The Mindful Body with Dr. Ellen Langer (Harvard psychologist): Ep 178 | Win the Day James Whittaker

I'm Ellen Langer, and this is Win the Day with James Whittaker. You're listening to Win the Day with James Whittaker.

What we do in life echoes in eternity. Broadcasting from Los Angeles, California, here's your host, James Whittaker.

Let's go.

Hey winners, welcome back to Win the Day. If this is your first time here, we sit down with some of the world's true changemakers to give you all the tips, tools, and strategies to win the day every day. The quote for this episode, it comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson and says, once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. Joining us today is Harvard psychologist Dr. Ellen Langer, widely known as the mother of mindfulness. Dr. Langer is the author of more than 200 research articles on human behavior and its consequences and has reached millions around the world through her inspirational talks. She has written 13 books including Mindfulness, On Becoming an Artist, and Counterclockwise, which have been translated into more than 15 languages. Dr. Langer's research with people in businesses, schools, and nursing homes, as well as other everyday scenarios, has significantly advanced the literature on positive psychology, health, and human performance. Her new book, The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, has just been released. In this episode, we're going to talk about proven psychological tips to upgrade your daily routine, how labels, positive or negative, can alter your destiny, the most impactful research studies from Dr. Langer's distinguished career, and how to harness the power of your own mind to dramatically increase your health, happiness, and performance. Before we begin, the right bit of inspiration can completely change the trajectory of someone's life. So if there's a friend or loved one out there who needs to hear this episode or could use some help to win the day, share it with them right now. All right, let's win the day with Dr. Ellen Langer. Ellen, great to see you. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Yes, thank you, and thank you for the nice introduction.

Well, you've had an incredible career, and I'm so excited for our conversation. I know how busy you are, so thank you for making some time. To kick things off, who was the very first person to believe in you, and how did that change the path you were on?

Oh gosh, I think it was my parents, my mother in particular. She would have had me laminated if she could have. And it was sad to me, she died young, and it was right before I got tenure at Harvard. And, you know, that was a long time ago. And I remember her telling me to learn how to type, you know, because that's the career I might end up having. So it was too bad she didn't see where this all led to.

And since then, who's a mentor that stands out for you? And is there a particular lesson that you still remember so vividly today?

Sadly, no. That doesn't mean they weren't, as it may be just in my memory. No, I tend to want to learn from whatever situation I'm in. My mentor at Yale was Bob Abelson. And he was important in my life, but I don't remember a specific instance.

And that's something that I love about you. And I love that idea of being mindful versus mindless. Do you want to give us just a little bit of an overview of what that is, just to set the tone for today? Yeah, sure.

It's a great place to start because people, when they hear the word mindful, they tend to think of meditation. And meditation is fine. It's just not what I'm talking about. This is a process that is so simple it almost defies belief. All you need to do is notice new things. Now, the problem is that everything we're taught, we think we know. And a way of understanding being mindless is frequently in error, but rarely in doubt. Okay, so when you know, you don't pay any attention, but you don't know because everything is changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives. It's also the case that meditation is a practice. Mindfulness, as I study it, is just a way of being. Once you recognize that you don't know anything and you're not alone in that, nobody really knows anything for sure, you naturally sit up and pay attention. Everybody knows they don't know. The problem is they think they should know. They think the person they're talking to knows, so they opt out, pretend, or whatever. So I'm here to free everybody to be comfortable with not knowing. So you become more mindful in one of two ways. Either you recognize everything is changing, you don't know, and if you can do that, then everything is new. Or you think of the things that are new, are old to you, and notice new things about it. And go home and notice 3 new things about the person you live with, if you live with anybody. Same thing at work and so on. And all of a sudden, they become new and alive and they feel seen. So now, so Just this noticing. What do we find? Incredible. First, we have several investigations that when you engage in this act of noticing, you live longer. When you engage in this act of noticing, you're going to be healthier. When you're engaged in this mindful pursuit, people find you more attractive. Relationships are better. Your memory is better.

The—

when you perform something mindfully, it leaves its imprint on what you're doing. Okay, so you're better, people like you better, and what you do is better. There's no reason why people shouldn't do this all the time. But when I say to people, you should be mindful all the time, they shudder because they confuse mindfulness with thinking. Now, thinking has gotten a bad rap, but for most people, oh my gosh, the thought of thinking all the time is exhausting. Thinking is fun. Being mindful is fun. What's not fun are the mindless evaluations we impose on ourselves. So when you're working on something, worrying that you're not going to be able to come up with something good or solve the problem, answer the question, is what makes you think that, the thinking itself. But when you're having fun, you're being mindful. You can't have fun unless you're mindful. And you don't have to practice. So let's say, James, you were going to come visit me in Boston, Cambridge, actually. You wouldn't have to do anything. You'd walk into my house. It'd be brand new for you. You haven't been there before. I don't even know if you've been in Cambridge before. And you'd see, oh, what books did she do that painting that's on the wall? What is this silly thing? Look at how many dogs she has. It would all be new. And so essentially, this act of noticing is the essence of engagement. And it's literally and figuratively enlivening. I guess you want me to stop and let you say something because I can just keep going.

Can that— can that— so So I can see how creativity is a big benefit of that because just doing the same thing over and over again, eventually we reach a point of complacency or things like that.

Initially, I thought of calling it mundane everyday creativity, but the problem with that is that people have mindless notions about creativity where emphasis is on the product. In this, conception, emphasis is on the process. Now, when you engage the process mindfully, the product is usually better. But, you know, if I just copied somebody and you didn't know that it was a copy, you'd have what you thought was a creative product without the creative process.

For sure. The Special Forces talk about things like complacency being so dangerous. The more you've been in the situation where you then think you know everything, That can literally get you killed or you're—

Oh, without question. But it goes far beyond that. Virtually everything you think you know is wrong on occasion. So I'm fond of doing this. I've probably overdone it already. So everybody already knows the answer. But the thing everybody thinks they know, how much is 1 plus 1? 2.

2.

