PNTV - Counterclockwise by Ellen Langer

You're listening to optimize with bryan johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV Today, another great book I'm excited to share. Counterclockwise by Ellen Langer. Counterclockwise, Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility. As always, Philosopher's Note, bunch of big ideas. We're going to look at five of my favorite ones now, starting with the title, actually starting with Ellen. Ellen is one of the world's leading researchers. She is a professor at Harvard and has done some extraordinary work over the last 30 plus years. She's also a painter and just an overall brilliant human being. This book is phenomenal. It's named after one of her classic studies and 1979. She brought elderly men into her research work, brought them to a monastery and pretended that it was 1959. It's 1979. These guys are 70, late 70s, early 80s. Sixteen of them split into two different groups. They both went to this old monastery that had been converted by her research team into an environment that just was all about 1959. Old Sports Illustrated magazines, movies, music from that era. She split them into these two groups. One group just went and talked about what it was like in 1959. The other group went there and acted as if it was 1959. Turn back the time 20 years ago. And they acted as if it was 1959. They talked about current events, watched movies, talked about the World Series as if it was happening right then. What happened? What happened was, in short, in a week they became younger. Their height changed, their gait changed, their posture changed, the length of their fingers changed. Their arthritis was reduced so significantly that their fingers actually became longer. They put on a few pounds, which for these guys was good form. And they became incredibly more vital and energized in one week. This is the heart of the book, this idea that our minds are extraordinarily powerful in ways we can't even imagine. So let's look at some of the ways that we can imagine and that science has shown and what we can do about it and make it practical in our lives. One other little point on that, that story came after that study, came after she did work with patients or not patients. She wouldn't call them patients because she's very clear on the words that she uses. Nursing home residents. She went into a nursing home and did a study where she had one group create more choice in their experience. They made more decisions in their day to day life. They decided when people would visit them, whether they Would watch a movie and if so, at what time, Then they gave them a plant and they said, hey, take care of this plant, put it wherever you want in your room, you can decide how often you want to water it, when you want to water it, etc. They gave them tiny little amounts of control, more mindfulness in their day to day lives. And then the other group didn't have any of that. They got a house plant, but it was just put there and the nurses just took care of it and took care of them. Then nothing changed. They looked at the results a year and a half later and the group that was given a little bit more opportunities to be mindful was significantly happier and healthier and something like half as many of them died over the year and a half than the group that didn't get a little bit of control. So this idea of efficacy and mindfulness and bringing choice and control into our lives is huge. After that study, she created this counterclockwise study. Now, first big idea, Psychology of possibility. That's been the focus of Ellen Langer's work for the last 30 plus years. The psychology of Possibility. So traditional psychology is interested in normative behavior. So what normally happens and can you bring in a variable that significantly changes people's behaviors? If the majority of people significantly modify their behaviors based on your experimental variable, you have a meaningful study right now. She says, that's interesting and we can learn a lot from that. But there's also something called the psychology possibility. The psychology of possibility. We aren't interested so much in the average normative behavior describing what is. We're interested in what can be. And she playfully shares a story of trying to get one dog to yodel. We're trying to get one monkey to say one word. If you brought monkeys into a lab and you tried to teach them language and none of them or most of them weren't able to adopt language in a meaningful way, you wouldn't have a very successful traditional study. But she says, in the Psychology of Possibility, if you were able to get one monkey to say one word, that's huge. That would mean nothing in a traditional study. Really, it's an exception. Exceptions aren't interesting in traditional research, but they are in the psychology of possibility. That exception points to possibility, it points to potential. And that's what we want to do in our lives, is to quit, look at the limits and the averages, start looking at what's possible. So again, if you can get one monkey to say one word, we can get him to say two words and probably three words. You can probably get two monkeys. Then you can figure out a little bit more and get three monkeys. Huge idea. Psychology of possibility. Second big idea is tied to this reversing Zeno's paradox. As you may know, Zeno's paradox is the idea, basically, that if you, with every step you take, get 50% closer to. To your destination, with every step, you'll never get there. Right? That's Zeno's paradox. Langer jokes. He seems like a bit of a pessimist. She reverses that, and rather than focus on that paradox, she says, what's exciting is that wherever you are, there's always one little step you can take. One tiny little step that you can take, that once you take that, you can take another tiny little step. And once you take that, you can take another tiny little step. You take enough of those steps, and that impossible goal becomes possible. One example she uses is losing weight. Say you or someone you know wants to lose 50 pounds, but they feel like that's impossible. They're overwhelmed by that. She says, okay, but what if you decided you wanted to lose one ounce? One ounce? What's one little thing you can change in your behavior? One little variable you can notice. Change your behavior such that you can lose one ounce. And people say, well, I can do that. I can lose one ounce. Well, if you can lose one ounce, you can lose another ounce in another ounce. And sooner than you may think, that impossible goal becomes possible, and you've built this extraordinary momentum. So that's reversing Zeno's paradox, finding