The Mindful Life: How Our Thoughts Shape our Health and Happiness with Ellen Langer & Tal Ben-Shahar

Hello everyone and welcome. So good to see you here, and you're here from all over the world, different continents and different times. Some of you should be asleep, but that's okay. Great reason to be up. What an honor today to have Professor Ellen Langer. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Professor Ellen Langer in a minute. Just a few words of introduction for those of you who are with us for the first time. So we are the Happiness Studies Academy. We offer online courses in a certificate program in happiness studies, as well as the world's first master's degree in happiness studies, as well as PhD in the same field. Today we have interpretation in Spanish as well as captioning, if you go below and click on it, in just about every language that you can think of, we think. So I'd like to introduce our very, very special guest. And in introducing Dr. Ellen Langer, I could tell you that she's the first woman to be tenured in the psychology department at Harvard University. I could tell you that she's considered the mother of mindfulness. I could also tell you about her amazing books, Mindfulness Counterclockwise and many others. I could also talk in great length about how she revolutionized fields ranging from healthcare to business to education. Could also elaborate on all the awards that she has won throughout her illustrious career. And I could also tell you that she's a gallery exhibiting artist. I could tell you all that and more, but you could read that. Online, and I'm sure you're here because you know who Ellen Langer is. Instead of telling you all this—

Hey, baby, what's going on?

Instead of telling you all these things, what I'd like to do is tell you a personal story, an experience that I had with Professor Langer, because Professor Langer was my dissertation advisor More than that, she was and is my mentor and inspiration. So this took place, I believe it was 2003 or maybe 2002. I was a graduate student working under the tutelage of Professor Langer, and one of One of the students I was working with was an undergraduate by the name of Elia Crum. And Elia Crum was a great student, very conscientious, and she wanted to write her thesis. Now, in order to write a thesis, you have to have as at least as one of your advisors, a professor. So I could be one of the advisors as a graduate student, but a professor, and of course the professor I went to was my mentor. And I remember the first meeting with Professor Langer. I was sitting on one side and Leah Crumb was sitting on my left, and we were sitting across the desk in Professor Ellen Langer's office. And Ellen Langer, in her usual very excited way, talked about a new idea that she has. She has about 27, 28 ideas an hour. So it was one of her new ideas and she was very excited about it. She said, this is what I think you should write your thesis on. She said this to Elia Krumm and she elaborated on the idea. And I was sitting there listening, not saying anything. And then Elia Krumm walks out of the office and I didn't want to challenge my professor, my mentor, in front of an undergraduate student. But after Elia Krum left, I said to Professor Langer, I don't think it's fair. And she said, why? And I said, because this is not going to work. This is such a far-fetched idea. And again, in her usual way, Professor Langer said to me, Don't worry. So, uh, I had no other choice but to accept the, uh, the verdict, and we moved on with, uh, the thesis. Again, I didn't think it would work, but it doesn't matter that much because undergraduates can still graduate even if they don't get results, or rather if there is a null hypothesis. In their thesis. So Alia Crum started the research, and it worked against my better judgment. Not only did it work, it was later published in Psychological Science. It is the very famous study on a hotel Cleaners. And I will put the link in the chat momentarily. And not only was it published, it was also picked as one of the big ideas by the New York Times Magazine, one of the big ideas of 2007. So I guess that taught me a lesson or should have taught me a lesson. But still, whenever I see a new idea coming out of Ellen Langer's lab, it astonishes me because Professor Langer thinks and works and plays outside the box. In fact, she redefines the box as she has done in so many fields. I would not be here today without Professor Langer. I would, uh, the Happiness Studies Academy wouldn't be the Happiness Studies Academy without Professor Langer. So thank you for being here. What an honor.

Thank you, Tal. I don't remember the, um, alley story quite the same way, but, um, I, I think yours is a nice telling of it.

Yeah, well, it's a story that, well, very much defined what the way I think about the mind and mindfulness, and it very much defined Ali Crump's career, who is today a professor at Stanford. Right.

Yeah.

So here's what we're going to do, Ellen, if it's okay with you. And if it's not, we won't do it. I hope it's okay. I'll ask you some questions and I'd love to hear your take, and I'm sure everyone would. And then we'll open it up for, you know, in about 30 minutes or so, we'll open it up for questions from the audience and they can just, you know, raise their hand and ask. All right, so let's start. At the beginning. What do you mean by mindfulness? You're known as the mother of mindfulness, but again, you're redefining traditional boundaries once again.

When people hear the word mindfulness, they tend to think of meditation. And I did some of the very early work in meditation. But what we look at is mindfulness without meditation. So meditation is a practice. You take yourself out of the world, you sit still for 20 minutes twice a day and repeat your mantra. And mindfulness, as we study it, you're very much in the world. And it's so simple, Tal, that when people first hear about it, they react the way you did to my hypothesis about the chambermaids. All you need to do is notice. Now, the problem is everybody thinks they're already noticing. And after almost 5 decades of research on this, I feel confident in saying virtually all of us are mindless almost all of the time. We think we know, but we don't. And a way of understanding mindlessness is being frequently in error, but rarely in doubt. All right. So because you think you know, if you knew what I was going to say next, you wouldn't pay any attention, and rightly so. But since everything is always changing, everything looks different from different perspectives. Uncertainty is the rule, not the exception. And so you can't know. So oftentimes when I'm lecturing to convince people of this, I'll take— here's the one fact everybody thinks they know. How much is 1 1? And I remember when I asked Danny Kahneman this, he sort of poo-pooed it until he got it wrong. And, you know, so all of us are taught 1 1 2. Well, that's fine. First of all, 1 1 2 mathematically if you're using a base-10 number system. If you're using the base-2 number system, 1 1 is written as 10. But who cares about number systems? If you take 1 wad of chewing gum and you add 1 wad of chewing gum, 1 1 is 1. You take 1 cloud and you add 1 cloud, 1 1 is 1. You take 1 pile of laundry and you add 1 pile of laundry, 1 1 is 1. Somebody sent me the other day, if you take 1 pizza and you add 1 pizza, you have 2 pizzas. But if you take 1 lasagna and you add 1 lasagna, 1 1 is 1. It's just a bigger lasagna. All right. So in the real world, 1 1 doesn't equal 2 as more often as it does. And who cares about silly arithmetic? But it's very important because when you thought you knew, you tuned out. When you tune out because you think you know, you're no different from a robot. You know, you're answering mechanically. The past has determined when I say, how much is 1 1, that you're going to say 2. And since you study happiness as I do, ask yourself the question, can robots be happy? And of course not. And so as long as we're acting like robots, we prevent ourselves from being happy. Now that you know 1 1 can be 1, 2, 10, possibly other things as well, if somebody were to ask you that question, all of a sudden you have a choice. And pay attention to the context to see which of those different answers you feel like giving. When you're mindless, you have no choice. All right. So two ways of becoming mindful as I study it: top-down, bottom-up. Top-down is if you appreciate that you don't know. Nobody knows. Nobody can know. Because again, everything is always changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives. So if you know you don't know, you pay attention. The other is bottom-up. Here, if you just take things that you walk outside a place you've been for years, perhaps, and you're no longer paying attention, you walk outside, notice 3 new things. Your best friend or spouse comes home and you notice 3, 5 new things about them. Just keep noticing new things about the things you thought you knew. And you'll come to an understanding that, gee, you didn't know it as well as you thought you did. So this uncertainty that everybody fears and runs from is the essence of our being mindful. And all these decades, almost 5 decades of research, has made clear to me that as you're actively noticing, the neurons are firing. It's literally and figuratively enlivening. Now, almost 50 years is a lot of time to put in different measures in these studies. So many studies, so many measures. When you're more mindful, people find you authentic, attractive, you're a better leader. The things that you do bear the imprint of your mindfulness. When you're mindful, you're happy. As I said before, robots can't be happy. When you're mindful, you feel good about yourself in the world. When you're mindful, all of those negative emotions that people take as just part of life, you come to say, "Don't have to be." You know, everybody thinks work is stressful. I enjoy my work. You know, work doesn't have to be stressful. And if you assume that it's stressful, then when you're at work and you're stressed, you're getting what you expect. You don't— you're not motivated to do anything about it. So I'm here to declare life does not have to be stressful. Stress is not a function of events. It's a function of the view you take of events. If you open up your minds and take a more mindful view, notice more ways of understanding any particular event, then there's no reason to focus on that one negative possibility. Right? So it's not saying, it's not being positive, but you don't know what's going to happen. And if you assume it's going to be negative, it would be foolish not to be stressed, worried, unhappy. If you see that it could be one of 5 different ways, then that immediately makes that negative view much less important. Yeah.