Okay. Now it's not though always 2. If you add 1 pile of laundry plus 1 pile of laundry, 1 plus 1 is 1. You add one cloud plus one cloud, one plus one is one. You add one watt of chewing, it goes on and on. So in the real world, one plus one probably doesn't equal two as more often as it does. When you think that this thing that you're most certain of is wrong some of the time, surely it will spread to everything else you know. So for me, I'm at this horse event. Now, I was an A+ student. Okay, so I knew, right? I memorized, I had all of these facts. This man asked me if I could watch his horse for him because he wanted to get his horse a hot dog. I'm trying to be sweet, but still in my mind thinking, is he crazy? Horses don't eat meat, right? He comes back with the hot dog and the horse ate it. And it was at that moment that I realized everything I thought I knew could be wrong. Now, some people might be scared by that. I found it exciting because because it meant that all those things you're told you can't do, they don't know. And that's been the essence of my work for the last 45 years.

And you're a teacher. How do you teach if you're teaching people that everything that they know and learn is wrong?

Well, you know, let's go back to how much is 1 plus 1. So if after we speak today, somebody asks you, unlikely, but you never know, James, how much is 1 plus 1? You're not going to mindlessly say 2 any longer. You're going to look at the context, think about it for a moment, and then say, you know, it's often two, that could be two. And so you can give the facts, but the facts have to be understood as probabilities, not absolute. And when you know something maybe, you're not that dissuaded from doing what maybe doesn't work, where if you're told it can't be, then you're not going to waste your time.

And we mentioned your teaching career there. Are there any transformations or moments that you've had with your students or that you've inspired your students to go on and take that really stands out to you?

Well, I remember way back when I first started teaching, I wanted to do this research on memory. I don't know if I can remember exactly what it was with elderly people. And the student I was working with, I won't use her name because this is, was, just kept insisting it's not going to work. You know, it's not going to work. Yeah, I thought it would work, but how could I be sure it's going to? If I knew for sure it was going to work, why bother testing it anyway? And I'll never forget her excitement. Dr. Langer! Dr. Langer! You know, she showed me that we got the effects we expected, and that was, um, a longevity effect by making people more mindful. So now you could work backwards and see who she was, but it doesn't matter. Too much work.

And out of all the research studies you've done, is there one in particular that's changed the way that you approach how you look at life every single day?

You know, it's interesting. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked that question. And you would think being asked it over and over again, I would just develop an answer. But the fact of the matter is that most of my research comes from my experience. So I will see something and then wonder, is it just true for me? Is it even true for me, or is it more generally true? And then I do the study. So when the study works, it's not, you know, I start off thinking that it's true. So it's not, oh my gosh, you know. But I think the extent of the findings can be, I don't know, enlightening, exciting. And perhaps the counterclockwise study is most like that. Shall we tell them about it? Let's do it.

Yes, for sure.

So, Most people buy into a mind-body dualism. And the problem with that is that they have to deal with the question, how do you get from this thing, a fuzzy thought, to something material called the body? And so there has not been, had not been a great deal of research on how the mind is affecting the body. And so I spent time thinking about this. In a very early study, we gave elderly people choices to make, and that was before before I was dealing with this mindfulness concept, but all it was really was making them mindful, and they live longer. And so how could it be? How could you think something? And then I realized that, well, maybe the key is to take the mind and body and put them back together. You know, they're just words. And that if you put them back together, then it's one thing. That means wherever you put one, you're necessarily putting the other. And so the counterclockwise study was the first test of this. We were gonna take old men, put their minds back in time, and see the effects on the body. And this was, I guess, first did this in 1979, a long time ago. But what we did was retrofitted a retreat so that it was 20 years earlier. In all ways that we could accomplish. It wasn't Hollywood, so surely it could have been improved. And had old men come. Now they were probably late 70s and 80s, but that was a long time ago. And so it would be equivalent to being in 90s and 100 now. They were old. I mean, when they came to be in the study, first they had to be tested. So I remember I'm in my office here, they're walking down the hall typically with their adult daughter, And I'm saying, what am I doing? I'm not sure they're going to live through the day, yet I'm going to take them away for a week and be responsible for them. So they were not your, you know, athletic types. And then they're at the retreat now with the instruction that everything they say has to be in the present tense. So they're describing They're watching movies, they're talking about current events, but they're not current, they're from 20 years ago, but they're talking about them as if they're just unfolding. Okay. Um, the mere fact of being at the retreat was novel and important for them. Okay, so let me skip to the chase. I don't know what the chase is, but I'm going to chase the results. Uh, what we found in a week, a week, Their vision improved, their hearing improved, their memory improved, their strength, and they looked noticeably younger. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think I had ever heard of an elderly person's hearing improve without any medical intervention. I've heard plenty who get hearing aids and wait a second, this thing isn't working. So that was, that was very exciting and started a series of studies that I've been doing up to the present to test this strange idea that mind and body are just one thing. And, you know, this started when I, when I was working on The Mindful Body, and it started off as a memoir. And so there are a lot of personal stories in it. And then it became what it is now, which is similar to the mindfulness book, but with more personal stories. So I will reveal I was Married when I was very, very young. I mean, almost embarrassed. And so I was 18 or 19, and we went to Paris on our honeymoon. So now I'm 19 going on 40. I mean, I have to be— I don't know why I believe this, but I believe that if I were married, all of a sudden I have to be all grown up. And so we're in Paris, we're at a restaurant, I order a mixed grill. On the grill, on the plate is pancreas. So my then husband was more sophisticated than I, and I said, gee, which of these is the pancreas?

Delicious pancreas.

Which is the pancreas? That one. So I have to eat it because this is the way I show that I'm sophisticated now. I eat everything else. Now comes the moment of truth. I start to eat the pancreas and I literally get sick. He starts laughing. I say, why are you laughing? He says, that's chicken. You ate the pancreas a while ago. So I made myself sick. And, you know, that's what my research has been about, you know, from then on about how to really make ourselves well. But showing in either direction shows the amount of influence we have. I have another pancreas story, which is really what determined my research life. My mother had breast cancer. That had metastasized to her pancreas. Let me interrupt myself. You tell me how many people you know have two pancreas stories. And, you know, that's the endgame. And so the hospital, the doctors treated her as if, you know, the game is over. They didn't exercise her limbs or anything because she was going to die. And then it was totally gone. Now, I think that these spontaneous remissions are not as rare as the medical world does. We can talk about that later. But how do you explain it? And the mind-body unity explains it. And so, um, that set my course for the next 40 years.

