The Rich Roll Podcast - The Mindful Body: Harvard’s Dr. Ellen Langer On The Power Of Mindfulness, How Thoughts Can Control Health, & Using Perspective To Lower Stress

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Dr. Ellen Langer is Harvard’s first tenured female psychology professor, a pioneering researcher on the mind-body connection, and author of “The Mindful Body.”     This conversation explores the radical impact of certainty on well-being and Ellen’s perspective that redefines traditional notions of mindfulness through the simple act of noticing new things.   In her return, we discuss why uncertainty brings freedom, how thoughts influence health outcomes, the kaleidoscopic nature of consciousness, and why everything we think we know deserves to be questioned.   Ellen is brilliant, irreverent, and wise. Her insights may transform how you think about thinking. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Roka: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL 👉ROKA.com/RICHROLL    AG1: Get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Go Brewing: Use the code Rich Roll for 15% OFF 👉gobrewing.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors   Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

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And so the idea of worrying about making the wrong decision doesn't make sense in the first place. And so you're always guessing at what's the right thing to do. And I'm here to inform people nobody knows. And it's okay not to know. Everything is mutable. Everything can be different from what it is. And so if it doesn't work, change it. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast.

I just wanna say upfront that I appreciate your attention. Attention is precious when you pause to think about it. All we have is our attention. Attention is precious when you pause to think about it. All we have is our attention. And while we tend to take this for granted or overlook it or waste it or misdirect it, what and who you devote your attention to matters. And for that reason, I don't take it for granted that right now you have chosen to give your attention to me

to this podcast. It's a responsibility that I take seriously and hopefully honor with today's conversation, which in many ways is itself about attention. My guest today is Dr. Ellen Langer. Dr. Langer has dedicated her career to challenging our most fundamental assumptions about the nature of the mind,

consciousness and human behavior. Dubbed the mother of mindfulness, Dr. Langer is Harvard University's most popular psychology professor, as well as my most popular guest of 2024. And today she returns to share deeper insights on mind-body unity, why much of what we think we know isn't so,

and how embracing uncertainty and mindfulness can liberate us from our self-imposed limitations. In addition, we discuss why making decisions right matters more than making the right decision and many other topics. Dr. Langer is a force of nature, brilliantly contrarian in the best sense and delightfully unconventional.

And my hope is that this conversation will leave you questioning everything you think you know and empowered by that uncertainty. So without further ado, please enjoy me and Dr. Ellen Langer. All right, well, we're here. Thanks for coming back, Ellen. My pleasure.

It's a delight to have you back in the studio. You are one of our most popular, if not the most popular guests that we had last year. And I left that last conversation with, you know, plenty of thoughts about how we could reconvene. So we talked about decisions, making decisions, and this idea of rather than focusing on making the right decision, making the decision right.

You know, maybe we can spend a few more minutes kind of exploring that because people were so fascinated. Well, the idea is you make a decision to take action. As soon as you take the action, you can't evaluate the decision, what the alternatives would have been. And the experience in anything is not a function of consequences that are fixed.

And our minds determine our appreciation of it. And so the idea of worrying about making the wrong decision doesn't make sense in the first place. So two reasons that I've just said. One is wrong based on what, and the other decision might have been more wrong, might have been the same, might have been better. There's no way to ever know that.

And that the experience you have of the outcome is up to you. You know, the example I gave in the mindful body, I came home from dinner at a friend's house and all of my neighbors were outside because my house had burned down. People in California can appreciate that now. And the next day I called the insurance agent

and he said that when he finally came, he said it was the first time in his 20 year career, but the damage was worse than the call. Usually it's, oh my God, oh my God. And then he gets there, it's nothing. But it didn't make sense to me to throw my sanity away with all of the items that I had already lost. They weren't going to come back.

Anyway, that's not the real part of the story. I move into the Charles Hotel and it was Christmas Eve. I go out, I come back to the hotel, the end of the night and the room is full of gifts, not from the owners of the hotel, not from the management, but from the so-called little people, the people who parked my car, the chamber maids, the waiters and waitresses.

It was beautiful. And Rich, I'll tell you that it took me forever to be able to tell that story without it bringing tears to my eyes. So now we have a situation where I lost 80% of what I had. I can remember only one thing that I lost, but every Christmas I'm reminded of what feels like the basic goodness of so many people.

And so for me, it was actually a very positive experience. But you know, I'm human. And of course I don't go and see my house and playing, oh, well that's no big deal. I mean, it was stressful. But in thinking about it, I can bemoan the things that I lost or I can recognize those were things that represented the prior me.

