. And we don't have to wait to become engaged. All you need to do is notice new things and you naturally become engaged.
It also makes a lot of sense. Like, let's say you just taught someone— let's say you had a woman watching football, or a man for that matter, that doesn't like it. But a lot of times they don't know the sport.
Yeah.
So the minute you teach them 5 new things about it and they're able to follow the sport, all of a sudden they love it. I mean, typically, I don't know how many people actually know the detail, like the basics of football.
Yeah, but you don't—
people say they don't like them. The first thing you have to ask them is, what is the it? What is—
well, what is the it? Yeah, I don't like it.
How many points do you get for a touchdown? And they'll be like, I have no idea. So what are you telling me, you don't like it? Let me tell you all the rules of the game and how the game works.
Well, but you can enjoy it without knowing any of those rules. You know, the ball is in the air, is he going to catch it, yes or no?
What makes it more things to your point then you would enjoy it more and more. So, you know.
But I'm thinking if you are involved with somebody who doesn't like football, the way to get them involved is not to give them the rules.
You would say how?
Just notice this, you know, look at how cute that guy is. You know, how big? You think the big guy is going to be able to run the fastest? Is he going to go to the right or the left? Is he, you know, whatever, just in a smaller, more fun way.
More simplistic.
Well, not— no, it's simple but not simplistic, right? It's a different level of analysis, you know, bottom-up or top-down. Top-down, here are the rules. Bottom-up, what are the people actually doing?
Was your mom very mindful?
I think so. She was not highly educated, but she was street smart.
Really interesting. And you talked— I know your relationship— before you even said that you were very close with her and with my father and with your father. Can you talk to that a little bit?
What to say?
No, just what about them that was, you know, you said you grew up in an incredible home. What about it?
They were just very supportive. You know, that, you know, again, it's so, I'll give you an example and tell you why it's hard to answer your question. I was in a dentist's office as a child. I'll never forget this. And then my mother came in and the dentist said what a good patient I was. And I thought, Immediately, what were the other kids doing in there? It wasn't, you know, that I could have done A, B, and C, and I chose, I'll follow the rules and I'll be, you know. So it's the same thing about having grown up in one house, not knowing—
What's happening around you.
Yeah, I mean, my parents told me as I got older that they didn't know where I came from. So it was, I mean, my mother worked. You know, when I was young, straight through. So I didn't see her a lot. We had our Fridays and, you know, Mondays that were, you know, we saw each other a whole week, but those were the days we really spent time. And they were able to, she was able to laugh at her errors. I remember she had the world's worst sense of direction. She would pick me up from elementary school every Monday, every Monday and Friday. And she knew to make a turn by this hot dog stand. And the guy moved—
There were no horses there.
No, he moved his cart. And it was, she couldn't find it.
Have you faced, how have you dealt with, especially in Ivy League schools now in the wake of October 7th, obviously having a Jewish identity, how has that been you know, difficult, challenging?
Sure. But not for me personally, because I'm, you know, I'm not there that often and I'm not as engaged in many ways as maybe I should be, or I was certainly when I was younger. But it was difficult for everybody. You know, it was difficult for the Jewish kids, difficult for Gentiles as well, for faculty, staff.
Yeah.
You know, because, um, uh, —people knew that many things could go awry. Yeah. Most didn't.
Yeah, no, that was a crazy time. Hard, yes. Yeah. And your suggestion to, like, let's just say Jewish kids or people that are being affected by it just in general— I mean, thank God, I think it's stopped now for the most part, but at least at this time— would be to do what? Just like, as far as how to react? And as far as how to see it, I should say.
Well, you know, I think that whether the stressor is big or small, my response to it is pretty much the same. The first thing is to recognize that most of the things we fear don't end up happening. And so we're sending good energy after bad. Yeah. You know, that there's time. The work of worry, so to speak, is mindless, I think, and doesn't strengthen us. So if you just keep living your life, you end up stronger and stronger so that if there is something eventually to deal with, you have more resources than worrying constantly about things that may or may not happen, which is separate. I'm not suggesting people shouldn't take action. During COVID I wrote a piece about— excuse me— what I called mindful optimism versus defensive pessimism. Defensive pessimists— excuse me— defensive pessimists believe you should think the worst and hope for the best. But our thinking is what creates lots of our reality. Because I can see you, for example, as shy or a snob. If I see you as one or the other, shy, I'm going to, you know, yeah, and try to be friendly.
Recently, Someone's like, I can't talk to the guy. He's so like, doesn't want to engage at all. I said, no, he's just shy. Yeah, like just exactly. Once you get going, like, guy's the nicest guy.