Incredible. Like doing some of this stuff to literally like reverse aging, or certainly the symptoms of it in many cases is, is quite extraordinary. With what you have learned in your career, do you have a process, and obviously all of your achievements along the way, do you have a process in terms of manifestation? Like, do you have a process for setting goals and, and achieving goals or anything like that?

No, not really. I mean, it's probably surprising.

I didn't think you would actually.

I get an idea and I do it. And, you know, and then I'm up against bureaucracy. It's not so easy, you know, to run these studies and often costs money that, you know, we don't have and so on. But essentially, when I set up a study, I realized this from the very early Nursing home study where we had people live longer. That was, you know, back in the early '70s. Nobody had done that. This was before mind-body medicine. And by having a study where you have the ultimate dependent measure— people died or they didn't, you know, you can't argue with that, right? They're dead. Now we can argue about why they're dead, but the fact— okay, so The measures became very important to me because of that. And so with any study, the first thing that I want to do is make sure that, um, if I get this, will people be surprised? Will it add anything to the body of knowledge that already exists? And this is at a time, not to demean my colleagues because they're all smart and wonderful, but most people were dealing with questions on a questionnaire. Feel the difference. And so most of the measures that I use in these studies are measures where you could ask your grandmother, so-and-so did such and such, what does it mean? She says, yeah, well, you know, that's a good thing or it's real. I don't remember the question, but I have a habit now. I've discovered that if I talk long enough, you don't remember the question anymore either.

It was the idea of goal achievement. And I think it's very interesting. It looks like you've harnessed a lot of momentum with what you're doing. And it seems that that momentum can perhaps open up your ideas to some other things that might be possible, and the momentum and possibility sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to drive it all.

Yeah. No, it's, um, uh, I'm overwhelmed with these ideas and, um, there, what's interesting to me, it may only be interesting to you if I can give you an example, and I don't think I'll be able to, is that I'll have an idea and then realize that, gee, you know, I had a similar idea 20 years ago. Uh, why did it take so long to come to fruition? But again, that's meaningless. I'll call you as soon as that happens again.

Sounds good. And congrats on your new book. It's incredible. I sent it out to so many people before Christmas. It's an amazing read. What's the problem that you wanted to solve with the new book and who do you want someone to be once they're finished reading it?

You know, it's the same thing with each book that I've written. It's sort of, I feel I was very fortunate. My parents were not intellectuals. They were not wealthy. But they were so loving. And so I had an upbringing where I was totally supported, which I think set the stage for me to be happy. And so from the very beginning, every study I do is, look, you can have it too, you know, and make some headway. There's been possibly an evolution in consciousness in the world now, you know, that I might have been part of. But the idea is that I think the kind of life that people seem to want is available to them if they only recognize. And so it's, um, you know, uh, there's a lot of this book, a lot of it, and we should talk later about these, um, mind-body unity studies because they're very surprising and really show the extent of the control we have. But there's another whole part of the book that deals with of psychological constructs where you have people who have problems and then you have professionals who get them over here. So they start off and now they're better. But there's a whole other world that's so much better than that better that I want to take people to. So we take a simple thing and there's a lot in language in the book. Let's say trying. Trying is good, right? So if you take somebody who gives up, you say, no, you've got to try. Okay, that's getting them to the next place. Trying has built into it the expectation for failure. Now, we did these little studies, and somebody told me that Yoda said this, which I didn't know. Okay, so these are the Yoda studies. But essentially, you know, all you need to think of, if you were going to have— if I gave you an ice cream cone, you wouldn't try to eat it. You would just eat it, right? So, um, if we— so we do some studies where we get one group is trying, the other group we tell do it, and they're doing surpasses the trying.

And you say that in the book about getting a coffee, right? Like in the morning when you're going to get your coffee.

No, that was a different one. Oh, was it? No, the coffee is about hope. I mean, there's so many of these words where we think these are good things. And I say, well, they're good, but they're not great. Here's how to make 'em great. So yeah, the coffee example was that when I go down to the kitchen, down, some people go across, some people go up, whatever. When I go to the kitchen to have coffee in the morning, hope that the coffee is going to be there. I just assume it will be there. So the word hope also has built into it an expectation for failure. And what people need to realize is that our expectations tend to be fulfilled. So it's, you know, it's not just a simple thing. And so we need to assume everything is going to be fine and go forward. And most of the time, I will be able to create that reality for ourselves. The one that I think is the most interesting— many years ago, I was asked to give a sermon at one of the Harvard churches. I don't know how many they have, maybe the Harvard church. And, you know, I'm not religious, and if I were to be religious, I'd be Jewish. So I don't spend much time in churches, but I tend to say yes to everything. Sure. Now, God, what am I going to talk about? And It occurs to me, well, forgiveness sounds something religious-like. It's not a matter of religion if you were going to think deeply about it, but I could get away with it. So I start thinking about forgiveness, and what I come up with is actually sacrilegious. Okay. If you ask 10 people, is forgiveness good or bad? What are they going to tell you? Good. It's good. If you ask 10 people, is blame good or bad? What are they going to tell you? Bad. It's bad. But, you know, you have to forgive. You have to blame. Before you forgive. Ah, forgivers are blamers. Now, do you blame people for good things or bad things? You blame people for bad things. Okay, so what do we have here? We have people who see the world negatively, who blame, then possibly forgive. It doesn't seem to me to be divine, you know, and that there's a better way. If you blame, you're certainly better off, just like if you give up, you're better off trying. If you blame, you're better off forgiving. But the better than better way is to understand why the person did it in the first place. Now, you asked me before about what study I did that was most important to me or whatever. This concept, you know, it's bizarre to me in some way. You know, I have many studies where people are living longer, lives are changed in very meaningful ways, yet This, this, I hold my hands as if you know what it is. This is the most important thing to me that I came to in all of my work, which is behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective, or else he or she wouldn't have done it. What that means is every time you're being judgmental of yourself or somebody else, you're misunderstanding the situation. So if, let's say, you see me as gullible, and you can persuade me that I'm gullible, I don't want you to forgive me for being gullible. Gullible. I don't want to forgive myself for being gullible. I want to understand why I'm gullible. Well, the reason I appear gullible is because I value being trusting. And if you're trusting, at some point you're going to be vulnerable. You might value the fact that you're flexible, but damn it, it seems so inconsistent. All right. So the point is, for every negative understanding, there's an equally strong positive alternative. No one gets up in the morning and says, you know, today I'm going to be obnoxious, bigoted, and stupid. So when you're calling people by these names, what are they intending? And this goes for all sorts of problems people have. You don't try to change a heavy drinker, get them to stop drinking by having them attend to the, what they're doing to the liver. Nobody is drinking because, um, of a desire to hurt your liver. So you're not going to stop drinking, right? Um, I don't know, you want to ask me something? Don't interrupt me.

