A Bit of Optimism - How to Stop Letting Your Own Thoughts Make You Sick, Stressed, and Stuck with Dr. Ellen Langer

Starting point is 00:00:00 We get stressed by the story we tell ourselves of what could happen, which could be fact, but it could also be fiction. Mindfulness is a way of changing the story. If you are experiencing something, you have available to yourself opportunity to reevaluate it, to reframe it, to understand it differently. And the more mindful you are, the more alternative ways of understanding it come to mind. Is this a tragedy or an inconvenience? That's the question my guest, Dr. Ellen Langer, wants us to ask ourselves the next time life goes sideways. Because most of the time, the bad things that happen to us, the things that feel like tragedies, like losing a job or a relationship, if we're really, really honest with ourselves. For most of us, they're not really tragedies.

Starting point is 00:00:48 They're just really inconvenient. Dr. Langer's 45 years of research show us that that single distinction can dramatically reduce stress. That's why she's often called the mother of mindfulness. She's a psychologist, Harvard professor, and author of the books The Mindful Body, and Finding Happy, both of which argue that thinking differently is good for our mood and for our bodies. If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism. Mindfulness is really trendy right now. Oh, it's been trendy for the last, I don't know, 30 years.

Starting point is 00:01:35 But okay, right now. Mindfulness is trendy and like many things that have... Nobody knows what it is. That's exactly right. The word gets overused to the point of corruption. Yeah. Like authenticity. Like these things that actually are really important, but they lose their substance.

Starting point is 00:01:55 And so just as a really good level set. Okay. Let's start by my telling you. your audience, what is mindfulness? There we go. What is it? Because it's not some ui-gooey, hippie-dippy thing. No, it's not a hippie-dippy thing at all. In fact, when people hear the word mindfulness, many think of meditation. And meditation is fine. Meditation is a practice. You sit quietly for 20 minutes twice a day, take yourself out of the world, repeat a mantra. And I did some of the early research on meditation. It's wonderful. But that's different from what I do. Mindfulness, as I study it,

Starting point is 00:02:28 is not a practice. It's just a way of being that naturally follows from an understanding that uncertainty is ubiquitous. We don't know. We think we know. In fact, one of my definitions of mindlessness, the other side of this, is that we're frequently in error but rarely in doubt. You know, everything we're taught in school by our parents, the world at large, teaches us absolutes. And these absolutes are invariably wrong part of the time. So, you know, I'm an A-plus-plus student when I was a student. And I go to this horse event. And this man says, well, I watch his horse for him because he wants to get his horse a hot dog. What are you kidding? You know, I say yes because that's what the nice thing to do is, but horses don't eat meat. Nobody knows that better than I, the straight-aid

Starting point is 00:03:19 student, the genius. He comes back with the hot dog. And the horse's, and the horse is, and the horse is, ate it. And that's when I realized everything I thought I knew could be wrong. And most people would be worried about that, but for me it was very exciting because that meant all sorts of possibilities opened up that otherwise would be closed. And, you know, think about it. Most of our facts, or our facts at least that come from science, when you do an experiment, what you get at the end of this is a probability. And the probability is that if we were to do this exact, same thing again, we're likely to get the same findings. So imagine we wanted to see do horses eat meat. We'd have to pick what kind of horses, not all horses are the same, how heavy are they?

Starting point is 00:04:06 We'd have to decide when the last time they were to be fed before the experiment, how much meat would be mixed with how much grain. And at the end, we'd find that most of the horses didn't eat meat. It's a mouthful, so it's shortened. Horses don't eat meat. But it's simply wrong. The other one that I'm fond of sharing with people is, okay, don't feel put on the spot, Simon. How much is one plus one? Everybody knows. I'm going to take a wild guess and go to. No, not always.

Starting point is 00:04:36 So if you were to add one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry, one plus one plus one plus. If you add one cloud plus one cloud, one plus one is one. If you add one wad of chewing gum plus one wot of chewing gum plus one, and somebody sent me one the other day, If you add one pizza and one pizza, you have two pizzas. But if you add one lasagna and one lasagna, you get one lasagna, just a bigger lasagna. So in the real world, it doesn't equal to. And this is very important because every time we give an answer based on our absolute understanding of things, we're no different from robots. And you want to be different from a robot because robots don't fall in love.

Starting point is 00:05:18 They're not happy. they don't have any agency. Now, if somebody were to ask you, how much is one plus one? All of a sudden, you have a choice that you didn't have. And that means you're going to be present. You're going to pay attention to context

Starting point is 00:05:32 and then decide. But when you first answered, you know, it's just no difference. Right. I mean, when you ask the question, of course, what my mind does is it goes back to, you know, first grade or whatever it was when we learned basic math. I don't know, second grade, whatever it was. And I can see the very,

Starting point is 00:05:48 the very academic one plus one on a blackboard. And I think what you rightfully said, which is in the real world, it depends. So when you don't know, you don't know, you pay attention. It's just that simple, right? And so since everything is always changing, everything looks different from different perspectives.

Starting point is 00:06:08 We don't know. And when you recognize that, nobody knows. You see, right now people know they don't know, but they think you might know. So they don't go near the situation or they pretend. Nobody knows. And then everything becomes new again.

Starting point is 00:06:22 That's top down. You just accept you don't know. Then you're going to be present. Bottom up is walk outside, a place you've lived for 10, 15, 30 years, whatever. Notice three new things. Notice three new things about the person you live with. You don't live with anybody. Three new things about a friend.