And then even if in fact he had been a snob, chances are he'll break down. And people prefer being nice to not being nice. And if he's a snob, okay, so this is kind of interesting. And I get to this by way of bullying, which I talk about. So when you're raising kids and you tell them, you know, it's not nice to bully, it's not nice to pick on people weaker than you, which I think is ridiculous that that reinforces the bullying, right? You're saying you push this kid around, that means you're stronger. What people should be taught is to feel sorry for the bully. And this is the bully who's 10 years old or who's 60 years old at any age. Nobody who has it together bullies. Bullying is a sign of weakness. And so if you teach children that to feel sorry for the bully, and the bully knows this, there's nothing in it for the bully to bully. And I've done this in trying to help women in organizations who have very high positions, but there's still some men higher up, um, who, um, bullies, whatever we call it at that stage, tries to intimidate her. And just, you know, um, recognize it doesn't come from a position of strength.
I was going to ask you about, you know, being a woman, and especially in the early years in the '70s. I mean, you've been around obviously for a long time. How that changed from when you started, you know, your career till now, and what hurdles you had.
Oh, those are 6 different questions rolled into one. I mean, the first question is the easiest to answer, you know, And people ask me all the time, how have the students changed? I have no idea in some sense, because I've also changed. So I'm witnessing something that I didn't witness before. Is that because it wasn't there before or because I didn't notice it before? So it's, I can't really speak to that. Certainly there are differences, but also more similarities than differences. What was the other 12 questions?
I was asking how it changed for you.
Like what hurtle for you? Yeah. I think that the older I get, the more I find everything around me sort of easy. You know, that when I was young and worried about what people thought of me, I might walk around, say I got something on my shirt and walk around like this, looking like an idiot, but not realizing it. So people wouldn't see I spilled something Who cares? Who cares? Yeah. And, you know, so in that Better Than Better, I talk about sort of 3 levels of— well, 3 levels. And the first and the third look the same, but they're very different. So let's use as an example— I don't know why I always use The New Yorker, although I think it's a wonderful magazine, but I'm still going to use it here. Level 1, people who don't read The New Yorker. Level 2, people who read The New Yorker. Level 3, people who don't read The New Yorker anymore. 1 in 3 look the same. Yeah, but they're not. But they are very different. We could have them reading again. I read it this morning. Yeah. And, you know, so very often the people who have the most going for them are Level 3s who— the world is run, I believe, by these Level 2s who think they know. They see the Level 3s, they think think they're level ones.
Yeah.
An example of the three levels, uh, with age might be, you know, when you're young, you're uninhibited, so you need to be true. You don't know what the rules of society are. Then you become like most people, you know, I don't know what age, let's say 13 through, for some, our whole lives, you become inhibited. Hopefully you get to a point where you become disinhibited, where, you know, it's not that you don't know the rules, it's that you don't respect the rules in the same way. Right. Now, so if you see an older person doing something, the mistake is, aren't they being childish? But it's a level 3, not a level 1.
Is the application as far as whether or not, granted the person's not being childish because they're self-aware, Does that mean that they shouldn't care about, you know, what they're doing? Their actions are— I mean, how would—
No, it's okay to care. But if you know there are going to be strong advantages to not caring, that's going to lead you not to care in the same way if you care. You have choices. You know, I could, with the spot on me, walk around like this. Yeah. I could not. If I'm not, there are some people who are going to say, "Oh, you know, she's walking around and her sweater is dirty." But you're probably going to have just as many people who say, "Isn't that nice? She's so free." And I think that's what I was saying before about there's a different way of being than most people, I think, have gravitated towards, which is to be confident but uncertain. And if you're confident and uncertain, it doesn't matter if your shirt is torn. Or your nylons, you know, when I was a kid. I don't understand, you know, I go to Home Depot, it's a fun store for me, and there's nothing about me when I'm there that looks Home Depot-ish. But everybody, not everybody, every time, there's somebody who'll come over and ask me questions for information about the store. You know, which I find— The person's calling me. Yeah, you know. And there's a way that people— Well, first of all, when you're confident and uncertain, you seem friendlier to people. And you are friendlier because you're not afraid of them asking a question. You're not thinking that you know the answer. You don't think you're better than— I don't think that I'm better than anybody. But I also don't think that anybody is better than I am. You know, it's a very different way of being in the world where everything else is lined up up on this normal distribution where we evaluate talent, intelligence, beauty, everything based on standards without asking the question, where did these standards come from?