Yes, I have so many questions on, on this as well. One of the big questions I wanted to ask you actually is how would you turn a something negative that you do, like a bad habit, into a good habit? And then a follow-up after that is how you can do that, say, if there's a spouse who does something where you know they need to change.

Well, no, no, that's the problem. You say Once you know, so let's say you and I are together, it'd be an odd match. I'm too old for you, whatever. I got plenty of gray hair. Okay, good. But what I'm saying is everything about you before I heard Ellen Langer, read her work, that I think I need to change in you to make you better, good enough for me to enjoy our interactions, is mindless on my part. What I need to do is understand the positive version of what you're doing. Now, when I understand that, you know, so let's, let's use the example I gave about you being inconsistent. You know, it's very hard to know what are you going to say next? Are you going to remember what I asked you to bring home? You know, all of these things. You're so inconsistent. Now that I realize that being inconsistent is the essence of your being flexible, I don't want you to change. But if I do want you to change, the way for me to get you to change is for you to stop valuing being flexible. Your desire implicitly to be flexible is what's leading you to be inconsistent. Let me give you an example of a study we did a long time ago to make this clearer. So we give people, I don't know if it's 200, 300, these negative behavior descriptions, and they say check off those things that you keep trying to change about yourself and you can't change them. So for me, impulsive. Gullible. I won't reveal the others. And then you turn the sheet of paper over and in a mixed-up order are the positive versions of each of these. Now the statement, the instructions are check off those things that you really value about yourself. My spontaneity and my being trusting. So as long as I value those, I'm not going to be able to give up the other.

Where does this idea of being grateful for what you have and essentially settling for what you have— settling might not be the right word.

Yeah, I don't want anyone to ever settle.

Exactly, versus saying—

No, no, but the world thinks you should. Every time people tell you to compromise, isn't compromise good? Well, compromise is better than whatever arguments are going on, but it's not as good as it can be. Compromise is just an agreement for everybody to lose. Just lose less than we would if one or the other of us, uh, met. There's almost always a win-win solution.

We'll be back with the show shortly. I've got a quick question for you. Are you living up to your potential? It's a question that shapes your family, your business, and your overall happiness every single day. That's why I'm excited to introduce the Win the Day Quiz. Head over to winthedayquiz.com right now, answer a few thought-provoking questions, and you'll instantly discover how well you're performing relative to your true potential. And here's the exciting part for our Win The Day family. As a fan of the show, you'll receive a personalized and absolutely free action plan to help you win the day, every day. Now just imagine how transformational the results will be when you consistently show up as the best version of yourself in every aspect of your life. Don't miss out. Take the Win The Day quiz now out by visiting winthedayquiz.com or click the link in the show notes. All right, let's get back to the show. Where does mindful meet high performance? Or in your view, is high performance most of the time not an ideal focus in terms of some of the stress and pressure that that can bring?

Um, you know, I think that if you choose what it is you want to do And it could be anything. It could be random, you know, that if you engage it mindfully, you're going to enjoy doing it and you're going to do it well. I remember saying to you that, you know, when I talked about mindfulness a moment before and I said you should always be mindful, what people don't understand is that it's energy begetting rather than consuming. It's what you're doing when you're having fun. So imagine you're doing some work, but you don't see it as work. In fact, nobody should see work as work. I don't know who decided work has to be stressful and unpleasant. And if you approach your work that way, then of course you're going to need time away from it. I'm always thinking about, you know, why is this happening and how might this be improved or whatever? Just my, you know, my general profession, no matter what I'm doing. And so, of course, if you're doing it more, you're likely to end up doing it better. As long as you're doing it mindfully, because if you're doing it mindlessly like a robot, you've sealed your level of performance and it's going to be the same throughout.

You can't get any better. What about for someone who might be doing behaviors, whether it's they're consuming too much sugar related to things like tumor growth or drinking in terms of—

Yeah, let's just take drinking for argument's sake. As I said before, nobody drinks in order to hurt their liver, to embarrass their spouse, to lose their job. All right. So showing them the consequences is not going to change the behavior. If we turned it around, even heavy drinking, there's a good reason for it. Now, if I said to you, Joe, when Joe is very anxious, but when Joe does X, he's fine, you'd probably say, well, he should do X. All right. So the drinking initially is not irrational. You know, so if Joe then knows that he did this for some positive reason, he doesn't have to come down on himself, then he's going to be stronger to find alternatives to reach the same end. You know, that in the book, I talk about a way of dealing with chronic illness when we have remarkable findings, of course, big things like Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and I'll go through that later. But it's the same the same approach, attention to variability, which is a fancy way of saying being mindful, notice change, can help a drinker or the, the, um, sugar consumer or whatever. Um, if you just kept a little diary and you are going to mark down at various times across the, uh, in the day. Okay, so it's 2 o'clock. Do you want to drink? Yes or no. Did you have a drink? Yes or no. You're going to find at the end of a day, and certainly at the end of the week, there were many times you wanted a drink and you didn't have it. You wanted a cigarette. If I wanted a cigarette right now, I can't have it, right? And there were times you didn't want it, but you had it. All of a sudden realizing, wait a second, I have some choices here. I'm not helpless with response to the substance, which goes against, I know, lots of people's beliefs.

