Short YouTube transcript of Brian Johnson's 'Optimize plus one' episode arguing that words influence behavior. Johnson recounts Ellen Langer's Harvard priming experiment where exposure to 'old age' words slowed participants' walking speed, and he urges listeners to mindfully choose empowering language.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one we talked about a few of my favorite pro tips to prosper as we look forward at our five year View prospectus and moved forward with hope prosper and made some progress AKA Profit. Today we're going to step back a moment and briefly chat about why all those words matter and why we spend so much time exploring the ancient roots of some modern words. I actually shared the 11 pro words from our session on prosperity along with the deeper meaning of some other non pro power prosper words like affluence, security, dignity and appreciation in the context of a section called Words Matter in which I talked about Ellen Langer and some research from her lab at Harvard. It's fascinating. Get this Randomly assign people into two groups and have them do some crossword puzzles. One group does a normal crossword puzzle. The other group does a crossword puzzle featuring words associated with old age. Then time how long it takes each group to go from the lab to the elevator. The group that was primed with the old age words, they walk significantly more slowly to the elevator than those who are not primed. That's crazy, but true. Why does that matter? Well, words matter a lot and that's today's plus one. See if you can bring just a little more mindfulness to the words you use today and choose empowering ones. Plus one plus one plus one.