Do you think there's a natural instinct of the world that was built into the world that has led us to this point that humans want to conquer and therefore there's a—
I don't know. I think that— Higher, lower? Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I'm not sure of the answer, but I think that there's always somebody who's benefiting by keeping everybody else still. And now if that person that's pretending that they know that's leading everybody else to feel less than were happy, if those people were happy, All right, um, we could make an argument. I wouldn't, but people could argue. But I don't know, uh, if you look among the billionaires— oh, the billionaires, that as a whole, I don't think they're a happy group.
I think more people would be happy living in this house on this lake than being— river— than being a billionaire. I'm not kidding.
I mean, yeah, you know, I mean, then the main thing is people people need to understand, you— I believe that you want all the money so that people will respect you, so that you can then respect yourself. Yeah. But you can do that without all that money, without all that.
That is such a powerful statement.
And then it's very free.
And I'm happy I got that on this podcast because I haven't heard you say that.
I never said that before, and I may never say it again.
That's a great, great, uh— it's true. You could do it without the money. Yet there's some sort of false belief built into us that you need to have the money.
Yeah. And I think that we don't have to go overboard. You know that, you know, who is that? Some comedian must have said, you know, I've been rich and I've been poor and you can buy a lot more things if you're rich.
I'd still be rich every day.
But it's just how much of yourself you're going to give up in order to earn that. And to recognize, you know, again, it sounds almost Hallmark, you know, no disrespect to Hallmark, but still, you know, not the most profound thoughts typically. But all we have are moments. That's it. So if you make the moment matter, it all matters. And you can make that moment matter at any age, any context, with or without any any amount of money.
This is, this is very powerful for people, I think, also that are older to hear, that start getting depressed that, you know, they're headed towards the end of their life because they give up on the joy. Yeah. You know, that, that they could be having in the final years for a variety of different reasons, whether they're— whatever is going on. Yeah.
But at least it's interesting because now since there's so many baby boomers, you know, the world is great, um, everybody is obsessed with living longer. And, you know, to me, I think people need to stop worrying about adding years to their lives and they start adding life to their years, which according to our research will naturally be what you're looking for.
Yeah, it's a counterintuitive approach.
You're supposed to be leading here, but I'm going to take control. Please, go right ahead. Because I want to talk about chronic illness because we haven't done that. Because when people are diagnosed with a chronic illness, that leads them to think there's nothing you can do about it. That's what the word chronic means. It's uncontrollable. But all the word chronic means is that the medical world hasn't yet come up with a solution, which is very different. All right. So when you have a chronic illness, you assume that your symptoms are going to stay the same or just get worse. But nothing moves in only one direction. The best example is a snowball. Stock market, it's going up, it doesn't go up in a straight line, goes up, goes down a little bit. It just has to go up more than it goes down. So things are always changing and we can take advantage of those changes to make ourselves better. So for example, what we did in this, we do this in each of these studies with big diseases that I'll mention later, is we call people periodically. Simple question, how is the symptom now? Is it better or worse than the last time we spoke and why? The why question is the important one because that does several things. First, by beginning this treatment, you feel better because you don't feel quite as helpless as you did with your chronic illness. Second, by noticing there are times it actually is better and there are always these times, you feel better because you thought it was always optimal, you know, maximally awful. Third and most important is when you ask, why now is it better? You begin a mindful search for why, and that itself is good for your health. That mindfulness is energy begetting, literally and figuratively enlivening. Fourth, I believe you're more likely to find a solution if you're looking for one. Yes. So we did this with people who have multiple sclerosis, arthritis, chronic pain, Parkinson's, stroke, I mean, big things. And in each case, find an amelioration of the symptoms. Now, when I first did this, I was looking for how to have people give themselves a placebo. You know, cure yourself. And you can't give yourself a placebo if the essence of a placebo is the belief that it's not a placebo. Okay. So this was my— You know, start into that. So here we were calling you, but now everybody has, if you don't have, buy one, steal one, you know, get it from your child, a smartphone. Set the smartphone to ring in a half hour. It rings, ask yourself, how is the symptom now? Is it better or worse than the last time and why? Set it to ring in, you know, 2 hours and 10 minutes. Doesn't matter, just vary the times in the course of the day. Every day. And you're going to feel better just by doing something. You're going to feel better because you're being mindful. So even if nothing happens with respect to the illness, but I think there's reason to be very hopeful that in fact it will.
This is so powerful, especially to me because I deal with this. I've been dealing with this since I'm 15 years old. So half my life. Yeah. You should try.
Have you tried this yet?
I mean, thank God right now Right now, for me, my case is not as severe as other people that I know.
So, but you can still make it better. I could make it better.