For sure. For someone who isn't aware of how their behaviors are damaging others, or perhaps they're not ready for change— and I know you're not a relationship counselor or a marriage expert or anything like that— but is there a question or, or anything else that you believe would help someone to get another person, whether a friend or a spouse, to recognize that change needs to occur? Well, or to start initiating the process that you just mentioned?

Well, the first thing you want to do before you rush in to help somebody is, you know, uh, don't presume because the culture has said this behavior is wrong that it's necessarily wrong. It can be looked at, you know, you can be looking at it mindlessly in the way I've already, um, suggested. There are cross-cultural differences, right? There are, uh, some cultures where people seem pushy, but that, you know, they're assertive. Now you can call it aggressive and it's bad, or assertive and then it's good. So, okay, so you're pretty sure that this is something the person should want to change, and the first thing is, does Does the person want to change it? Okay, well, if not, you know, you're not going to be successful. But the first thing to do, I believe, is probably to understand what— why the person is doing it in the first place from this positive perspective. And then the more mindful people are, the more choices they have. You know, we're taught from the beginning and certainly all through school to look for single answers to questions. And so we come to think that you ask me a question, how much is 1 1? I say 2, that's it. You know, rather than, well, there's so many other ways of looking at all of this. And if we open up our minds and we see that there are so many ways of achieving whatever this thing is you want, you don't have to do it this way that's driving your spouse crazy, for example.

For sure. It's so good. And something I love about your work in the new book is talking about the role in the world of medicine and with doctors and the way doctors talk. To patients. And to me, um, in the book you mention how scary labels often lead to negative outcomes. And the, the biggest question I wanted to ask you today was this idea of like, should trusted advisors and medical professionals ever use false labels framed in the positive if it would lead to a much better result? And what would be the ethical implications?

Yeah, no, I, I don't think that if you realize that something is negative that you should ever do it, but You shouldn't be so sure it's negative. Maybe it's one way of dealing with it. I mean, I think doctors, most people don't realize that many doctors are giving out placebos all the time. Well, placebos are false information, right? But I have so much to say about placebos. I don't know where to start with this. In fact, I've already forgotten the question. So let me tell you an answer to that and we'll make that the question. One of the things that people need to understand is that medical science, like all science, only gives us probabilities, maybes. So if we were to do the study again exactly the same way, which we can't, we're likely to get this finding. These probabilities are given to us in books, by our parents, on media as absolutes. As with the horses don't eat meat, one in one is two. Well, no, not always. Okay, so So when the medical world is giving you this absolute information, you think you should follow it. When it's a maybe, then you have a chance to insert yourself in the thing that's going to involve you more than anybody else and make your own decisions and perhaps deviate from some of that information. And I think that even when we have diagnoses But the diagnosis itself is a probability. We're saying, yeah, well, a lot of people who have this thing, we're going to call it cancer. And then you have the next part. Well, when you have this thing called cancer, that was some arbitrariness, that you are going to behave or experience A, B, and C. Well, no, not everybody experiences. Remember, my mother's cancer disappeared. All right. Now, you know, and that's very exciting. I get lots of calls from people asking for help, and I tell them the story, you know, that she was supposed to die and she didn't. You know, the information that you're given— I was given by well-meaning, smart people. I don't mean to demean anybody in the medical profession, but as we started off, nobody knows for sure. And when you don't know for sure, then you take care of yourself in different ways. And one of the things in the medical world tells us that there are diseases that are uncontrollable. Well, you can never prove that anything is uncontrollable. All you can prove is that the ways you've tried to control it have failed. If we knew that the disease you have is indeterminate, if I told you there's no way in hell you could ski down that slope, you're not going to try to ski down. If I say, you know, doesn't look good, but, you know, who knows? Then you may do it. And then we'd all learn something because all we know is what's considered impossible today will become commonplace tomorrow.

And also the right guidance and the right— getting the right reps in for those different things makes a big thing. When someone's in their most vulnerable state and a trusted professional tells them something, if they were able to say, look, here is an example of what you can do to start to— because I've had a lot of, you know, I know people who have passed away from, you know, young people who have passed away from cancer and they talk about the stress that came in after the diagnosis that was never really addressed. They address all the physical stuff, but just wasn't so much of the mindset thing.

Yeah, no, I think stress is the major killer, and stress is psychological. Events don't cause stress. What causes stress are the views you take of events. So if you are mindful, you're opening up a way of understanding whatever it is in so many ways And you can choose, you know, which you want to focus on. So, for example, if you believe something negative is going to happen, how could you not be stressed? But as I said, things themselves are not positive or negative. They just are. And then we evaluate them. So let's say you take this negative thing and you see all the ways it could actually be good for you. You're going to immediately be less stressed. I have a couple of one-liners with stress that actually friends of mine seem to put them on the refrigerator. And one is we should ask ourselves, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience? Because most of the time we're getting crazed. Um, you know, I didn't get the job done in time, like I got in a little accident and the car is bruised, uh, you know, whatever, are not tragedies. And so then you breathe and, you know, go forward. Um, But essentially, if you experience stress, stress relies on a prediction that something terrible is going to happen. And it turns out prediction is an illusion. It's very easy after the fact to say you should have known, but going forward, who knows what's going to happen next? And so next time you're stressed, first thing to do is to remember the last time you worried about something and what ended up happening. Most of the things we worry about never happen. Second, that when they happen, gee, they're not as terrible as you thought they were going to be. And even when they're terrible, somehow we get through it. Okay, so you review all of that. Yeah, so I don't have to worry so much about this. Then you say to yourself, okay, this thing may happen. Give myself, give yourself, give somebody 3 to 5 reasons why it won't happen. Now, first you went from it's definitely going to happen to maybe it will, maybe it won't. So you calm down again. Now's the kicker. Imagine it does happen. How is that actually a good thing? And so you do this often enough, I very rarely, if ever, experience stress. If right now something, you know, the camera stopped, all right, so what? You know, we've gotten to know each other. You know, I have other things to do. It's not really going to have a major impact on my life. It's wonderful we're together. It's wonderful if we're not. So it's very hard to live with me in that you can decide where we're going to eat, if we're going to eat out, what movie or play we're going to— I'm going to have a good time no matter what. And, you know, so it's a nice, comfortable place to be. The medical world used to believe that psychology— well, it's always nice to be happy. But psychology was irrelevant. The only way you were going to get sick was the introduction of a pathogen, antigen. And now people recognize psychology matters. I'm trying to move everybody all the way over to recognize that it's probably more important than anything else.