Starting point is 00:06:39 Three new things about your work environment. And every time you do this, you're seeing that something you thought you knew, you didn't know as well as you thought you did. And that eventually brings you to the understanding, hey, I don't really know anything. And you add to that apart, but that's okay because Simon and Ellen don't either. What I'm curious about is our brains are constantly seeking clarity and certainty

Starting point is 00:07:03 to help us not only make sense of the world, but also to help us avoid danger, no? No, our brains are taught to respond that way. People have also been mindlessly taught that evaluation is part of events. People are good or bad, things are good or bad, consequences are good or bad. But in fact, the valence of a consequence,

Starting point is 00:07:28 whether it's good or bad, is in our heads, not in events. So stress, everybody thinks they have to experience stress. They don't. All they need to do is to see that that situation that they're scared of, first, probably won't even happen. Second, that if it happens, there are advantages to that. And this is a bigger one because people are, you know, they're just short, this is awful, this is wonderful. You know, I can look at it awful.

Starting point is 00:07:54 I can take the thing that's awful and turn it around and experience it as wonderful. So in the mindful body, I tell a story because I know when I talk like this, people say, what the hell do you know from the ivory tower? You know, there you sit in Cambridge at Harvard. I'm always compelled to. Wait a second. I'm now 79. You can't believe I haven't gone through lots of things in my life. So let me just tell you one that I write about him this book a few decades ago, around Christmas.

Starting point is 00:08:20 I go out to a friend's house for dinner. I come back and all of my neighbors are outside because my house went up in smoke. It was very scary. My dogs were fine. And the next day I called the insurance agent and he says in the 20 years he's been doing this job, this is the first time that the damage was worse than the call. So people are saying, oh my God, oh, my God. He gets there and it's no big deal.

Starting point is 00:08:45 But to me, I had already lost everything I lost, throwing my sanity after it wasn't going to help. But now the story gets really good. So I leave my friend's house, 80% of what I owned had been destroyed. I go to the Charles Hotel and with my two dogs, and I'm a sight to be seen. I go out now, Christmas Eve, I come back and my room is full of gifts, not from the owners or the management of the hotel, but from the so-called little people, the people who park my car, the staff, the people, the waiters and waitresses in the restaurant. I mean, it took me almost a year, Simon, to be able to tell the story without it bringing happy tears to my eyes.

Starting point is 00:09:28 Now, here's the thing, every Christmas, I'm reminded of the basic goodness of so many people. And that brings a smile to my face and warmth in my heart. And I don't remember, except for one thing, I remember nothing that I lost. in the fire. So net, net, this thing that was more awful than what most people are stressed about turned out to be a positive experience. Now, I don't think that I'm saying when I got there, I said, oh, well, who the hell cares? So I don't have a house. You know, I suffered the way most people would suffer. But then talk to myself about it and it became a very different event. Can you separate for me, and I think you're touching on it, because stress is important

Starting point is 00:10:14 for survival, if we go back to Caveman Times, which is the, you know... We're not living in Caveman Time, first of all. But this body we have as a legacy machine, it's still the same machine that was back in Caveman times, trying to manage itself in a modern day. I would say you should be eating with your hands, that you'd be walking around even when it's cold at without shoes on. You know, there's a thing called progress, some call it evolution.

Starting point is 00:10:41 I don't, but things change. technological progress to make our lives easier, safer, all the rest of it is not the same as our brains reacting to a rustle in the leaves for fear that something might try to eat us or kill us or rob us is the modern interpretation. Well, you're saying we're designed this way, and I'm saying as we're designed, we change. But the human animal hasn't evolved. Our brains haven't evolved at all. How mine does. evolutionarily the population of homo sapiens is still the same homo sapien that was in caveman times as it is today otherwise we'd have a new species and we don't wait a second but all of this was theory you're presuming that there wasn't a caveman who didn't respond this way when there was a rustle in the league

Starting point is 00:11:30 i think he got eaten i'm pretty sure he got eaten no that he didn't say to him that that's probably a squirrel or whatever lives in the woods out there And then we get back to the horses don't eat meat. You know, that we're fed theory and forget that it's theory. Theory is a guess. It's a smart guess, but it's still a guess. And it doesn't account for deviation. I'm not disagreeing with the importance of, no, no, no, I'm not.

Starting point is 00:11:58 I'm not disagreeing the importance and premise of mindfulness. What I'm trying to understand myself is that, that theoretically, our brains, are wired to help us stay alive. And one of the things that helps us stay alive is to be alert when we hear a noise or see something we don't know to put our guard up for fear that it may cause us or the ones we love harm. And that stress response is not always, is not always bad. Okay. So let's say that once you feel, oh, my God, how long does it take you to say, oh, it's nothing? Right. All right. Okay. And I'm saying at the least, but I'm saying, saying a lot more than this, the more mindful you are, the quicker you respond to anything because

Starting point is 00:12:45 mindfulness, you're aware of change. When you're mindless, you're holding things still. When you're mindful, you're always aware that everything is changing. But this is important because when your house burned down, it was the recovery that mindfulness helped, your recovery of you, because you still were upset, you still got depressed, there's still loss, you still have to go through the morning of the loss. You weren't just like, oh, my house burned down, you know, things. happen, you know, I have to believe that wasn't the response. No, but it's not as extreme in the negative as you're saying either, but I gave you an extreme example. Yeah. Now, most of the time when people are stressed, it has nothing to do with anything that big. They're stressed because they forgot

Starting point is 00:13:25 to make a phone call. They forgot to get the report in on time. They burnt the potatoes. They are told that they have to have some minor surgery. First of all, in order to experience stress, you need two things. You need to have a belief that something's going to happen and then that when it happens, it's going to be awful. Now, we can't predict. This is another thing that we've grossly misunderstood. You can predict for the group. You can't predict for the individual. So let's say I'm playing, who's the biggest basketball person this day, these days. Michael Jordan was the first time I told this story. So if he's still big, we'll use Michael Jordan. So Ellen Langer is having a foul shooting contest with Michael Jordan. They each get to shoot one basket. How much of your life savings are you going

Starting point is 00:14:16 to wager on Michael Jordan winning? Okay, so now, oh, are you kidding? It's a slam dunk. You'd have to be foolish, not to bet as much as you can, but let's step back a little. Michael Jordan on occasionally misses, not frequently, but on occasion. You're talking about your whole life savings. Ellen Langer, Although you don't know it, more than on occasion gets one in. Certainly nowhere in a Michael Jordan. But let's say Michael Jordan had a fight with his spouse right before. Or Michael Jordan didn't get any sleep or, you know, he sneezed right before he took the shot. I mean, it could be a million things.