You know what you were talking— you were saying the view you take on things is what matters. This is a very stoic approach. And then when you talk about how we need to appreciate that we don't know, this is a Socratic approach because Socrates, you know, when he was told by the Oracle of Delphi that he's the wisest of all Athenians, he said, it's true, but it's true because I know that I don't know. And for years, I thought about that quote, and I thought, okay, it was probably false modesty, or maybe I disagree with him. But when you look at it from the perspective of the way you define mindfulness, he knew what he was talking about. Or maybe he didn't. So the amazing thing about this is that we can be mindful at any moment. We don't need to wait for this mindfulness session. And the impact, and again, what you have shown in your research over the years, the impact is radical.

Oh yeah.

Whether it's on physical or mental health.

Yeah. When you talk about the chambermaid study, which at some point I probably should explain to people, there's, well, let me step back. I was at a horse event. Now, as Tal made clear, or didn't make clear, but I was an A++ student. I have genius awards also. I mean, you know, awards up the wherever, the wazoo, whatever a wazoo is. Okay. So I'm at this horse event and this man asked me, can I watch his horse for him because he wants to get a hot dog for the horse? No one knows better as well, but not better than I. Horses don't eat meat. But being nice, I said, of course. He came back with the hot dog and the horse ate it. And at that moment, I realized everything I thought I knew could be wrong. Now, what people need to understand is that all of our facts, virtually all of our facts, come from science. They come from experiments. But experiments can only give us probabilities that if I were to do this exact same thing— and you can never do it exactly the same way, any experiment— but if I were to do it exactly the same way, I'm likely to get these results. Now just think how difficult it would be to say these kinds of horses, given this amount of meat, tend not to eat the meat. You know, it's much easier to say horses don't eat meat, but it's wrong. And because all of the facts were given, all of these absolutes we believe we know. If we know, we don't need to tune in. And so, you know, many people, I think, if they saw they were wrong, as I did in that moment, would feel bad, would worry. I was ecstatic because that opened up a world of possibilities. That means everything I thought couldn't be, maybe it could be. And what has consumed lots of the research over the last several years and the work that Ali did with me is based on this idea of mind-body unity. Now you have a mind, supposedly you have a body. Everybody knows, and if you were to see somebody vomit, all of a sudden you yourself feel like you're going to regurgitate. You know, so somehow your thoughts are affecting your body. Another example I use too often is you're walking down the street and a leaf blows in your face and you get startled, your blood pressure and pulse increase until you see, oh, it was just a leaf. But to have a mind and a body, there's no way of explaining. How could that be? How do you get from a fuzzy thing called a thought to something material called the body? I said, these are just words. Somebody said they could have had mind, body, and elbows, you know. And I say, at least just to be for useful purposes, heuristic purposes, although I think literally, we want to put the mind and body back together as one thing. Then wherever we put the mind, we're necessarily putting the body. And so the first study that many people know about, and I can call one of my own studies, TAL, famous because if you watched The Simpsons Go to Havana, they talk about the study. So just very quickly, we retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier, had elderly men live there for a week as if they were their younger selves. So they spoke about past events, for example, as if they were just unfolding. So they put their minds back in time. We found their memory improved, their hearing, their vision. They were stronger and they looked noticeably younger. All in less than a week. And to this day, I still haven't heard of any person, older person's hearing improve without medical intervention. And rarely can they even do it with medical intervention. And so that was the first one. But the second, and I'll tell you the Allie one, and then perhaps just one more. But we have so many of these, and they all are written up in my last book, which is The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health. All right. So, and what happened with Allie, she came in and she wanted to do a study on sex differences. And it was only because I didn't think the study she wanted to do was worth all the time I knew it would take her that I suggested that she do this study. And the study was where we were going to go to chambermaids. And the first thing we asked them is, how much exercise are you getting? And so this is bizarre. These women are cleaning hotel motel rooms all day long, every day of the week, work week, and yet they don't think they're getting any exercise.

Oops.

Okay. So I think—

all right.

So I will continue talking about this study until Professor Langer comes back. So these chambermaids are working in the hotel and they don't think they're getting any exercise. They are just cleaning hotels. And then Ali goes in and she tells a group of chambermaids, one group, that what they're doing is actually exercise. That each time that they are, for example, vacuuming, they expend x amount of calories, that each time that they make the bed, they're expending another amount of calories. When they are, you know, picking up things, it's more calories. And in fact, she shows them that throughout the day, they're getting as much exercise as the FDA recommends. They're actually exercising. And then she also tells them about the, the benefits of exercise. So this is group 1. Another group of chambermaids who are not in touch with the first group are not told that they exercise. They are simply told about the benefits of exercise. And then she leaves these 2 groups to do their thing. No talking to them. Only testing them. So testing them before and then testing them a month later. And what was fun— and this is the study that I told Professor Langer is not going to work, because how could it work just by telling them that what they're doing is exercise? They're going to do the same thing as the other group. And indeed, they did the same thing. In fact, Ali tested that. It's not that one group exercised more than the other or worked harder than the other. They continued business as usual. The only difference being one group thought about their work as exercise and the other group did not because they weren't told to think about it this way. They were just cleaning the room. The first group was cleaning the rooms and getting their exercise. The second group thought that they were just cleaning the room. The difference was remarkable. The group that was told that what they were doing was exercising became physically healthier. They were stronger on tests. They were more flexible psychologically. They were also better off physiologically. They were tested and were shown to have, um, to change their actual physical makeup just because they thought they were exercising. All these differences as a result of Essentially, the placebo effect. As I mentioned earlier, this study was not just published, it was also picked as one of the most important ideas of 2007. As Professor Langer said earlier, your body is where your mind is. I just want to make sure Professor Langer, is she here?

Okay, so I don't understand why my computer went out, but now I'm on my phone. I apologize if, well, all I was doing was talking, but it didn't like what I was saying, I guess. But you liked what I was saying, so let me finish that very quickly. Oh, you want to continue? What?