Which seems so, so simple and basic. I, I feel like you mentioned earlier, what is it about the human mind when we get a prescription or a pill, like you said, even a placebo? Is it, is it because we're in such a vulnerable spot? Is it because we put such a position of trust on those people?

No, we don't think about it. It's mindless at that point. We have been taught from an early age, if you're sick, you take a pill and you get better. If you're sick, you take a pill and you get better. You're sick, you take a pill and you get— at some point, the pill has this magic quality. And, you know, but people need to recognize, and everybody knows this, but they need to bring it front and center, that when you're taking this nothing, You're getting better. Who's making you better? You're making yourself better. So all of my work has been basically trying to get us to leave out that make-believe part of it and just make ourselves better. And the thing that I come up with that I alluded to, that I have all the research described in The Mindful Body, is attention to symptom variability. When you're given one of these dread diagnoses, you know, you have a stroke, you have multiple sclerosis, whatever we have, you know, the common belief is that your symptoms will get worse, stay the same or get worse. That's what people assume will happen. And what happens? Nothing ever moves in one direction. It's not like the stock market. You know, if it's going up, it doesn't go in a straight line. It goes up, goes down a little, goes up or down. We can make it either direction. But the point is there are blips. When it's— when you're feeling better, why are you feeling better? Well, you don't even know you're feeling better because you're not expecting it. All right. So what we do is call people random times in the course of a day and ask them very simply, how are you? Is it better or worse than the last time we spoke and why? Well, when you do that, 4 things happen. Yesterday, when I was telling the story, I had 3 things. I've come up with a 4th. First thing is you feel you're in control. Which reduces stress and is good for your health in and of itself. Second, by seeing that there are moments when you're feeling better, you start to feel better and worry less about it. Third, most important, when you start looking for why now is it better or worse, that instigates a mindful search. And that itself, even if you don't figure it out, is good for your health. But fourth, am I up to four? Doesn't matter, I'm calling it fourth. Fourth is that But I believe you're much more likely to find a solution if you're looking for one. Okay, so now you might say I talk too fast and there's too much information, so you won't say it. But if you were reading this, you might say, you know, well, how is this like a placebo? Because, you know, what I wanted to do was to have people do it for themselves rather than take this sugar pill. But you can do this for yourself. Almost everybody has a smartphone. Some of them not so smart, but still. And you set it to ring in an hour. It rings and you ask yourself, how am I now? Is it better or worse than before and why? And then set it for 2 hours and 10 minutes. The times don't matter, just vary them. And you come to see that we have, as I said, found very positive results with chronic pain, with arthritis, with Parkinson's, you know, and it even works with relationships. No, let's take stress. People who are stressed think they're stressed all the time. Now, again, nobody is anything all the time. Okay, so, but when you're stressed, when you're not stressed, you're just being. So you're not thinking about the stress. So you go stressed, not stressed, not thinking about it, stressed again. You forget that intervening time. If you do this where you ask yourself periodically, Bell goes off. How do you feel now and why? You might find, well, you're maximally stressed when you're talking to Ellen Langer. Okay, so then the cure is easy, right? Either change the way you talk to me or don't talk to me. So solutions are not always difficult once we figure them out.

It sounds like a lot of the stuff you're talking about too is taking it away from someone else and putting the ownership back on yourself for the result. Is that right?

Yeah.

Because that should be enormously empowering.

Well, the other thing you said something before that reminded me of this. I'm glad I'm reminded again that even when we're talking about uncontrollable diseases, there's always, in my view, and I don't have data for this, it just seems a thought experiment, there are always things you can do. When I was teaching something about COVID or whatever, I have a slide of this woman athlete and she's leaping over whatever those things are, or a couch potato. Where she's just stuffing her face. And to my mind, if these two women were both exposed to COVID, I'd put my money on the Olympic athlete as having a shorter time with it if she gets it at all. So what does that mean? That means you can make the rest of you, whichever part is ailing, you can make the rest of you stronger.

We had in episode 124 of the show, we had—

You remember each episode?

I literally wrote this one down, 'cause I never do remember, actually. So I thought, but this one I'd write down. Write it down. We had Rich Deviney, who's an amazing Navy SEAL commander, came on the show and he spoke about the key to success in all domains is the ability to delay gratification. And then we had Jeff Spencer on the show in episode 134 who said along those lines, he said restraint is the most important word in the prolific achiever's vocabulary. And I know you have a bit of a different idea on that, which I thought might be good. So how do you feel about instant gratification for someone who does want to perform at their best and live an extraordinary life.

Okay, um, I'm gonna tell it. I have a short version and a longer, and which one do you want?

Tell us the long one.

Okay, so, um, do you, uh, did you ever see the video? Everybody should see it, it's wonderful, about piano stairs. Okay, so these people, I think they were, um, Scandinavian, Swiss, Swedish, uh, in subways all over the, the world You have an escalator and stairs. And they have— everybody's experienced this, where almost everybody is on the escalator. No one is taking the stairs. This is going to be a long way around to the answer, and I may forget. Remind me. Now, what they did was to lay down piano keys on the stairs. So as you go up, it actually makes noise. Do, do, do. Okay. And in almost no time, Everybody left the escalator and is taking the stairs because it's fun. Now, when I teach this, I tell my students, why are you waiting for somebody else to put down the— you can make music as you're going along. I personally make almost everything a game. Everything is fun. So when you're making it fun, you're not delaying. I don't think we should delay gratification. I think that is a mindless notion that there are activities that can't be enjoyed or even interesting, and you have to get through them. And I think that it's only when you're doing that activity mindlessly that that's the way it's understood. You see what I'm saying? So I don't have to delay gratification because I'm having a good time. Am I working now or am I playing? You know, and I think—

So as long as you know what phase you're in, like if you've got a big performance, or, you know, like a big speech. It's not like you're going to be at Sizzler crushing this buffet for 2 hours beforehand because you can have a full stomach. It's like, I know I've got this.