Starting point is 00:14:53 And so for that one basket, I very well could win. But if Michael Jordan and I were each shooting 100 baskets, that's when you should put your money down. Okay. Now, that's all fine, but for all of us, we're trying to predict the single event. We're not trying to predict, you know, how correct the weather forecast is over time. It's when I walk outside today, are they going to be right? And everybody knows that they're often not right. Let's go back to stress.

Starting point is 00:15:24 So we're saying that to be stressed, you have to believe something's going to happen. So now give yourself five reasons. Three if you're too lazy. Three reasons why it might not happen. So you immediately feel better because the first reaction, oh my God, maybe it won't even happen. Now comes the harder part. Let's assume it does happen.

Starting point is 00:15:46 How is that actually an advantage? And there's always an advantage. And if you can find the advantages, you don't become frazzled. I mean, my life is, you know, a human, so it's not entirely stress-free, but it's virtually stressful. I mean, you have to hit me over the head very hard for me to react.

Starting point is 00:16:07 Okay, so I'm on a podcast, and I'm explaining this, and I say, look, let's say that my internet went out right now. All right, so I'd go have lunch. You know, the funny thing was my internet then went out. I don't just talk to talk. I walk to walk, and I went and had lunch. But for a younger person, a person of, oh, my God, this is a career maker or a break. people talk themselves into all sorts of stressful events,

Starting point is 00:16:34 that could have been terrible. If you look back over the last, as many as you can remember, let's say last three times you were stressed, you're probably going to find the thing you were worried about didn't even happen. So now we're throwing good time away for no reason, that if it ends up happening,

Starting point is 00:16:51 there's time to deal with whatever it is. But all the time you're wasting, worrying about it, and then it doesn't happen, is wearing the system down. certainly not good for your mental health. And it turns out I have a lot of evidence. It's not good for your physical health. Look, I agree with all of this stuff. And I try to live my life comfortable with uncertainty. I sort of appreciate chaos even. I find creativity in chaos. Without chaos, there's no creativity. The point I was trying to make before was I want people to

Starting point is 00:17:23 have realistic standards that this is not a switch you turn and instantly you have no stress, that we're still human, we have human reactions. And I just want people to recognize that it's their ability to recover from stress or understand stress or get through stress in a healthier way, which is the standard here. That's the only reason I was pushing on the biology, which is I just want people to recognize that the standard we're setting here is not that something actually happens. Sure, sure. And then the part that I want to double click on because I think it's so interesting what you're saying,

Starting point is 00:17:56 which is we don't necessarily get stressed by the thing that happened or the thing that could happen. We get stressed by the story we tell ourselves of what could happen. And it's our own story, which could be fact, but it could also be fiction. That's what's generating the stress and the anxiety is the story. Mindfulness is a way of changing the story. And not only that, but most of our stories were developed at a much earlier time in our lives. So at 30, do you want to be reacting? to what you understood only partially when you were 20.

Starting point is 00:18:31 That's dictated. Or when you were 15. At your age now, do you want to still be stressed by the things that bother you now when you're 60 without ever rethinking them? But yes, I didn't mean for people to think that, you know, that's why I use the example of my house burning down. There are real things that happen,

Starting point is 00:18:50 although most of our stress is not a function of things at that level. If you are experiencing something, you have available to yourself opportunity to reevaluate it, to reframe it, to understand it differently. And the more mindful you are, the more alternative ways of understanding it come to mind. Next time you're stressed, ask yourself, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience? And almost instantly people realize, yeah, it's not a tragedy. And then you breathe more easily. I want to share a story. I've told this story a bunch of times, but I love it. I was watching the Olympics. And I noticed that the journalists were all asking the athletes the same question. Are you nervous or were you nervous? And all the athletes all gave the same answer. No, I'm excited. No, I was excited. And it got me thinking, which is, if you think about what the characteristics of nervousness are, it's like your heart starts pounding, your hands get clammy, you start in visualizing. You start in visioning the future. But if you think about what excitement is, your heart starts pounding,

Starting point is 00:19:57 your hands get clammy, you start envisioning the future. And the reason the journalists were asking, are you nervous? It's because they would be nervous because they're not elite athletes. They would be nervous, which is why they asked the question. And all the elite athletes had learned to interpret this data, not as nerves, but as excitement, which is one of the reasons they're Olympians in the first place, which is they have this mindset of let's give this a try versus let's run away from it. I was so interested by the simple mind shift interpretation that I decided to test it out. I was on a plane, and the plane hit very severe turbulence. And ordinarily, I got, you know, sort of get like this, and my heart starts pounding,

Starting point is 00:20:37 and I start envisioning the future. And I get nervous. And I literally said, under my breath, out loud to myself, this is exciting. And instantly, I was fine. Yeah, that's great. That's, well, you know, it turns out all emotions are biochemically similar in the way you just describe. So let's say you're going out on a date, on first date, and you see yourself as anxious, versus you see yourself as excited, the same thing you're explaining now. You posture yourself