I actually described the—

Oh, okay, great. That's wonderful. All right, so we have lots of these studies where we put the mind in different places and take the measurements from the body. The most recent is one that my graduate student Peter Ungl and I did where we inflict a wound, a minor wound, but a wound nonetheless, and people are in front of a clock, and unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged. For people in twice as real time, for a third of people as fast as real time, and for the last third, it's real time. And the wound heals based on clock time, perceived time. So study after study with diabetes, fatigue, we have people in a sleep lab, again, like playing with clocks. They wake up, the clock tells them they got 2 hours more sleep than they got 2 hours fewer, the amount of sleep I got. Cognitive, physiological, and psychological measures all follow perceived amount of sleep.

So I have a question. I have a question.

And I have an answer. Let's see. Go on.

So if you had told me about this study with the clock time and how it is, it actually affects how quickly or slowly your wound heals. I would have told you that it doesn't work. Still, after all those years, I would have said the same as I said about Ellie Crump's study.

Why?

Why is it so difficult for people to grasp this idea that our beliefs affect ageing, illness, everything, our ability to shape outcome. Why?

Well, we have been taught absolutes from very young ages. And, you know, you're more likely to believe something absurd that you've never been taught anything about, you know, than to be taught that something you learned when you were 10, 20 years old is simply wrong. And what happens is that once we have some idea, one and one is two, we block ourselves from considering any other alternatives. Horses don't eat meat. You just assume that, and you watch horses, and most people aren't feeding horses meat. So you don't get a chance to challenge the idea. And so living with it for a certain amount of time, and I have no idea how long, is necessary. But I would imagine the more important the thought is to you, the harder it is to change it, even if the thought is causing you great distress. Yeah. Which is what's sad about it. I mean, everything that we're taught, it's interesting. And I have part of this in The Mindful Body. I talk about better than better. I have a lot of respect for my colleagues who get you from bad to good. And then we think that's the end of it. And there's always an even better way. So a funny story that I think you'll enjoy. Many, many years ago, you might have even been at Harvard at the time, I was asked to give a sermon in one of the churches. I'm not religious, and I don't spend any time in church. I'm Jewish. Okay, but I say yes to everything. So I say yes. So now I am going to give this sermon. I know nothing about religion. What am I going to talk about? Okay, I said I am going to do it. Okay, then all of a sudden, maybe I could talk about forgiveness. It is not religion, but it is sort of religion-y, and I could probably get away with it. So I start to think more deeply about forgiveness, and I come up with something that was actually sacrilegious. So if you ask 10 people, is forgiveness good or bad? They are going to tell you forgiveness is good. If you ask 10 people, is blame good or bad? They say, oh no, blame is bad. But they don't realize that before you can forgive, you have to blame. Oh, our forgivers are our blamers. Now, do you blame people for good things or bad things? Well, you blame people for bad things, but things in and of themselves are neither good nor bad. So what does that mean? That means the people who see the world negatively blame and then forgive. And I think that's hardly divine. Now, of course, if you're going to blame, it's better to forgive than not. But it's better not to blame in the first place. And this led me to tell all these many remarkable findings over all these years, to an understanding of something so simple, but became the most important thought that I've had over these decades. The very simple idea that behavior extends from the act, or else he or she wouldn't have done. Nobody wakes up in the morning, today I'm going to be obnoxious, aggressive, rude, inconsistent, conforming, whatever we call people. Yet whenever somebody behaves in a negative way, we're assuming that that behavior somehow describes what their motivation is. Let me put this a little differently. You know that it turns out if— so I personally am very gullible, and I could go, "Oh, please help me, I don't want to be so gullible," and you can help me, but I'm always, always going to fall back to that position and be gullible. And why is that? Because going forward, from my perspective, I'm not being gullible, I'm being trusting. And the only way you're going to get me to stop being gullible is to stop valuing being trusting. Now, you, the example I use when I talk about this, is you drive me crazy because you're so damn inconsistent. Well, from your end, you can keep trying to change. You're not going to be able to change until you stop valuing being flexible. So it turns out that each and every negative understanding, judgment we make for ourselves or other people has an equally strong but oppositely valenced alternative. And if you want people to change, what you need to do is change the behavior as it's enacted from their perspective. So, um, you know, and it leads to a world where people are less judgmental of other people and certainly less judgmental of themselves. So I like being— I like the fact that I'm spontaneous. You might see me as impulsive. I like the fact that I'm flexible. You may see me as inconsistent, and so on. It's very different. So then once you see this person from the perspective from which the behavior was enacted, there's no— you don't have to forgive me for being trusting, forgive me for being flexible, forgive me for being spontaneous. It's a very different way of being. I'll let you speak. It is.

Behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective. I remember when I first heard, I think it was in one of your labs, about this idea of only being able to change when you understand basically the two sides of behavior. But that led to a major breakthrough personally in my dealing with perfectionism, because for years I could not get rid of perfectionism. And then when you talked about this, I had an aha moment because I realized, yeah, the reason why I can't get over my perfectionism, which is hurting me in many ways, is because I also see myself as responsible and hardworking and trustworthy. And these were traits, characteristics that I associated with perfectionism. Yes, I was also defensive. Yes, I was also inflexible. Flexible. However, it's only when I was able to separate the two that I was able to keep the responsibility, to keep the trustworthiness and get rid of the defensiveness and such. Which leads me to something that I've been thinking about a lot and talking about a lot with our students, our certificate students, our MA students, our PhD students. Are very familiar with your work, of course. And, you know, they know about the, the studies that you talked about. They know about how, you know, just dressing up as a fighter pilot actually improves your vision.

Yeah.

How, you know, how people who take care of plants— another one of your very famous studies in a home of the elderly actually live longer. They also know about the fact that they should always start with the second study. You've said this to us so many times when we were students. Okay, so this is the first study, but I want the one that you're really interested in, the study that you would have done after. Start with that one. And another thing that our students hear from me over and over again, which I learned from you, is that small changes can and do make a big difference.