Oh, you can know, yeah. But there's knowing and the fear that if I get it wrong, you know, my life's going to fall apart.

Yeah.

And whenever we feel that way, and it's often in relationships, you know, relationships aren't quite good, and then you get scared the person is going to leave. And what you're not realizing is that In that case, a relationship requires two people. If the other person isn't there, you're not in a relationship. And so it'd be a blessing for the person to actually leave at those moments. And I don't remember what that has to do with the buffet, but—

So you might not have an answer for this one.

I have an answer for everything.

Oh, good.

They're not always right.

So there are some things that I have just always, you know, things things that you sort of have a feeling about, an intuition that might be true that you just can't verify, you can't, you can't prove. Is there anything that you believe to be true that hasn't yet been verified through research or perhaps a discovery just over the—

oh no, all the time. So when I was starting to write the book, I had a chapter that was called the woo-woo chapter. Um, I took most of it out. There's still stuff there, but this happened to me forever ago. Um, I don't know why I'm telling you this, but I'm going to go forward with it. We had just gotten back from, um, Japan, and we're trying to figure out where to go next. And, um, we're thinking, well, you know, we just spent all that money, which is itself odd because somebody is always paying for it, but nevertheless, um, so should we go, shouldn't we go? Maybe we can't afford it. We want to go to Kuala Lumpur. We can't remember the name. Then we remember the name. Then I say Maybe I could get the Harvard Club to pay for it. Now, this was the most bizarre thing in the world. I had never been to a Harvard Club. I knew nothing about a Harvard Club. I also knew nothing about Kuala Lumpur. The next day, I get a letter inviting me to lecture to the Harvard Club in Kuala Lumpur. Kuala Lumpur. Yeah. Now, I didn't know, was that I was Picking up information or was I putting it out there? I can't tell you how many statisticians have walked away from me at parties because what's going on here? So there's that sort of thing that is always lurking. And to me, the way I keep my mind open and open, I think more than many scientists, is by recognizing all we don't know about the things we think we know. And when you realize you don't really know the things you think you know, then it's easier to say, well, I don't know this either. Maybe there's some way that, you know, that it might be true. We have a study. So remember, I have lots of this research. I have to tell people about it soon. But lots of this research where our imagination leads to incredible things. Now we have one study going on We haven't finished it yet. I'm told that these young girls in China, or in Asia in general, are watching what are called mukbangs. I may have this wrong, but what they have are videos of just people eating. That's people eating pizza. Why anyone would want to watch somebody— so we've used these. One group is told to imagine eating that pizza, you know, smelling it, chewing it, And the cheese is described and, you know, get into it as fully as if you're actually eating it. The other group is counting the number of times the person chews just to ensure that they're both watching the same thing with the same intensity. And the question is, will these people who are imagining eating it gain weight, lose weight, or what the prevailing thought would be is there'd be no change? And I believe there will be a change. Now, if it's the case that you gain weight without actually— we're going to have to change all our physics. For me—

It's a foundational principle. Exactly.

Except that when we recognize that the foundation of everything is, you know, a concatenated probability, it's almost like a house of cards that we act as if it's more firm than it actually is. So it's hard to take something apart if you see it as solid. I recognize most of these solid things as not so solid. And—

I think that's so good. You know, the amount of time, you know, the example you mentioned there about your Malaysia trip, the amount of times that something has happened like that to me, to me, it's so similar. It sort of circles back to the quote from the start, which is the one that I took from your book, and I love it. Ralph Waldo Emerson, once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. We have no idea how that happens, but yet it happens. And sometimes you have to create space. You make a decision to sort of put the wheels into motion and sometimes you need to create space, which is where for me being more in flow state versus chronic stress can bring those things in.

Yeah. I use the quote in, for another way in addition to that, which is for people to understand that decision-making is, doesn't unfold. Okay, we have now, people make decisions, they think they should be doing something other than what they're doing. They should be doing cost-benefit analysis. They shouldn't be doing cost-benefit analysis. It makes no sense to do a cost-benefit analysis because every cost is also a benefit. So if you add them all up, all possible ways that each can be understood, it's not gonna tell you what to do. When you're gathering information, there's no end to the amount of information you're taking, you could take in, and each new piece could change the sense of the decision. Now, all decisions are between things that are psychologically the same or different. If they're the same, it doesn't matter. Do you want A or B? I don't know. Give me whatever you want. Or they're different. Do you want $100 or you want $1,000? There's no cost benefit. Right? The choice follows mechanically once you articulate the options. So in the first case, it doesn't matter. You get information. It's okay. You know, I'll take this one. Now, and also, and this is too much, but hopefully I'll be teasing people and they'll read it written and can think about it some more, that when you recognize that you can't predict, even though we think you can, You can't predict the individual case, right? If you said, is Michael Jordan going to get every shot in that he makes? No, you know he's not. Can you predict which one he's going to miss? No. All right. We can't predict the individual case. That when you're making a decision, the sense of the decision relies on you being able to predict, right? Do you want— Do you want to go here or there? Well, you have to predict that here is going to be the same experience you had the last time, or that there is. I don't know. The here or there is not getting us either here or there. The bottom line to all of this, and which similar to the quote, is I feel very strongly that rather than worry about making the right decision, we should make the decision right. Doesn't matter which choice. You can never know. Once you make a decision, The game is entirely different. You can't go back and see what the other alternative would have been. Could have been worse, in which case this was fine. But it itself is not going to be good or bad. It depends on what you do with it. And we can always make it, you know, a fantastic, engaging experience.