Starting point is 00:21:03 in very different ways, and chances are you're more likely to have the second date if you saw yourself as excited. And so what people don't understand is that emotions are choices. Okay, if biochemically similar, then you can call it by one of several different things. and what you call it will determine basically how you respond and subsequent feelings about it. And whether it's a date or a job interview or a conversation with your boss, when you come into a go, I need this, oh my God, I want this, I want to get married, I want the promotion, I need this, I got to have this. You know, we've all said that employee or that person you're going to date with that reeks of desperation,

Starting point is 00:21:43 you know, and we can feel it, we can see it, versus the confidence of excitement, which is this would be great, but it's okay if it doesn't, it's okay if it's okay I don't get it also. And that calm is incredibly attractive. Yes, for sure. But, you know, to go back to what you were saying before, if a person can't do it and seems a little crazed, it's fine. If you're so sure the person you're talking to is seeing you that way, then you call it by that. Say, boy, I guess I'm more nervous about this than I thought I would be. Yeah. Then it's a non-event. Then it relieves the tension, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And the person can no longer evaluate. you by that because you've stolen his thunder in some sense.

Starting point is 00:22:25 So we've lived a life of doing the opposite of what you recommend, most of us. Yeah. And so what is the first step to mindfulness, to living a mindful life versus a mindless life? What is the first step that we can all take? I mean, the first thing is really to try to garner a healthy respect for uncertainty, which, you know, just know you don't know. So every time you're thinking you know, and that's hard. because when you think you know, you're not there to know that you're not there to make the change.

Starting point is 00:22:57 So do then noticing three new things, five new things. But there's something else that I have some extraordinary research findings. You know, we're able to help people with chronic illnesses turn back time somewhat, heal our wounds fast. I mean, lots of it. But the one thing after all these years that has become more important to me, seeming more important than any of these is the simple idea that behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective or else the actor wouldn't do it. And you're an actor. So every time you do something and then you look at it and you think, oh, God, how could I have been so stupid, clumsy, aggressive, whatever it is,

Starting point is 00:23:40 you know that that wasn't motivating the action. Every time you're judgmental of somebody else, even you have a dog and the dog is barking. And so what do most of us do? we have stopped that barking. You just sort of respond as foolishly as the dog is. If you said to yourself, why is the dog barking? Dogs don't just bark for no reason. People aren't just awful for no reason. From the dog's perspective, the dog is afraid.

Starting point is 00:24:08 And imagine if you say to yourself, my dog is afraid, therefore I'm going to hit him? No. I mean, only the cruelest among us would do that. You know, we can't change these behaviors. This is what I found most interesting. So I could come to you, Simon, and say, please help me. I am so gullible, it defies belief. We both agree, I'm gullible, and so I'm going to make a commitment.

Starting point is 00:24:33 I'm going to do whatever all the experts say to do, but it's never going to be effective. And why is that? Because going forward, I'm not being gullible. Going forward, I'm being trusting. And as long as I value being trusting, there are times I'm going to see gullible. And the example I would use is, Simon, you are so damn inconsistent, it must drive everybody who knows you crazy. Oh, my God, look, I did all those, you know. But you're never going to change that because from your perspective, what you were is flexible.

Starting point is 00:25:07 So if you want to change yourself or somebody else, you have to change it from the perspective from which they were enacting the behavior. change and find out what they value. And if they value being flexible, they're going to appear inconsistent. If you value being spontaneous, you're going to seem impulsive. Each and every negative description that we apply to ourselves or somebody else has been equally strong, a positive alternative, no matter what it is. I mean, I love this. That would make people more mindful because part of our mindlessness, well, first of all, whenever we're being evaluative, we're being mindless, right? We're saying what this behavior is rather than realizing it can be understood in multiple ways. When you and I now understand each other better and care

Starting point is 00:25:58 more about each other, it's, I'm more open to be mindful, unless afraid you're going to hit me over the head, you know, if I don't follow the script. What's nice about talking to you is you're reinforcing a lot of the lessons I've learned along the way. One thing, which has helped me as an entrepreneur is embracing uncertainty. When I was young as an entrepreneur, I thought I thought I had to not only know the answers, I thought I had to get the answers right. And now when I make decisions, I'm very comfortable that every decision I make could absolutely be, quote unquote, the wrong decision. And the results that I hope to get from this decision might actually go the opposite way. And so even though I want to make the best guess that's informed by data and a little bit of gut,

Starting point is 00:26:41 you know and a little bit of you know sort of checking the wind i'm very comfortable with the fact that i might get it wrong and then we'll change well you see it now i think that the posture that a successful person should have is to be confident but uncertain and that's the way you were describing yourself and in the world today confidence and uncertainty are inflated and you think that if you're confident it's because you're certain and now we should just turn that around you see somebody who's acting like that and you know that they're mindfulness. The way I've always described myself as strong opinions loosely held. And because I speak in hard words and because I sound like I, I, you know, this is the answer. I think people think that I'm closed-minded to some things, but I love when somebody has a good

Starting point is 00:27:27 argument to prove me wrong. And people who, who want to debate or fight with me, what they, what they often don't, is I'm actually listening. I'm actually listening. If their logic makes sense to me, I'm all in. And what's really funny is when the logic doesn't make sense to me, I started asking lots and lots and lots of questions, which then somebody who wants certainty and isn't comfortable with uncertainty gets very, very, very defensive very, very quickly. Whereas I enjoy being questioned,

Starting point is 00:27:58 and I'm only asking questions, not to prove someone wrong, but I'm looking for information to see if I'm wrong. So what we should do is start the buzzword, you know, when anybody is being certain, somebody should, you know, call them mindless. You know, just have a little, a little buzzer. And you should see the response when I would ask somebody how much is one plus one. You know, what are you an idiot? You know, why are you asking me this?