So all the difference in the world. In fact, so we're starting a mindful school. I also have some plans for a mindful hospital and so on. And in each of these environments, the changes are small, but I expect that the effects are going to be enormous. So let's say in school, rather than being taught that horses don't eat meat, if you were taught Horses seem not to eat meat. In other words, to take the absolute and make it conditional. Make everything would be, perhaps, it would seem, could be. And then you don't close your mind. Even in sports. You know, when I'm lecturing in person, when I often do, and it's amazing to me, Tal, because I'll ask, is there anybody over 6 feet tall here? And there's always somebody 6'5". I invite them to the stage. And we look ridiculous next to each other. You know, here I am at 5'3" and he's 6'5". I asked him to put his hand up. I put my hand next to it. His hand is 2, 3 inches larger than mine. And I just raised the question, should we do anything physical the same way? It seems absurd. Now, so if he's the person who wrote the rule, wrote the instructions, wrote the how to do it, it's crucial that I don't mindlessly follow that. So the more different you are from the person who created the roadmap, the more important it is for you to deviate from it and to sort of do it the same way. You know, a simple thing. This seems to me off-color, but it's really not. But somehow it doesn't feel like I should say it. But he and I, not at the same time, are sitting on the same toilet. The size of that toilet. Now, one of us is not getting our biological needs met, right? Because physically we're so different. And so, you know, that's just to concretize the idea that the world is built for certain people. And then when you don't fit, when you're built in a different way, we tend to then draw negative inferences about ourselves. I'm too fat, I'm too tall, I'm too short, you know, whatever it might be. And we just need to understand that virtually Everything is a big statement, and I don't know if people understand what I'm trying to say. Maybe I'll say it better and they will understand it. Everything that is was once a decision. The height of the table, the, um, uh, where to put the, uh, the thermostat, everything. What courses should be taught, what we should call the days of the week, um, everything was once a decision, which means there was uncertainty. Because it can't be a decision unless there was at one time uncertainty. It means somebody made that decision, and they made that decision based on their needs, their biases, their views. And then the rest of it just mindlessly follows suit. And, you know, so to me, I mean, and I don't know how I came to this, but, you know, the first talk I gave, I'll never forget this. I walk into a room and they The stage, you know, where I'm supposed to be standing is very far from where the audience is. And I knew that would make me nervous. So I start rearranging the chairs, the first thing, to bring the chairs closer. I mean, somebody decided they should be back there. There's no, you know, it's not, it doesn't come from the heavens. This is where people should sit and this is where the speaker should be and so on. And when you recognize that, Everything that is was put there by people. People have particular preferences, biases, and those are basically people in the past. So those people today might not even agree with the things that they decided. What the bottom line to all of this is, is that everything is mutable. Everything. And people tend to take what is as if this is the way it's supposed to be. And don't think about how to make it so it better meets their needs.

Okay, so there is this assumption, I don't know, everything is mutable. We're going to open it up for questions from the audience. So just as a reminder, the way to ask the question is you raise your hand like this, and then we will call on you. But here is the last question. So concretely, how can people bring more mindfulness to their daily routines? And more generally, what do you hope people will take away from your work when it comes to living a healthier, happier, more mindful life?

Well, everything becomes possible, you know that. And so then there's no reason not to pursue whatever you want to pursue. And when you recognize that outcomes are in our heads, not in events, you know, that you ask yourself, how else might I understand this? And the world just becomes a happier place to live in. You end up feeling better about yourself. You know, it's interesting. I was at a dinner party the other day with very successful women, all women. And At some point, the conversation got around to antidepressants, and I was shocked. I was the only person there who had never been on antidepressants. And I thought, my goodness, how do kids stand a chance when all of their parents are? So I wrote a children's book. It's really a children's book for adults called Finding Happy. And, you know, and the point of it, some of it I've just discussed already with you. Is that people think if they have a lot of money, status, power, that will make them happy. I know a lot of people who have money, power, and status, and they're the ones who are on antidepressants. They want these things so other people will respect them. Why do they care for other people to respect them? So that they'll respect themselves. And that's such an easy way for this. Which I've already spelled out. If we appreciate that we do make sense, or else we wouldn't do it, we don't need to take ourselves to task. And that also would tend to lead us to be nonjudgmental of other people. And then the world just changes. I don't think I answered your question, but I answered some question you might have asked me.

But from your perspective, I think you Answered the question.

Yeah, well, no, I mean, you know, if you say what is the one thing I would tell people, is to exploit the power and uncertainty. You know, when things are working, okay, don't bother. But as soon as things stop working, recognize that every aspect of what you're doing can be changed, because all of it was just a decision. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Thank you. I could go on forever, and I will come over to visit you so that we can hopefully go on for a lot longer. Um, let's open it up, and we'll begin with, uh, Nev.

Oh my gosh, Miss Langer, what a privilege to have you here. I literally want to pinch myself. Thank you so much for joining us. Um, I have so many questions. First of all, I love the counterclockwise. I was familiar with it before, and I want to use it on myself. How can I think myself younger? How can we implement it on ourselves? Okay, let me answer one question at a time because this one is important. So the Counterclockwise study was not intended to actually make people younger. It was to get people to open up to the idea that the things they think they can no longer do, they're still able to do. And so it takes people back in time when they could do those things, and then they see they can do them. And, you know, and then they're no longer— they're now in the present, able to do it. You know, our strongest medication, I think, is a placebo. And, you know, we all know a placebo is just a sugar pill. So you take this nothing, you think it's something, and you heal. And for me, and so much of my work in medicine, in health has been to get people not to need that placebo. You are making yourself better. So I keep looking for ways for people to make themselves better, to expect that they can be better, to expect— and something that goes along with this in a cockeyed kind of way is that people think, like Tolle used to, that they want perfection. Let me use an example I've used before. You're a little kid and you're in an elevator and You try to press the button and you're not tall enough, and a parent picks you up and you press the button. Next time you get in the elevator, you struggle. You're a little taller, but you're still not tall enough. Eventually, you're in that elevator and you're tall enough. You press the button. Then the event is over. How many of you listening to me now are excited when you can press a button in an elevator? So the point is, you can either do things imperfectly mindfully or perfectly mindlessly. So seeking perfection makes no sense. All right. And when you recognize that, then getting into the process of what you're doing as the so-called journey takes on different meaning. Anyway, you had 3 more questions. And since you were so nice— I'm actually so curious if you have any morning or night rituals to practice more mindfulness, calm down the noise? I know you are the master. Okay.

Yeah.

So to me, mindfulness isn't a practice. Meditation is a practice. You have to do it 20 minutes twice a day. To me, mindfulness comes from accepting uncertainty. Nobody knows. So you don't have to feel bad about not knowing. And so trying to find out different things becomes more meaningful. As soon as you solve a problem, solve it differently. Ask yourself for 3 solutions rather than the simple one. 3 explanations for whatever you're thinking. Um, before you go to sleep, if you're a happy camper, go to sleep. If you're not a happy camper at that moment, uh, don't punish yourself. Look at the thing that's keeping you awake and ask yourself, how— why do you see it this way? How else might you understand this? Not only that, but that everything that seems negative also has another side, an equally strong other side. So what is the advantage to that thing? If you fail the test, if you're, you know, person you live with asks for a divorce, these things sound terrible, but there are other, other ways of looking at them that then give us some peace. You know, divorce is interesting because People are so worried that their relationships are going to end. If you're— a relationship requires two people. If one of those two people doesn't want to be in the relationship, the relationship isn't worth having anyway. And it would be a favor to you. At any rate, so the bottom line to that is you're tossing and turning. Take a look at what it is that's keeping you awake and look for alternative ways of resolving it. Don't just keep repeating it over and over again. Look at different ways that the whole situation can be understood. I don't have time now, but if you read The Mindful Body, I had an experience where I had a major fire that destroyed 80% of what I owned. I moved into the Charles Hotel because I had no place to live. And it was Christmas Eve. I went out Christmas Eve. I came back to the hotel. It was full of gifts from the chambermaids, the people who parked my car, car, the waiters and waitresses. It was overwhelming. Now, to this day, every Christmas, I reflect on how nice so many strangers were to me. And it took me years before I was able to tell the story without it bringing tears to my eyes. And I don't remember anything I lost in the fire. All right, so was it good or bad? You know, over time— now, I'm not suggesting that that it wasn't stressful when it first happened. But I think that if we keep in mind that our stress is a function of the view we're taking of events, not the event itself. And when somebody does something to you, first of all, they're not doing it to you. They're doing it because of some need they have. And how might you understand what they're doing differently? So when Tal is driving me crazy because he's inconsistent, and I'm spending time not sleeping trying to figure out how am I going to get him to stop doing that. If I simply say, how else might I understand what he's doing? And I say, oh, from his perspective, he's just being flexible. And the relationship takes on a very different flavor.