So I just went on the diet that I was telling you about. Yes, I was watching. I went on the— I really shouldn't be talking about this yet because I should really wait. I should really wait until it has a good month. Yeah, don't have this, but the hell with it. So I started now, I'm on day 4 of the lion diet or carnivore diet. Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, they talk about this a lot, and there's a bunch of other people that discuss this. In an effort to try to get off the medication, which is just treating the symptoms. It doesn't do anything to actually heal the actual issue at hand. And happens to be I feel fine throughout the day for the most part. I get fatigued and tired, so, but I don't have pain. So how would you, let's say, apply what you're saying to myself? Like set an alarm every hour to see how I'm feeling? Yeah, sure.
Well, no, you can pick the symptom. It can be fatigue, it can be pain, it can be— I'm not in pain. No, so it doesn't have to be pain. If you have no symptoms for a disease, you have to question, do you have the disease?
What does it mean? No, I have disease.
That's for sure. Well, because you took a test that said you have it, but—
Well, no, because I'll get flare-ups. I'll be in the bathroom.
Okay, so the flare-ups then are the symptom.
Yes, but I don't always have the flare-up. So let's say when do you have them and when don't you have them? Oh, well, the way Crohn's works is if you— like, let's just say if I take the medication on time, then I won't have a flare-up. I mean, unless the medication stops working. But let's just say I've been on, let's say, Remicade now, right? I've probably been on it 5+ years since 2019. Uh, before I took that, I landed up in the hospital after taking something for a previous 5 years. So God willing, this should work longer. Um, but now I've been taking it 5 years. I take it every 6 weeks. If I take it, I'm fine. About 2 months ago, my insurance didn't approve one of them. It was a whole thing. I don't know exactly what the hell happened. It's always a mess. But the point is, I was late. 3 weeks late. Sure enough, week 8, boom, flare-up started.
When the flare-up is starting, there's a particular set of circumstances surrounding it. Do you know what those are? You know, you wake up and— Oh, yeah. Your arm hurts. Well, did you sleep like this? Or, you know, did you bend down to pick something under the bed? You know, cockeyed. I mean— The more of this you can notice, the more you can vary it. So let's say you have chronic stress. You think you're stressed all the time. No one is anything all the time. Yeah. All right. So you start doing this random, you know, asking yourself, am I stressed now? Yes or no? And you find out you're maximally stressed when you're talking to Ellen Langer. The solution is easy, right? Don't talk to me.
I doubt that's ever going to happen. Thank you. I might come back here again, like, randomly.
You're welcome.
All right, but yeah, no, perspective is— I remember when I was younger, I think you'll find this interesting. So my first therapist that I ever went to, which is interesting when discussing this, but the hell with it, why not, uh, I remember I must have been like 15 or 16, and I was like complaining about something that I feel shitty about, you know, maybe I wasn't good at this sport or something. And, and he asked, and he asked me. His response to me was, how many kids are in your class? So I said, well, I'm one of 30 kids in the class. He said, okay, fine. So are you better than any of the kids? So I said, yeah, I'm better than some of the kids. He said, okay, how many kids are you better than? I don't know, 10, 15, whatever. He's like, no, no, no, count for me. So I sat there for 5 minutes, I thought, I went through it. I'm better than 26 of the kids. So he said, okay, one second. So there's 3 people that are better than you. You're, you're coming in here, you have this this entire perspective and this entire, you know, narrative in your brain that you, you know, you suck, you're not good, when really you're the fourth best. You know, you'd make the— you'd make the team, you know, starting five, which was just a wild perspective to me. And a lot of times people like— I used to—
yeah, so, uh, my version of that is, um, to ask you people, uh, do you expect to be successful 100% of the time? It doesn't matter what you're doing. And people say I said, so how much of the time? And I expect to be successful, let's say 90% of the time. When was the last time you said to yourself, I must be in my 10%? Yeah. You know, to recognize, to be a little easier on ourselves. Yeah.
There's such a powerful component to that. Like, I know I used to have crazy impatience. I mean, I still have impatience. I would say that that's the number one, that that's the number one thing that I, you know, my number one thing I have to work on There's probably a bunch, but I would say it's my patients. And I learned like, when something's coming up, it's always easy to see it in other people versus yourself, like, you know, to be as kind to yourself as you are to other people. But I always find when someone else is starting something new and they're like, I can't do this, blah, blah, blah. I said, well, how many— it's like the 10,000-hour rule. I'm like, how many— how long have you been doing this? What, like a week?