Starting point is 00:28:25 And they would tune out. So how much does age play into this, right? Because when we're young, we're carrying a lot of insecurity that we want to be liked. We want to be right. we want to be smart. We want to be perceived as all those things because it'll benefit our careers. And I think that one of the things that you and I have the benefit of is we've lived a few years. And as I got older, I realized I know less than I thought I did. In fact, when I was young, I thought I knew so much. Now I realize I know so little.

Starting point is 00:28:56 Studying for a PhD, you come to learn more and more about less and less until you know all about nothing. I mean, isn't that beautiful? But how much of is this what we're actually described? is the value of getting older and just wisdom. And how do young people embrace what you're talking about more readily? I teach a large class on health psychology at Harvard. And so every year I'm addressing this issue. You know, I said, here's what happens if, but why wait? Now, but before I do that, make that clear, little kids, you know,

Starting point is 00:29:31 you take a little kid and you put him in a room and all that's there are cardboard boxes. He's going to make games out of it or she and have great fun until the parents somehow teaches them that's just a cardboard box and let me go spend a lot of money on a toy. I think that once, especially when there's some language, little kids are very mindful and we teach it out of them, which is very, very sad. And then there are people who are so stubborn in their thoughts that they don't experience the wisdom of getting older. But in a more general way, yeah, I think that, you know, all you need to do is a little reflection. You know, so you're two years old and you scrape your knee and you're screaming bloody murder. And then you're five years old and you're really too old for that. I mean, it hurts, but you know it's going to stop hurting.

Starting point is 00:30:21 But now you're seven years old or however old it is. And Jamie or Johnny didn't send you a Valentine, you know, in the class. And oh, my God, the world's going to, no one's going to love me. And then you become 15, 60. And so if you're doing the looking back, you notice that, yeah, all the things you were expecting to happen that no longer happened. That pimple didn't mean you were going to be forever, you know, marked as somebody unattractive as you were marking yourself. But there are some people who probably don't do that. But surely, you know, if you don't become wiser with age, then it's very safe.

Starting point is 00:31:01 So I'm curious how you think about sort of, you know, therapy and that who we are and our anxieties and our insecurities and the struggles we're having are the result of our parents and overcoming how our parents, you know, screwed us up. I would say it's our parents, our schools, every institution that we experience have taught us to be mindless. And so how do you get out of it? well, there are several things. First is most of our learning is absolute. Horses don't eat meat. One in one is two. Right. Right. So if no matter what you're taught, you make a conditional, allowing that there are other ways and never closing the box. So it's always interesting. So there's that, learning conditionally. Second is recognizing that everything can be understood in multiple ways and teaching young people, people at any age, to become comfortable with uncertainty.

Starting point is 00:32:03 And then how to evaluate outcomes so they're not letting other people's misdeeds or things that happen by chance determine your well-being. It's really right there for in front of us. And we have so much data, Simon, that when you're more mindful, the neurons are firing, and it's literally, literally and figuratively enlivening. When you have, having fun. You can't have fun unless you're mindful. Here's another thing, only tangentially related. So when I give these lectures in person, I ask, is there somebody really tall out there? Six, five. And I don't know why, but I always seem to have a six-footer in the audience. So I invite him to the stage. And there we stand, and I'm five, three, and we look silly together, right?

Starting point is 00:32:52 And so all I just stand there, let everybody see us. And then I say, should we do anything physical the same way? Probably not. It's ridiculous. His hand is three inches larger than mine. So now, here's the rule. The more different you are from the person who wrote the rule, wrote the directions, wrote the instructions. The more different you are from that person, the more important it is for you not to mindlessly do it.

Starting point is 00:33:22 the way they're telling you to do it. I want to go back to the very beginning of this conversation, which is context, context, context, right? Because without the context, there is a point where somebody will just become annoying to hang out with because they're like, you know, like the one plus one example is fun in an academic situation like this one

Starting point is 00:33:37 where we're sort of debating what one plus one actually means, but there are practical application. So one of the things that I love, my dear friend and mentor, Ron Bruder, he taught his kids this very lesson, right? Which is to question what the world means. He was standing at a crosswalk with his kids, and he started to go. And the kids pointed out, it says, but dad, it says, don't walk.

Starting point is 00:34:01 And it means we have to stand here. And he said to them, he goes, how do you know it doesn't mean we have to run. That's great. And but, you know, which is, which is, which is a great lesson, which is a great lesson that don't accept the world as it is. And it's all the things you're talking about. However, the reason they came up with that system was so that people don't get hit by cars, and it actually means stand still. The answer is not to mindlessly stand still, mindlessly run or walk. The answer is to notice.

Starting point is 00:34:35 So if there's not a car in sight, you know, I had this guy that I was dating very briefly right after graduate school. Wonderful man. But we got to a crosswalk. there was no traffic. He stopped and I'm walking and I just said, it's just not going to work. I mean, like, I'm a New Yorker where J-walking is just part of the culture, you know,

Starting point is 00:35:00 but the drivers are used to it, so they expect it. If you go to a city where they're not used to it, it's actually more dangerous. But it is funny to me when I go to a city, to your point, when it says don't walk and there's no traffic in any direction and everyone's standing there and I was like, I don't understand, but what? There's nothing, you know, I start walking and somebody says to me, Simon, you're going to get us killed? I'm like, with one car.

Starting point is 00:35:22 So the worst example, or the best example, is in London, where they know everybody mindlessly is looking to the right. Right. And look left in the street, yeah. Whatever it is. And they have big science. So, no, I don't think you should walk, run, or stand still. I think you should be sensitive to the ongoing situation and let that determine. But the big takeaway of this conversation is context, context, context. Yeah, but here's, no, it's bigger than that. It's bigger than that, Simon. Because, yeah, it is.