So there are certain sentences or phrases that you say to yourself regularly, such as How can I see it differently? Or one of the phrases that you often repeat, draw novel distinctions.

Yes, just whatever it is you're involved with, look at it in 3 new ways. Find 3 new ways of— 3 new things to see about it. Mindfulness is active noticing, is what you're doing when you're most alive, when you're having fun. You don't have to practice it. If you came to visit me right now, I'm in my house in Cambridge, you'd walk in, it would be new. You'd say, "Did she do that painting that's behind her? What is that strange thing over there?" You would notice. And so then it would be rewarding. So as you're noticing, the neurons are firing. And so many years, so many experiments have shown our work that that's literally and figuratively enlivening. And it's easy. All you need to do is know that you don't know. Don't feel bad you don't know because nobody knows. All right. One and one is not always two. Amazing.

Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Nev, for the questions. We're moving on to Eos.

Thank you.

This is like a privilege to hear this talk. This is like 7 AM my time. I mean, you've not only brightened brighten my day, probably brighten my month or year. Thank you so much for this wonderful talk, and thank you, Tao, for arranging it. So I was having a lot of aha moments, like, um, I'm trying to clarify or making sure I understand this whole process, how it works. So first of all, when we hear some people, people with negative thoughts, they tend to blame first, then they forgive, right? So, in terms of mindfulness, what would be a better practice? So, I'm sorry.

Yeah, sure. So, for me, that if you did something, it wouldn't occur to me to look at it negatively in the first place. But that's because I've lived this for so long. So it's okay. Every time you hear yourself seeing something negative, Simply ask yourself, how else might this be understood? You know, again, nobody else wakes up in the day and then says, today I am going to be bitchy, I am going to be sloppy, I am going to be all the things that we call people. So what are they being? And you do this enough times, and then eventually you get to the place that I am, which is you don't have to reframe because the negative frame doesn't occur to you in the first place. And it doesn't mean that the positive— so let's say I said, "Tall, his being inconsistent was driving me crazy. And now I've listened to Ellen Langer and I'm going to see, oh, you know, I'm going to see inconsistent as flexible." That doesn't mean it is flexible. It can be inconsistent. It can be flexible. You know, that it is nothing. Until we label it. All right. But there's one label that leads us to feel good about the person, treat them well. And there's a label that we give for ourselves that leads us to feel good about ourselves. And the label that keeps us awake at night. And it seems to me a simple choice. Go on. You know, when you were—

when you were talking about how forgiveness presupposes blame. I was thinking about a letter that George Washington, first president of the United States, wrote the Jewish community, and it was about tolerance. And he said, you know, everyone's talking about tolerance and, you know, saying to me it's important to tolerate the Jews or any other minority group, but who gives me the right to tolerate? Because tolerate presupposes me being the one who's doing the tolerance.

Yes, exactly. No, I think there are all sorts of things that we tell us. That's what I said to you, that, you know, I spend so much time in the book talking about a better-than-better way. So certainly being tolerant is better than being intolerant. Yes, forgiveness is certainly better than continuing to blame. But there's a better way, and the better way is so freeing. Yeah, you know, that when you're targeting somebody, what you're implicitly saying is that this thing, by anybody's understanding, is negative, that the person intends it in some way to be this way. And I, in all my glory, will learn how to live with your inadequacies. And I think that we need other understandings of the so-called inadequacies. Inadequate in one situation probably makes you quite adequate in another. Yeah.

So does it mean that we can just let go of a lot of labels? Just like for the longest time, I kind of like told, I felt very proud of being a perfectionist because I associate with being responsible and deliver excellent work. Right. So it's because we have this kind of association of this label. Right. Does it mean that if I just let go of the label, So whatever that I use, like different ways of looking at it that makes me feel good or feel better, then I can just use it. Does it mean it?

In some sense, yes. You know that you're behaving in a particular way and then you choose the way to understand why or how you're behaving. And all I'm suggesting is open up the set of choices available to you. You know, that if I see somebody who is a perfectionist, I could just easily call them neurotic, you know, which is a negative thing, right? That they can't let it go. But it's good to value what you're doing. And my phone is now making funny— okay, I hope we're not going to be cut off again. I think that we need to enjoy what we're doing, when we're doing it, in the ways that we're doing it, and worry less about the end result. And when you're a perfectionist, you're doing everything in order to achieve some end result. And in doing that, you're not enjoying the process. So the more time we spend with the process, not only will we enjoy it more, but you'll typically end up with a better outcome. And I say things like this— half of the world now is consumed with living longer. Everybody is taking supplements and walking and doing, you know, everything because there are a lot of baby boomers alive today. And, and I advise people that rather than spend your time trying to add more years to your life, I think it would be better to add more life to your years. And ironically, I think that by doing that, so that would make you more mindful, that when you're more mindful, you're going to be enjoying more of what you're doing. You're going to be healthier and probably in the long run will end up living longer. Right.

And then when we don't even— when we accept every single moment, even with uncertainty in everything, so you don't even need to reframe your negative thoughts, right? Because it's already— you just accept whatever it is.

Yeah.

But no, I don't like—

I think Buddhists often talk about accepting. I prefer creating. I don't think you should— nobody would say, oh, poor you, you're accepting being happy and successful. Right? So when we use the word accepting, it almost presupposes that there's something negative going on there. And I think that when you're involved with something, be fully there. And when you're fully there, you're actively participating. So you're not accepting, rejecting, you're not evaluating it. You're just being in it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Els. Let's limit our questions to one question each. And if we can make it short, because we only have 4 more hours left of this webinar.

Meg.

What an incredible way to start the new year. I always start the new year with words because I feel that if I really want to be alive to the opportunities in front of me, I focus on a word. It's very empowering. So mine is shine and empower this year. So I think you're perfect for me because I absolutely eat this all up and want to share it with the world. There's a poem I live by. It's Mary Oliver's. The instructions for living a life: pay attention, be astonished, and tell all about it. And it's, to me, embodies being mindful, aware. And, you know, it's interesting because when I stay the path to myself, be true, right? I'm okay. But then I get distracted because I'm a lawyer by trade. I get distracted by, you know, getting invited to— going to every fight that I'm invited to, right? When I don't need to. And I always wonder, for those that have— I've been doing this practice for a long time. Thoughts create things, creation, the whole idea of a flourishing. What do you recommend to actually say, okay, that's not— don't push against the mission, but walk in the direction?

Yeah. I mean, essentially, distraction. It's interesting. If I'm the teacher and you're a student and you're not paying attention to me, what I'm likely to do is say that you're distracted. But that student can easily say he or she is otherwise attracted. All right. So, you know, so if there's something that you find more interesting than whatever it is you were doing, you know, then you have a choice. Do it. Why not? Why call it a distraction? And then you have to take yourself to task for doing something interesting. You know that if you trusted yourself more, you know, you could go— you're very conscientious. You probably work more hours than most people in your field. If you let yourself be distracted, my guess is it's not going to take you off to any strange place. You'll come back and finish the work you have to do. So, you know, I think that basically what we need to do is have more respect for ourselves. If, you know, if something feels good, I don't see why we shouldn't do it. And I know that people are going to go crazy. What if drugs feel good and alcohol? That's a whole other story. But anyway, so enjoy your distractions as you being otherwise attracted.