So there might be times then, because I know a lot of stuff you've spoken about with things like aging and life expectancy, for someone who just feels like they're their time's up, everything seems to be up against them in terms of perhaps disease and a few other things, perhaps acceptance then for the final chapter would be a very strong way to go at it.

Yeah, no, I mean, I know people, you know, in the Counterclockwise book, I ended it with a discussion with a friend, Dodie Powell, who's, you know, she was in her late 80s, early 90s, who said, you know, Ellen, I'm not afraid of dying. But living is sure fun. And so it's hard when you're younger to have that feeling of, I'm not afraid of dying, you know. But I think that many older people, all right, it was very nice, you know, and now it's time. My friends are all dead. Um, I have achieved what I wanted to achieve, and I see my kids are married and happy, and, you know, whatever is important to you. Um, so at that point, what was the question about accepting it? There's nothing to accept. It You know, it's just an is. And I think that that's the way it is with most decisions that people don't understand. You know, that you're making a decision, should you retire or not? Should you get married or not? Should you have children or not? There's no way you can do that rationally. Your life will be very different if you have children, you don't have children. You can't do both and then, okay, well, I had children, not so good, I'm gonna give them away and now lead the life without children. You know, so whichever life you end up choosing or randomly end up in, there's no reason why it can't be satisfying. That to be happy, all you really need to do, and this sounds like a Hallmark card, which makes it sound unimportant, but I don't think there's anything more important, is that all we have are moments. And if you make the moment matter, It all matters. And that's a nice way to reduce some of the stress people experience as well.

That's so good. Last question for the Rocket Round. On your best day—

We're done already? I didn't tell them about the study. That's all right.

On your best day, what's an affirmation that you would write on a flashcard that you could show yourself on your worst day?

I don't— my days are not like that. Good days, bad. On occasion, I have a bad hair day. And then I say, okay, well, I don't even know what the style is. So maybe what seems bad is actually good. Now, you know, when you get a little older, you hopefully look at some of the things that drove you crazy when you're younger in a new way. I wrote a piece about this a long time ago. You know, when you're 4 years old and you fall and you scream, "Oh my God!" And you're screaming bloody murder, the world is ending. And then you're 6 or 7 and Johnny or Janie didn't send you a Valentine. "Oh my God!" Oh my God. And then you're 18 and you've got pimples. Oh my God. It keeps going. And then at some point, you know, it all, it just doesn't matter in the same way. And you wish you didn't waste your time worrying about all of these things. And in fact, that's also a motivator. I deal with this with my students. Why do people wait? We already know that most of the things people are worried about either don't happen or are not worth all the time. So for me, I don't have— that doesn't mean at the end of the day, you know, if you call me and say, so how are you? You know, I've had experiences, but I don't—

alarm comes on too early in the hotel room, flights get delayed, all the fun stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well, let's now move into the Win the Day Rocket Round. 10 questions for some quick answers.

All right. Okay.

Number 1, what quote inspires you the most?

You know, it's interesting. I should be more intellectual and choose from somebody out there, but the one for me is, "Rather than spend your time trying to make the right decision, make the decision right." Number 2, morning coffee or evening wine? Oh, definitely coffee. I have to be awake so I could have the wine in the evening.

That's right. Number 3, what's one bit of advice you would give your 18-year-old self?

Um, take what you do seriously, but don't take yourself so seriously.

Number 4, what book do you gift the most apart from your own?

Whatever my last— oh, I know, whatever my last book is.

Is there a book that, uh, contributed most to the mindset you have today?

Um, possibly. Not that I'm aware of.

Yeah, more of an accumulation of experiences and everything.

Yeah.

Number 5, was there a vulnerability you once hid within that became your superpower?

I think my sense of humor.

Number 6, what's one thing you've learned about failure?

That if you persist, it usually becomes a success.

Number 7, if you could sit on a park bench and have a conversation with someone alive or dead, who would it be?

It depends on the day. That, you know, and sometimes someone like William James, but most of the time, as I mentioned, my mother died when she was very young. It's very weird, you know, being 76 and my mother having died at 57. When I try to imagine her her. So it would be fun to, or too weird, I don't know, to have a conversation with her.

Number 8, is there a tool or resource that best helps you run your life or your business?

Um, I think, uh, my mind, uh, which is available to everybody. Not my mind, but people, if people have their own minds and make good use of it.

Your mind is available to everyone through the podcast.

Right, exactly, exactly.

Number 9, share one thing on your bucket list.

I don't have a bucket list. You know, I was in Australia, several speakers, and then she, the person who organized this, brought us all out and unbeknownst to us, then asked everybody what's on their bucket list. So everybody's speaking, these are big shots. And then she gets to me and I didn't know, is this a good thing or bad thing? I don't have a bucket list. And I thought it's gotta be an advantage to not having a bucket list. And that was because, If you make the moment matter, you can't do more than that. If I'm happy and fulfilled right now, I don't have to yearn to be in Paris. And if I'm in Paris, that's wonderful also, you know. So, um, you can be just where you are, um, if you're present.

And final question, number 10: what's one thing you do to win the day?

I'll wake up. I love it.

Well, there are a bunch of ways to connect with Dr. Ellen Langer. I will link to all of these in the show notes. You can visit her website, ellenlanger.me. Follow her on Instagram @ellenjlanger and grab a copy of her awesome new book, The Mindful Body, on Amazon. Again, all that and more will be linked in the show notes. Ellen, thanks so much for coming on the show.

My pleasure. This is fun, James.

Thanks for joining me on another episode of the Win the Day podcast. We want to hear your thoughts on what we covered today, so drop a comment on the YouTube version of this episode with your favorite takeaway, any questions you have, or what actions you'll be taking as a result of what was shared in this episode. And if you found value in the Win the Day podcast, leave a 5-star rating on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You'll find a link to both of those in the show notes. It'll only take you a few seconds, and more ratings really helps other people discover the show so they can get the mindset upgrade they need, and we can bring more winners into the Win the Day movement. That's all for this episode. Get out there and win the day. Until next time, onwards and upwards, always.