Starting point is 00:35:54 Okay, so my colleagues for forever, it used to be one's personality matter. Then social psychologists were saying, no, it's context. And a debate between the two of them. For so long, my view of question is, who determined the context? And it's very important because whoever determine the context is controlling your behavior. So let me give you an immediate. Hold on. Let me make my argument of a context first, because... No, see if your argument holds after I give you the example. If it doesn't. But I didn't even say, you interrupted and started disagreeing with me before I made my point.

Starting point is 00:36:32 All I did was say a word. No, but I know what the word means to you. Okay, go on. I'll be quiet and I'll even try to listen. For me, when I say context, what I mean is, is like, and it goes back to the don't walk. The context is, is this sign a suggestion or is there a reason for this sign? And if I go to my reaction to a personal situation, when I say, what's the context here, which is like, am I reacting to reality or am I reacting to the story I'm telling myself?

Starting point is 00:36:59 And those things tend to be pretty easy to solve. And it's not me determining the context. It's me saying, can I be, you know, I have a belief that this is going to happen. Am I 100% certain this has happened? Am I 100% certain this is going to happen? And eventually that logic falls down if the answer is no. Okay. So when we think of context, consider, you know, you're at a football game. And a football game, it's great to get up and yell and scream and whatever. Versus you're in a library. Right. In the library, that context demands that we be quiet. So it's not to influence other people. Right. Okay. Now, I'm in the hospital. They have visiting hours. A hospital is like the library. My mother is, has been diagnosed with.

Starting point is 00:37:46 breast cancer that's now metastasized. And I go in and the rule is somebody decided that visiting hours are from X to Y, whatever time frame they give. I make clear to the powers that be there. Okay. So if I'm in put my head, as you would do, in the hospital context, saying, well, these rules were decided. They make some sense. So when they say I should leave, I should leave. You're a New Yorker, Simon, and if you were caring for me in the hospital, I know you wouldn't do that. And I say to the powers that be there, that because my mother, the maternal context, I brought to bear. Okay, I'm in the hospital.

Starting point is 00:38:33 That's one context. I let myself think of another context, my relationship with my mother. And that was going to take precedence. And I said, I will be here for as long as my mother wants me to be here. and we can fight about it. You can try to get rid of me. We can make it a whole big show. Or you can turn the other way or you can just smile and let me be.

Starting point is 00:38:56 But that's what I'm going to do. And they let me be. Let's say you're walking by and you want to cut through this person's lawn. And there's a big sign that says, don't walk on the grass. And so most people, unless you're from New York, are not going to walk on the grass. Now, assume instead that sign says, Ellen Langer says, don't walk on the grass. All of a sudden you realize that that grass belongs to somebody. Maybe I can negotiate with them.

Starting point is 00:39:25 Maybe she's not at home. Maybe they don't care now because things have changed. So the point is, everything that has been created was created by people. And once we put people back in the equation, all sorts of control. us opens up. So if I say to you, smoking causes cancer. Okay, so you know not to smoke. If we put people back in the equation and you say, a study by Simon and Ellen found that for most of the time, people under these conditions, more of them are like, more smokers are likely to get cancer. And you give the actual papers. Yeah. It's all of a sudden less persuasive. So when you want to

Starting point is 00:40:08 persuade somebody of something, you take people out of the equation. But just as surely, when you want people to feel more room to make decisions, you put people in. One of the names that I was going to use for the Mindful Body Book was Who Says So? I say we should all become our three-year-old selves. Because when you say who says so, all of a sudden you realize you have options. I'm not sure I agree with this. Because let's go back to the hospital example, right? Which is what we do not want to create or confuse is that minding.

Starting point is 00:40:42 mindfulness means that you get to do what you want when you want because your context is your context and it's not their context. And then you just have a society of people just sort of like the way I think about context, which is I understand that rules were passed for good reason when they were passed and they may or may not be relevant anymore, right? I understand that. But sometimes rules are enforced because they are on the books, even though we've lost sight of why they were passed. So go back to the hospital example, visiting hours between seven to seven, whatever it is, right? Now, I understand, I can ask somebody to say, okay, I can either assume or I can ask why are visiting hours. Now, maybe because there's more staff, because there's more staff, they can handle not only the patients but the guests.

Starting point is 00:41:24 And overnight, the staff goes down and they need to put all their attention on the patients and they just can't deal with all the guests. And so there might be a very good reason. And because nighttime you want the patients to sleep and there's less noise. And so if you're with your mom who's, who's, you know, has metastasized cancer, you know, it's, It's not like I'm going to be here. You take it or leave it. You can ignore me or not because what you're creating is a situation where that other person who their job may be on the line to help enforce those rules, right?

Starting point is 00:41:53 And so I don't know the politics and the anxieties that they carry. And so it's a- I mean, you're right. You're right. It's a negotiation, which is like, and you've said it, which is appealing to humanity, which is I understand the rules. And what I'm asking is, can we please make an ex-I understand. I understand.

Starting point is 00:42:09 Well, that's exactly. Of course, I didn't come on like a, I don't want to. I think you're completely right. I should not make it seem that way. I should not make it seem like way. But I do have very strong feelings about rules. This comes across. Well, because it's been, you know, a bit more.

Starting point is 00:42:29 I mean, all these years, I see people heard, depressed, unpleasant because of rules that make no sense. Yes. So when I was quite young, when I was in my sort of, oh, I probably was maybe 13, 14 years old, I started to become really curious about mind over matter. Somebody had used the phrase or I heard it, you know, mind over matter. And I did an experiment in my bed. So my bed was up against a wall. And one side of my bed was just wall.