Thank you, Donna.

Hi, everyone. Such a privilege to be here and listen to you, Professor Langer. Thank you, Todd, for inviting her. I read in one of your books about the uncertainty is essential, fundamental for happiness, and I can understand what you mean. And I also wonder about What about the secure, the safe attachment, which implies certainty? Well, yes. No, no, no. Well, let me say it differently. When you recognize that you're in charge of understanding the world around you, the way you're going to experience anything. So when you were a little kid, Maybe, you know, I had these strange experiences, but I remember this kid in elementary school and he used to punch me. And then the teachers told me, that's because he likes you. All right. By very early on seeing, I could see this punch as something negative, or I could see it as a statement of liking from somebody who's shy. You know, it ends up very empowering. I'm just lost. Well, so about the certainty, Tal, help me get back to the questions. I can actually answer.

So the question is, if uncertainty is important for happiness, then what about the safety of certainty?

Yes. Well, you know, you can be— you can have certainty. It's very hard. How do I say this? Everything is changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives. That's the reality. Now, you know, if you want to make believe it's not, if it's easier for you to think that 1 and 1 is 2 all the time, you know, I think that you're losing out on a fulfilled, happy, and long-lived life. So we start off with the reality of uncertainty. Now, why should uncertainty scare us? It only scares us when we think that means we're going to be faced with circumstances and not know how to deal with them, rather than recognize that what we experience is up to us to frame. So I'm telling you that this major fire that I had was a joy, not at that moment, but that over time it brought me and still brings— we just had another Christmas, and I just had an opportunity. This happened 20 years ago, and I'm still reflecting on, you know, on how kind people can be. And in this world today, that's important because there's a great deal of unkindness around. So when you know that you control your experience of the outcome, you worry less. You need certainty less. Right now, all of us race to get the good things, run from the bad things. For me, I know the bad things can also be good things. The good things can also— so I'm still, you know, it doesn't matter. So let's say earlier, I don't understand why I have the internet on my iPhone, not on my computer.

Computer.

So I'm in the middle of a sentence and my computer goes off. Now, so what? I mean, I could go, oh my goodness, you know, this is going to be terrible. But really, very few things are worth all the worry that we give them. In fact, if we wanted to talk about stress, I give you a couple of one-liners. The next time you're stressed about anything, ask yourself, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience? It's almost, oh my God, I had a car accident. Oh my goodness, I missed the meeting. Whatever it is, it's almost never tragic. And so then you breathe a sigh of relief and you go back into things. Not only that, that almost always, more than well, most of the time at least, the things we worry about never happen. And so if you reflect on the last 5 times you were so worried and you see it did not even happen, then that helps you the next time around. So when you are stressed, that requires 2 things: 1, a belief that something is going to happen, and 2, when it happens, it is going to be awful. Take each of those. First, the belief that something is going to happen. We have no idea. Prediction is an illusion. Ask yourself, what are 5 reasons, 3 reasons that this thing won't happen? So you went from thinking it's definitely going to happen to maybe it won't happen. You immediately feel better. Then the fun part, the harder part. Let's assume it does happen. How is that actually an advantage? So you're a student, you know, when I'm talking to my students and you're going to flunk the course, you flunk the course. And how is that a good thing? Well, if, you know, people don't flunk courses that they're interested in, you know, so it's a statement that either I'm not studying the right way, or maybe this isn't really for me. And, you know, an opportunity to reorganize themselves. People who are stressed at work, worried that they're going to be fired. I couldn't imagine living a life that way. Like that, 40 hours a week, every week of the year, thinking that, oh my God, I might be fired. You'd be better off being fired and going doing something else, you know, so that if your, if your work is being appreciated, you're not going to feel that you're being going to be fired. And you shouldn't be at a place where you don't feel you're being appreciated. You know, so I think that what we assume is wherever we are is where we have to be. And I think that wherever we are is one of several places we could be. You know, so I don't know how I got into that little discussion. So I'm not sure exactly how to get out of it. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Miriam.

Hello, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us, and thank you, Tal. Um, you touched on a subject that I've been working on this, and so it's crazy to me that this happened, but I always felt that I was a person that took everything to heart to a point of detriment.

And I started—

I decided to work on myself to just let things flow. And I realized that at the same time, I value that I'm so passionate.

I—

that the joie de vivre that I have is, is that passion. And when I work on letting things slide, I at the same time I'm toning down the beauty that I see in myself. And you exactly touched on this duality. I still think it's very important, though, to calm down and not to take things so, so, so to heart. But how do I do that without—

Well, but wait a second, though. You know, I don't know, calming down, because I'm not a particularly calm person. I'm never stressed, but I'm excited all the time. And so it sounds like you're excited. So I don't think you should give that up, you know. So we need somewhat of a different language, you know, that if there's something— if you're telling yourself you should be doing, you know, X, Y, or Z and you're not doing it and that's why you worry about it, question why should you? Where did that should come from, you know? And how else might you do whatever you're doing to bring yourself more pleasure? But I think life is short and, you know, people should be seeking the kind of passion you said you have. So I don't understand why you'd run away from that.

You know, I'm reminded of some of your studies, of course, and also Tomaka's study about how just changing one word from, for example, seeing a test as a threat versus seeing it as a challenge.

Exactly.

Can make such a big difference.

Yeah. To go from being a victim to a survivor. And you can do that for yourself. As soon as you have this negative view, just ask yourself, how else might you conceive of this? And recognize that there isn't— people see, we would be naturally more likely to do this, but then we have a group of people who feel that they know the truth. And so they call this, I think, what is it, spin doctors, you know, that what they're doing is taking the truth and spinning it another way rather than they're taking one way and looking at it another way. You see, you know, so, and part of it seems to me, but without the specifics, I don't know for sure. But that's what you're doing. You're feeling that that other view is the right view and that you're sort of lying to yourself so that you have to find a more compelling alternative view.

I think that what happens is when something difficult happens or bad, something that I perceive as bad happens, my heart starts racing. I feel it a lot.

Yeah.

And I want to tone it down.

Yeah. So at that moment, you're caught by one understanding of the situation. And so you need to get yourself out of that situation and just taking a breath and walking away for a minute or two. And then, I mean, you can use me, Paul, or anybody else and say, how would they respond in this situation to help you get alternative ways of being. Love that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Philip, hello.

Hello, good evening. Do you hear me?

Yes.

Yeah, I'm Philip, I'm from Vienna, and I'm a student of Tal, and, uh, Tal taught us about your studies, uh, regarding the elderly. I remember, of course, I about the hotel maids, which is very efficient and helpful, and about drawing novel distinctions when playing, which raise the quality of the music.