He said, you know, there's a whole other response to this. Okay, so, um, you're a little kid, and if you've heard all my podcasts, I've I've said this before, but still, I'm just repeating. I've probably heard it. So you're a little kid, you're in the elevator, you're trying to press the button, you can't press it. Your mother, father, or adult picks you up, you press it. Okay, now next time you're in, you still can't, they pick you up. Eventually— so it's great fun, can I reach that stupid button? Eventually you can press the button. When was the last time you were excited about being in an elevator? Yeah. Okay, so the point is You can be imperfectly mindful, right? Or perfectly mindless. You know, so you might think, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could get a hole-in-one every time I swung the club? But no, there'd be no game there. So we have to understand, appreciate that the difficulty is part of the whole game. I mean, you don't want it to be— when you want to be successful, go play tic-tac-toe against a 5-year-old. You'll always win it, you know, whatever age it is where they don't yet know.
It makes it exciting if you could lose. Yeah.
And when you do, you know, so I play Words with Friends, um, and I play with, you know, number of people, but I— there's one person I love playing with because I almost always lose. You know, I, I think that people need to understand the advantages to losing, not because then you don't have to worry about not winning, but there's something something to strive for, you're learning something. Mistakes are the same sort of thing. That you can be successful, but mindless, you haven't learned anything. As soon as you make a mistake, that tells you you've been mindless. And then you have the choice to go forward differently. To go forward mindfully. And the work that we've done shows that when you do that, our mindfulness leaves its imprint on the products we create. Create.
It's really, really fascinating. So, um, okay, I know we, we have to go. It's also, it's getting late. Yeah, it's getting— I'm enjoying this conversation a lot. That's why I'm like just rolling with this. Um, I wanted to ask one last question. It's a two-prong question. First of all, have you had a lot of critics on your work? That's one. And two, I would ask— well, it's a three-prong question. What I was— I would ask is how you've dealt with that. And my last question, which is very, very important because it's really the basis of this podcast is, you know, this whole pod is about, you know, this whole discussion has been about labels that we apply to things. Um, what would you say people just misunderstand about, let's say, yourself and the work you're doing?
Oh geez. Um, yeah, I, I don't know how to answer that. First, I'm sure there's, uh, criticism. Um, I— they don't come to my face and tell me, so I'm oblivious, and, and that's fine with Excuse me. I think that it would be, I would enjoy people understanding that I'm sharing, I'm not selling. You know, I'm telling you what my work has led me to believe because I think there's an advantage for you to know it. And you don't accept it, you know, that's fine. The science is, real and carefully executed. That's powerful. And much of, you know, that I'm saying things that go very much against the grain in some sense. So I don't expect, you know, if people all the while learning things by making it become second nature, and I say you don't want to do that, that people are not going to instantly just stop. Yeah. It would be I behoove them to think about what I'm saying and try the alternative and see where it gets you. Because again, when you're not there, if you're not growing, you're dying. And, you know, when you're being mindless, you're not there and the neurons aren't firing and whatever you're doing can be done by a robot, which is one of my favorite— I did this thing. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but I'll tell you anyway. Whether it'll be appreciated or not. So this was many years ago, and it was during a school vacation, and I went with some colleagues, women, to play tennis. And the gym was open, so we walk in, and the custodian comes over and says, "You're not allowed to use the court today." So I said, "Why?" He said, "Because it's vacation." I said, okay. I said, you know, I'm happy to pay for the net, you know, leave you a deposit on the net. I don't see what else we could steal here. What could go wrong? We're all insured. And so, you know, he was adamant. And then I said to him sweetly, although it doesn't sound like it could be sweet, but I swear to you, it was sweet. Better than me. You know, I said, look, if you were going to always say the exact same thing, never deviate from the rule as you understood it, your job could be done by a machine. And that, you know, what you want to do is, you know, think about it. You have 4 faculty people here ready to play. Yeah. What is the potential to— anyway, of course we ended up playing or I probably wouldn't tell the story or I'd probably tell the story and it'd be a different, make a different point. You know, for us to recognize that if you're not there, you're missing out on opportunities that you're oblivious to. And if you're not there, you have no way to avert the danger not yet arisen. If you're not there, you have no choices. And if you're not there, life is not exciting.
It's such an unbelievably complex topic. Dr. Langer, I really want to thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. My pleasure. Like, I've learned— forget about in this conversation, which I've learned a ton. I've— between reading the book, watching all the podcasts, I— there's definitely a new— any— I'm not kidding, the last week problems have come up, I'm like, okay, what— like, right away I've thought, like, what are options that could have happened? Yeah, well, what would you say? And, and really what I've taken away is, like, I can't predict the future. So the fact I think this is is going to be bad. It does not mean it will. It could be good. Um, Stackland, thank you so much, guys. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Uh, back with another great guest next week. As always, peace and love.
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