Starting point is 00:43:00 It was white. And the other side was looking into my room, obviously. And so I laid on my shoulder, on my left shoulder, looking out into the room. room and I closed my eyes and imagined what if I was on the other side of the bed, still on my left shoulder, what if I was on the other side of my bed? And if I were to open my eyes right now, I would see wall. And the reason I picked that is because wall is an easy thing to imagine, right? And I just lay there, concentrating, concentrating, concentrating, that if I opened my eyes, I'd be on the other side of the bed looking at the wall. And lo and behold, like a switch, I would have put money down.

Starting point is 00:43:34 I would have bet anything that I was on the other side of the bed until I opened my eyes and I realized I wasn't. I did it a few times, and then I pushed my experiment even further, which is what if instead of being on the other side, because my weight was still on the left shoulder, what if I was actually on my right shoulder? So now I'm looking out at the room, but on the same side of the bed, just on the other shoulder. So here I am lying facing the room, and I'm imagining facing the wall, because the wall's an easy thing to imagine. But this time I'm imagining being on my other shoulder. And I concentrated on that thought, and lo and behold, I would have put money down that my weight was on the opposite shoulder until I opened my eyes to realize I was actually staring out at the room.

Starting point is 00:44:15 And this is when I became convinced that our minds are so powerful that I can trick my body, that my weight was on the wrong shoulder, that if I could do that with my mind, then I could trick myself good or bad into anything. Yeah. So you know, and the reason you're talking to me about this is because of my work since 1979 about mind-body unity. So the idea that you have a mind and a body, then you have a question, how do they talk to each other? How do you get from a fuzzy thought to something material? No one's been able to answer that. And I thought, well, this is silly.

Starting point is 00:44:49 Mind, body, they just words. If we make it one unit, then wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting the body. And I had two very early experiences. The one, I was married when I was obscenely young. And I go to Paris on my honeymoon. and I order a mixed grill. On the mixed grill is a pancreas. I asked my Ben husband, which of these is the pancreas?

Starting point is 00:45:15 He points. I, Van, I'm a big eater. Having a wonderful time. Now comes the moment of truth. Can I eat the pancreas? And I started eating it and I literally get sick. It would have been easier to imagine the wall on the other side of the room. And then he starts laughing.

Starting point is 00:45:34 which was not good at any time. Honeymoon, very not good. And I say, why are you laughing? He said, because that's chicken. You ate the pancreas a long time ago. So I had made myself sick. Now, to go back, the other pancreas story I have, most people don't have a single one.

Starting point is 00:45:51 I have two good pancreas stories. I don't have any. My, well, you can borrow, well, don't borrow the first one at the second. When my mother's cancer had metastasized to her pancreas, that's the end game. And then magically, it was totally, gone. And the medical world couldn't explain it. So, you know, I had made myself sick. She had made

Starting point is 00:46:11 herself well. And that was going to lead to decades of my research trying to figure out, you know, what's going on. The findings of these studies, you know, the one that many people know about, the counterclockwise study. And the reason I think people know about it is because if you tune in to the Simpsons go to Havana, they talk about the study. So you know you've made it, Simon, what's the Simpsons are talking about? been mentioned on the Simpsons yet. So I'm still working at it. All right. Anyway, so this was a study where we retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier.

Starting point is 00:46:44 We had elderly men live there as if they were their younger self. So it put their minds back 20 years. Okay. So they would be discussing past events as if they were just unfolding. And five days, in five days, it's a pretty short time. Their vision improved, their hearing improved, their strength, their memory, and they look noticeably on there. Go to the second one. So what we did was ask chambermaise how much exercise you get. They say they don't get any exercise. That's because to them, exercise is what the

Starting point is 00:47:16 surgeon general says you do after work. And after work, they're just too tired. We take a ton of measures. Then what we do is we divide them into two groups. So one group, the important group, we tell them, your work is exercise. Making a bed is like working at this machine at the gym. So we persuade them in the short discussion that their work is exercise. Now we do our follow-up measures. We find out, has their eating changed? No, the two groups are still the same. Has the effort they're putting into their work change? No. Nevertheless, the group that has changed their mindset, change their minds, now see their work as exercise. They lost weight. There was a change in waist to hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure came back. And some way that really

Starting point is 00:48:03 says more than most people understand, it speaks to what we call the nocebo effect. So everybody knows a placebo, you take a nothing, you think it's something, and it does the work of the something. A nocebo is you take a something, but you think it's a nothing, and it takes away the effects there. Yeah. So as you were saying, you know, that it works, we can bring about good or bad for ourselves. You always hear in hospitals, right? Doctors always say, you know, she was a fighter, he was a fighter. These people of medicine, they often refer to the mindset of the patient, you know, when they talk about these remarkable recoveries.

Starting point is 00:48:42 And I don't even think they realize they're saying it when they say it. Yeah. And I think that being a fighter is a bad metaphor. You know, I was giving a talk to about 5,000 people who were dealing with cancer. And this was very early on in my work. And one man objected strenuously. And he said, his wife was a fighter. You know, she fought the cancer.

Starting point is 00:49:06 And, you know, and I got through the day with that making sure he was okay. And everybody understood more fully what I meant. And I thought about it. You know, if a little kid was pulling on your pants left, you wouldn't see yourself as fighting the kid. Right? It's an annoyance. And so when you bring out the full artillery fighting the cancer, you already raised the opponent to a very big position. Oh, so let me just tell you about this.