And yes, yeah, and so it's very— and you know, I'm glad you brought up the orchestra study because, um, uh, what we found there can be added to any job, any career that we have, everything that we're doing. What we did was we symphony orchestras. We divided them into groups. Half of them were going to be in the mindless group because we thought that most of them were mindless anyway. And they were told they were all going to play the same piece of music, but they were told, remember a time you played this where you were pleased with your performance and just replicate that. The mindful group was told, make it new in very subtle ways that only you would know. And they're playing classical music, so the distinctions had to be subtle. We record the pieces, we play them for people who know nothing about the study. People overwhelmingly prefer the mindfully played piece, and the orchestra members prefer playing it that way. And so when you find yourself doing whatever task— all of us have tasks that, you know, some of them require no thought and we do them without any thought. But to my mind, you know, if you're going to do it, be there for it, or why bother? And it's also make it a game. You know, it's interesting how easy it is. And let me tell a little story, taking away from the question you're about to ask, but I'm on the stage with a bunch of Harvard faculty because it's graduation. And we don't realize that now that we're there, we're stuck for the next 3 hours because they're going to give diplomas to every single area, subdiscipline, sub-subdiscipline, oh my God. And so everybody starts complaining. I said, so now they have, these are graduate degrees. And so they say, isays and sages. And I say, 5 PhDs. And somebody else says, 2 PhDs. And then, you know, then we get the answer as they give the degree. And then there's the next area. And all of a sudden, it became fun. You know, and so we don't have to take the world as it's given. What we need to do is create the world that we wish we had been given. You had a question.

You have a teaching about appreciative inquiry, which is about the classic idea of repeat what you had, where you have been successful, repeat it. And so you are actually giving the idea that rather do what what, what, what, uh, rather do.

No, you want to see the situation as one where you can do what you did when you were successful, but you want to change it in some ways because it's with the changes that you grow and actually enjoy what you're doing.

You look for, you look for something new, which is actually exactly the first time you had the success, probably you did exactly that. Yeah. it was new, and that is why you had success. And by repeating it, there's no guarantee that you will have the success again, compared— well, you understand?

But I tell you what, I think that people have a very narrow idea of what success is. So if you and I were playing basketball, and I threw the ball, and it goes around the rim, and then falls out. To me, I would see that as success because it was almost there. It would require no more skill than I already have to make that basket. Right. You know, and so when we— and also that if when you're doing whatever you're doing, you recognize the many different ways you're appreciating it and enjoying it, you know, if you're eating an ice cream cone, you have the taste of the ice cream cone, you have the feeling of licking eating that, you know, before it all melts. You know, you have the taste, the specific taste. I don't know what else you have. But, you know, it's not just each bite of the ice cream cone is exactly the same. The feel of the cone, the feeling of other people wishing they had your ice cream cone. And so if you understand there's so many different joys you can be getting from whatever you're doing, there are that many more opportunities to, to be pleased, right? If you're studying for a test and all you think is, if I don't get an A on the test, I was a failure. But you think about now I've got my parents in the other room leaving me alone. So all I have to do is tell them I'm studying. You know, you're learning many different things while you're studying for that test. And even if you don't you don't pass it, you've still learned many different things. So we can, you know, I've always been against tests because tests are set up to find out what the student doesn't know. And, you know, and I have a song I sing with my grandkids when they were, since they were 5 years old, which is, everybody doesn't know something, everybody knows something else. Everyone can't do something, everyone can do something else. And so why limit ourselves? You know, something—

well, everybody can— sounds good. Everybody can— some is good at something else.

Yeah, exactly. Everybody can't do something, everyone can do something.

Question which actually is answered, that maybe I can answer it myself. So my question was, uh, surprisingly, uh, how can I be more mindful? Yeah, but But from what I get is if I have pleasure, then this is a way to be mindful.

Yes, right, exactly. Robots don't have fun. So if you're experiencing yourself as happy, relaxed, enjoying whatever you're doing, you're necessarily being mindful.

But actually the question is, of course, if it's difficult, if it's very difficult, what What would be a technique you would recommend?

Well, okay, so if I were to give you a test now of spelling of 3-letter words, would that be satisfying at all?

No, it's boring.

Of course, exactly. So that you have to understand what difficult means somewhat differently, right? That instead of the word difficult, if we call it challenging, brain. Because otherwise we're just pressing elevator buttons.

Well, I talked to ChatGPT before we talked. So if it's dangerous, maybe it's not. Is it the time to be mindful in danger?

Well, of course. No, no, no. That if there is real danger, that the more mindful you are, the more you're going to see, the more options you have. It's interesting. And related in a slightly different way. But I say people should be mindful all the time. So then this person said to me, okay, you're in the park and you have a 3-year-old kid, and the 3-year-old kid walks into the street. Should you be mindful? Shouldn't you just grab the child back to safety? And I say no. I said, first of all, if you were mindful, the child wouldn't be in the street in the first place. Second, and this is the part that speaks to the issue you've just raised, You want to notice the way— make eye contact with that driver, notice the way the driver is physically situated so you know whether you should turn the car to the right or to the left. You know that in a dangerous situation, it's most important to be mindful.

That is a good answer. I don't know yet exactly how I do it, but at least I know your research shows that before the doubt, mindfulness is more helpful than mindlessness.

Mindless.

Yes, I think so. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Philip.

Ben. Hello. I'm just going to go straight to the question, but thank you for having this Zoom. My question to Professor Ellen Langer is that Your work shows how mindset and context shape outcomes. To what extent do you agree or disagree with the idea that perception is reality? It's experienced as reality, but, but there— I don't think there is in most ways a reality that exists independent of human presence. You know, that's why I said before, when you see— if I see Tal as inconsistent and you see Tal as flexible, there's no right answer. There's no reality. They're just different frames that both encompass all of the data, although one frame is positive and makes you feel good about Tal, and the other is not. So, you know, so it seems to me, you know, a no-brainer as to how to understand it, but not to take it as this is real? Who says this is real? Who's in charge?

Thank you, Ben. So we have time for a couple of more, more questions. Kim. Hi, everybody.

Ellen, I love all of your research that I've read. I work with people who have hoarding disorder, and I know it's a very specialized disorder. Disorder, but I'm thinking of how a ton of your work can help people with hoarding disorder. You know how labels hurt and yeah, you know, the—

I don't know. I don't know anything special about hoarding, but it seems to me that one person's hoarding is another person's saving. You know, so that how much hoarding is there until we call it hoarding? Okay. Do you see what I'm saying? You know, so that, you know, if I have 10 coats and you think a person doesn't need more than 2 coats, then that would make me a hoarder of sorts. All right. So I think we need to get rid of the label and say, say, what is the person afraid they're going to be missing, right? You know, that you need to have this thing because what if? And, you know, so when I— I, as Tal had mentioned, I also paint. And so in doing art, the strangest things become potentially interesting. So I haven't done this, but let's say, you know, I break a plate. Now I could imagine ways in which that broken plate could be made into a sculpture. So now I'm not likely to throw away the broken plate. All right. So if I didn't throw away the broken plate, I could be accused of being a hoarder of sorts, right? If you have an area full of these broken plates. If, on the other hand, rather than call me a hoarder, you ask me why I need the broken plate and I tell you it's for art project that may occur in the future, then you can persuade me perhaps to get rid of the plate for now. And when I'm doing that project, then break some plates, because you can always find broken plates, you know. So in other words, part of hoarding, I would imagine, again with no special expertise, but part of the hoarding is I need this thing and there's no way for me to get it if I don't have it. So I have to make sure I have it. Yeah.