variables and variability in your life via mindfulness, such that you can alter your behavior and move in the direction of. Of your ideal outcomes. That's the heart of her work and this book. The third big idea is role playing. Amazing research. This is in the context of priming. So it's amazing what happens when we prime ourselves or when individuals are primed in research studies. Get this. You can bring people into a lab, split them into two groups. One group gets age, like elderly related words negatively associated with age in a crossword puzzle, for example, if they're primed with those words, right, like dementia or whatever other positive things we can come up with, right? If they're primed with those not even knowing it, and the other group isn't, that group that was primed with negative aged associated words will walk more slowly to the elevator than the group that wasn't primed. Nuts. They do research on Asian American women, and they look at the effect of stereotypes and priming stereotypes Now, Asians stereotypically are viewed as really good at math. Women, on the other hand, stereotypically are not viewed as great at math. So what's fascinating is they can prime the same Asian American women in this study, split them into groups. Women, one group is primed to think of or to be. They're primed by their gender, focusing on their gender, which is associated with poor performance. And guess what? Their math test scores go down. Prime the same group with their ethnic orientation, which is stereotyped with better math performance, and their performance goes up. That's truly crazy that something as simple as that prime can change behavior that quickly. The role playing game was they wanted to test whether priming people to think of Air Force pilots would increase their vision. And short story is it does. They had these individuals role play being an Air Force pilot, literally wear a uniform, get into a simulator, and then look at letters on the wing of another plane. And they compared them to individuals who didn't dress up in the uniform. They just went into the simulator and then looked at numbers randomly somewhere else. The group that pretended that acted as if role played being a pilot, their vision went up. That's crazy. Again, hard to even wrap your brain around how quickly that can go up, but it does. We talked about this in the Inner Game of Tennis. Timothy Galway describes the fact that one of the best ways to boost your performance is just to act like you're a great tennis player. Channel that, have that confidence and your performance will go up. Fascinating stuff. And she's got another half a dozen stories like that. Here's another wacky one. Room attendance. So women who clean hotel rooms actually get enough exercise to meet the daily required or daily recommended allotment of exercise. Right. But they don't know that they do. So she did this research with them and she said what would happen if we described to these room attendants that in fact they were getting enough exercise? Right. Don't change anything else, but just the knowledge that they were in fact getting an adequate amount of exercise, would that change their health? Fascinating research. Short answer is yes. Splitting them into groups again, one group just keeps on doing their thing. The other group is told, hey, those 15 to 20 rooms you clean, that take you 20 to 30 minutes each, that's exercise. And they had tested them at the beginning and none of them thought they were getting enough exercise. Two thirds didn't think they were getting enough. Another third didn't think they got any exercise. Then they explained to them that in fact all that work was physical exercise. It was Just like going to a gym. Literally as effective as working out at a gym. And then four weeks later, they tested them and the women had lost a couple of pounds. They had reduced their body fat, and they had other markers that indicated they were healthier than the control group. And the interesting thing is, nothing else changed. They controlled for the variables. They in fact worked out less outside of work. They did less sit ups and other things they were doing didn't change their nutrition, et cetera. Yet they had significant health gains vis a vis the control group simply by changing their perception of their behavior. Again, crazy. And Langer says, we don't actually know exactly why that occurs, but it should be enough to trigger us to bring more mindfulness into our lives and to think about how we can optimize our lives. Final big idea is on aging. Get this. If you have a positive orientation toward aging versus a negative one, you will live seven and a half years longer with the positive orientation than with someone with a negative orientation. Seven and a half years longer. The reality is your perception of your aging is going to be, I think it's the greatest predictor of how long you will live it out. Predicts. Or it gives you more years to your life having a positive orientation than does blood pressure, cholesterol, exercise, smoking. Those things account for anywhere from one to four years. Right. But how you think about your own aging process is the most powerful thing you can imagine. So how are you thinking about your aging process? Get excited about it. I've got these gray whiskers coming in, and they're signs of wisdom. They're not signs of anything other than I'm getting more and more wise and I can combine the vitality with the wisdom. That's a good thing. We want to get excited about our maturing and our evolution and the continuum of our lives and the things that change without thinking that something's wrong with us, we're flawed or breaking down. Huge concept. Go counterclockwise on it. And there you go. So room attendance. Simply changing their perception of their behaviors. Change their health outcomes. What role playing. Imagine you are an Air Force pilot and your vision goes up. Imagine you're great at whatever it is you aspire to be and your performance will go up. Reversing Zeno. Odds are that's the case, certainly in the psychology of possibility. And then reversing Zeno's paradox. Take baby steps. Find little ways to advance on the continuum. Quit thinking that it's all or none and just take a little step on that continuum and go counterclockwise. Hope you enjoyed. I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that Philosopher's Notes TV episode. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson me. Two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome and 2 our optimal living Membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. 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