Starting point is 00:49:32 the next the last study. We inflict a wound, a minor wound, because they wouldn't let us do the study, and I don't want to hurt people anyway. And then we put people individually in front of a clock. Unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged. So for a third of the people, the clock is going twice as fast as real time. For a third of the people, it's going half as fast as real time. For a third of the people, it's real time. Now, most people would assume that wound is going to heal when the wound. wound heals. I mean, what's the difference, right? But no, in fact, the wound heals based on clock time, perceived time. So we have demonstration after demonstration of the extraordinary control we have health and well-being. I mean, we have people in a sleep lab and they wake up

Starting point is 00:50:23 and they think they got more sleep than they got, less sleep than they got, and biological and cognitive functions follow perceived amount of sleep. Wow. So I, used to wear an aura ring. Yeah. And my aura ring used to tell me more often than not that I wasn't getting enough sleep, right? And then I got something called eight sleep, which are these sheets. I got them because they can cool your bed. That's really why I got them because I like a cold bed. But they just happen to measure sleep, which I don't care about, but they happen to measure it. And the sleep score I get from eight sleep is always fantastic. I'm like the favorite. Now, by the way, my sleep habits

Starting point is 00:51:02 have not changed. Some will argue that because the sheets are colder, I'm doing better. But I would keep the room very cold. I just thought this was more efficient than keeping the air conditioning on all night. Right. And I honestly can say that I sleep better now, but I don't know that I'm actually sleeping better, but because I'm being told that I'm sleeping better, I believe it. Yeah. So I believe, so the stress created by the aura ring was you suck at sleep. And I was always tired. And now I'm always well rested because I'm a champion sleeper according to my sheets. Okay, so I have one that's the negative bragging, if there is a true word. So I had believed always that if I have coffee, caffeine, it has been coffee, after 12 in the afternoon, it keeps me

Starting point is 00:51:50 up till 3 o'clock at night. However, if the last cup of coffee I have is at 10 of 12 the afternoon, it has no effect on me. Right. The most important part of all of this is that all of these decades of research has made clear to me virtually all of us are mindless almost all the time. Yeah. And, you know, when you're mindless, you're not there to know you're not there. And you're not invalidating the research, but as you said right at the beginning, which is it is preponderance, it's predictability, it's en masse. It's like more likely.

Starting point is 00:52:22 When these studies are telling us likelihoods, we are interpreting it as. certainty. Now, that's very good. You're trying to hoist me by my own patar. And I didn't even know I had a pittard, whatever a ptart. I can tell you what a ptart is. You know, in cartoons, the little, the little bomb that's round with a little fuse, that's a potard. Oh, is that a ptard? Yeah, that's a ptart that's a ptard. Yeah, that's a bit of, you're going to be hoisted by a ptardlessness. It just, yeah, it just means, you know, that. It means you blow up, you, you're blown up by your own grenade. Yeah. Hoisted by your own pittard. At any rate, in defense of my pittardlessness, that when you've done four decades worth of research, you know, leading to the same conclusion,

Starting point is 00:53:05 it's a little different than a single study. But you're still talking about likelihood because even your research, there is uncertainty. Of course, of course. So it's interesting because people say to me, isn't there a time being mindless is better? And I say no, and I say it unequivocally. And how could that be? How could she speak with certainty? You know, it's like everything is uncertain, except.

Starting point is 00:53:30 You know, so then I say, imagine, Simon, you're in the park with a little three-year-old. And the three-year-old starts walking into the traffic. You'd say, isn't it better that I mindlessly just pull her out of the traffic? And then I say to you, Simon, if you were mindful, she wouldn't have ended up in the traffic in the first place. Second, if you're going to pull her out, you know, you don't know whether the driver sees you pulling her out or is, himself starting to have, you know, swerve in the opposite direction, you want to make sure you're pulling her away from the traffic rather than, yeah. I think I would recommend finding a different example because we can't make it revisionist, right? If something bad is about to happen and we say,

Starting point is 00:54:12 well, if you were mindful, it wouldn't have happened in the first place, which is kind of a mean thing to say, because things do happen. And I think there, I think there are things that mindlessness is okay. No. And I will come up with a really good example. Good. You think while I talk for a second, because no matter what you're doing, you can do it mindfully or mindlessly. If you're doing it mindlessly, you're not there.

Starting point is 00:54:39 The neurons aren't firing. There's no advantage to doing it. Hold on. Your definition is two things now, because mindlessness in your car example is about reaction and an automated response. Well, it doesn't have to be an automated response, though. What I'm saying is I grab you quickly because you have my little child now. But human reaction, it's like the same reason why when you touch a hot stove,

Starting point is 00:55:03 your body says move your hand and then you feel the heat. But the reaction when your child is about to be hurt, that is automatic that you grab someone and hopefully it works out the right direction and works out the right way. And then you realize, oh, my God, what just happened? It happens afterwards. That is our minds, that is our mind protecting. before the understanding happens.

Starting point is 00:55:28 I'm sure at your age you've been protected from something that was actually good for you. Because the person misjudged. And I've also been protected from things that were actually bad from me. Yeah, but who's to say before the protection? The point is, all I can say is that sometimes it worked out well and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it was, I wish it happened and sometimes I wish it didn't. Still, you can do things mindfully or mindlessly, no matter what you. you're doing and the overwhelming evidence, theoretical and practical, is to be there. If you're going to

Starting point is 00:56:03 do it, be there for it. And when you're mindless, you're not there. You're no different from a robot. And would you like, in fact, if I said to you, your kid is in the road, do you want me to send a robot to get the kid out of the road or an Olympic athlete? Because the robot, you see, has only been programmed for certain things. And if you're uncertain, we know something that hasn't gotten into the program could be operating. I'm going to end right there. Ellen, so much fun. Thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed it, Simon. You stay well. You too. Hi. As always, thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, please do remember to subscribe to a bit

Starting point is 00:56:48 of optimism wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And remember, new episodes drop every Tuesday. A Bit of Optimism is a production of the Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. And if you want more cool stuff or just to find out what I'm up to, visit simoncynic.com. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other.

A Bit of Optimism - How to Stop Letting Your Own Thoughts Make You Sick, Stressed, and Stuck with Dr. Ellen Langer

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