Again, behavior makes sense. Yeah, behavior makes sense from the perspective.

Right, exactly. And so we have to treat the person with some respect. So for me, you know, in the course of my life, I've been so many different sizes. And that— so I had clothes that, you know, that were for size 14. And, you know, they, you know, they would look ridiculous on me now. And I saved them for a while because what if I gained And then I thought, okay, well, if I gain weight, I'll buy new clothes, you know? And to recognize how much we really need, you know, because most of us can afford a couple of outfits. There's no, you know, you don't need to have the closet full that many people have. But so in other words, how would you let somebody ask somebody to let go of something if you yourself believed it was important to have it? What would you tell them? I guess I would go through your process and, you know, come up with a few different answers for each problem, you know. Yeah, but I think— and always best to have them generate as many of the answers as they can, which one is not likely to do as long as you see it as they have a problem. that, you know, if you see a person as having a problem, then they need the expert to solve it. If you see the person's behavior in some worldview making some kind of sense, you know, so I live with somebody who, I don't know, I'm neurotically neat. And so then there are these piles and everything. And, you know, so for a while I let it get to me and then I had the conversation, you know, why do you do this? And the answer was, That person's approach was do a deep cleaning, and then you just live. And then when it gets dirty enough again, you do the deep. And that was perfectly sensible. It was just a different way of being from mine, which is you clean as you're going so it never gets bad, but it's never also as deeply clean as this other person's. You see what I'm saying? It all goes back to their behavior makes sense, or else they wouldn't do it, even if It seems on the face of it that we want to cast aspersions and see it as some kind of psychological problem. Thank you. I love everything you've said today. Thank you. Thank you for that and for listening. You know, you think about alcohol, you know, that nobody drinks in order to hurt their liver. So when you want to get somebody to drink less and you tell them what they're doing to their liver, it falls basically on deaf ears. And so that the person who's drinking— if I said to you, and I wrote this in some one of my books, um, a person says they're anxious and then they do X and then they're no longer anxious, is X a rational thing to do? And to my mind, yes. And then you put in there, have that drink. So if we didn't make the person who's having that, those drinks, feel less than sick in some ways, that then it might be easier for them to come up with alternative ways of dealing with the stress or whatever the reason is for the behavior.

So thank you. Thank you for that. If it's okay, we'll take one more question.

Sure.

Professor Langer, thank you. So Denise Floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Tal. Thank you. And Professor Langer, this has just been an absolute treat. Can you talk a little bit about the healthcare system? We— all the evidence that you've come up— is it just a perverse incentive system that keeps us from taking mind-body? No, no, no. You know that, um, you have to understand that it's only a few decades ago that the medical world acknowledged that psychology makes a difference. The view— the medical model used to believe that in order to be sick, there has to be the introduction of an antigen. All right, so they've come a long way. And this is one of my crazy things where, you know, I have been talking— I did the Counterclockwise study in 1979. That's a lot of years ago. And that was to show, you know, to try provide evidence for mind-body unity. And I've had some influence. So the world went from mind-body to mind-body connection. They're not connected. If you see it as connected, then you have the same problem. How are they connected? And, you know, so, so the answer to the question is these things, you know, just take a very long time. Now, I thought you were, you know, talking about, um, you know, hospitals, medical care, all of this. Is based on that medical model. And so I think that there need to be major shifts. And as I mentioned before, when I said about we're starting this mindful school, what a mindful hospital would look like, and I actually design it at the end of the Mindful Body book. And it would be a whole different thing from what we have now. And if And if you think about it, hospitals haven't changed. You know, they upgrade equipment, but since the inception of hospitals, they're pretty much the same. And it's sort of incredible that you go to a place to get well, and as soon as you get there, you're stressed out, you know, out of this world. And I believe stress is the major killer. So you go there to get well, and being there before anything happens is making you sick. And all people need to do is actively notice. When that doctor sees you for the second time, he shouldn't feel, or she shouldn't feel, that they know you because you're not the same as you were even an hour before. And by actively noticing the patients, the doctors will be less likely to suffer from burnout. The nurses will be less likely to suffer from burnout, you know, because they're taking, not just giving. And all of the changes don't require a whole lot. You know, and again, as Tal said before, that— I mean, this is what was the major part of my work for all these decades, where how very small things can produce very large changes, starting with that nursing home study where all we did was give people some choices and they ended up living longer. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.

I was thinking about how you were saying that the small change would make a difference in the doctors or the nurses. And of course, your studies on emotional contagion would suggest that the difference that they make in themselves would also extend to their patients.

Yes. And we have some, you know, a number of new studies on mindful contagion. And the simplest is that when you're mindful, you present as somebody who's not going to bite my head off, which makes me feel more comfortable with you. The relationship grows, and that's good for one's health. But the most recent finding is really weird. I hesitate to even mention it, but now that I've gone this far, I will. So if you are just standing next to somebody who's mindful, you yourself become more mindful. Very woo-woo. But it only seems woo-woo because of the theories that we bought into in the past. And it's interesting because if I ask people, how is it that we're able to speak right now? How is it you can see me? I'm in Cambridge. You're all over the world. And nobody can really explain it. You know, you might have a few people who think they can explain it, and that's fine. But the larger majority of us don't know. We just accept it. And yet when we have some of this information about how to be healthier and happier, we discount it out of hand because it goes against theories that have been around for just too long. But I'm pleased to say, Tal, one of the most exciting things for me is that in this year, there seems to be a major shift in the medical world. I've given major lectures now at all the leading medical schools. I get emails asking me for advice from physicians, surgeons all over the world, which would have been, in my experience, unheard of not that long ago. So things are changing and I think changing for for the better. But we don't have to wait to make our own lives change. All we need to do, to repeat this again for the last time in this conversation, is accept the uncertainty, ubiquity of uncertainty. We can't know, so it's okay not knowing. Nobody knows. And now stay awake. Prior to this, I think most people are sealed in unlived lives. And it's not that hard to break the seal. So I wish you and all of your students and all the people we're speaking to today great success in this and the joy that comes from simply being there.

I really cannot thank you enough. And one of the great privileges of my life is being your student. Brilliant. And thank you for being with us. And, you know, Joseph wrote in the chat, my head hurts in the best possible way. And it reminded me of my experience every week, you know, in your lab when you came at, you know, charging at 200 miles an hour with new ideas and Thank you for that and for everything that you do and you bring to our world.

Thank you so much, Tal. This has been very nice, and it's wonderful seeing you again.

Thank you, and thank you all for being here. I know there are many hands and many questions, and we really could go on for 4 hours or longer. I will bid you farewell. Good night, good morning, And take good care of yourselves and others. Be mindful. Bye-bye.

To me, the word that comes to mind the most is connection. Knowing very authentic and generous people from all over the world, for me it was life-changing. Get in here and you know you've got fantastic support in every which way possible. Didn't expect such a level of preparation and it is just mind-blowing. You know, they treated— treating us like princesses. 'Princesses and princes,' or like, 'I'm coming for the best date of my life.' People hug each other, they smile to each other, they support each other, which is amazing because this is not something you can learn. Such a passion towards other people can only come if you have the happiness in your heart. And that you care for other people. And the HSI community is the community of people who care for others. Go Hokie!