I didn't just buy them yesterday and a chance then to go forward and rebuild based on who I am at the moment. So the idea being that events don't cause stress, the outcomes of events are a function of our thoughts about them. And so if you're making a decision and you know that if this happens, it'll be fine.

If that happens, it'll be fine. Doesn't matter what happens. I was doing one of these podcasts on Zoom explaining this to people. And I said, okay, look, if my internet goes out right now, it's not gonna be, oh my goodness, I'll go have lunch. That the older you get, the more you realize

that most of these things just don't matter. One of the things my wife always says is everything is neutral until perspective is applied. It's all a matter of your perspective that you lend to a certain series of events or outcomes, right? This is very easy to say and difficult to practice, correct? And how to kind of differentiate between trivial outcomes and outcomes that perhaps are more dire

or to which we apply a more severe perspective. But when you first find the outcome, then you're making all sorts of guesses about what it would have meant to you. And that gets into all of your thoughts about prediction. Yeah. And uncertainty and our great discomfort with uncertainty. Well, and which is a shame

because certainty makes you mindless. And uncertainty is the rule, it's not the exception. Everything is changing, everything looks different from different perspectives and we're holding it still, we're confusing the stability of our mindsets with the stability of the underlying phenomenon. So we hold things still to have control, but that very holding still robs us of control. And we want control again because we want to make sure we can maximize these positive

things, minimize these negative things. And when you recognize that thing itself isn't positive or negative, the whole thing becomes very easy. Now, it's not, you do this often enough. I don't know, I've been very fortunate to live my life this way, that I'm not reinterpreting events with a fire, yes,

but with more mundane happenings. My immediate response is to understand the way it's an advantage. Are you fundamentally wired that way? Is that teachable? Do you think that this is a habit that people can adopt? I think it's teachable. I had loving parents and as I'm fond of saying,

my mother would have had me laminated if she could have. And so since I'm fond of saying, my mother would have had me laminated if she could have. And, you know, so I, since I'm a little kid, I'm always telling people about the other side, you know, that, no, why don't you look at it this way? Scarily, if most people had been positive, my mind might have gone the other way. Well, let me tell you how that could be awful. Why do you think it is that the human animal

is so unat ease with uncertainty when uncertainty is truly the fabric of the universe? Well, I think we're taught that. I don't think it's, I mean, some people argue that it's wired and I don't really believe that. I think that everything is the way it is because somebody is prospering. And it's important for me to stay on top

by leading you to believe I know things without any uncertainty. And so that I'm superior to you in some way. And I argue against all of that. But regardless of whether it's wired in, it's not wired in, the fact is uncertainty is the rule. And to deny it is not helpful. There's freedom in accepting this idea of uncertainty

and our compulsion to feel like we're in control of our lives or that we can predict outcomes is what also causes us suffering. So freedom is kind of confronting the reality or the lack of reality. But you can control it. All you really care about is your response to the event. The event itself doesn't really matter.

And that we have full control over. Now, not when we're mindless, not if we're taught that this is necessarily a bad thing, and you're taught that over and over again, it's very hard when confronted with that to turn around and say, oh, who cares, this is minor. But if you examine it and just ask yourself, what are the advantages to it?

In fact, one of the things I say when people who are stressed, stress requires two things, I believe. First is a belief that something's going to happen. And second, then when it happens, it's going to be awful. So attack both of those. The first, give yourself three, five reasons why it won't happen. And you immediately feel better

because you went from single-mindedly, this thing is going to happen to, I mean, maybe it won't. But the more fun part, fun for me, but for most people is to then say, okay, let's assume it does happen. How is that actually an advantage? And when you do that, then you're in a position

where it might happen, it might not happen. Either way, I'm going to be fine. And so then you can get on with just being. Yeah, I think that, you know, there's a lot of talk, especially on podcasts about sleep hygiene, how important it is to get eight hours and all these sort of protocols to ensure a healthy night's sleep.

But all of that is for not, if you're just hashing, you know, stress, and if stress is just this cycle that's recurring in your mind and you're thinking about all the terrible outcomes and all the things you have to do, like if you can't put the brakes on that or arrest it or reframe that narrative,

I think that's the real source of people's inability to sleep. It certainly is for me. I get stuck on your original statement of eight hours because I find it ridiculous. Did you tell Andrew that yesterday? I did actually, I believe. What did he say?

Yeah, that if you just ran a marathon versus you were in bed all day watching television and eating candy, you're not gonna need the same amount of sleep that night. And some people need more, some people need less. What happens, I think we talked about this last time, is that I think people need to understand that science only gives us probabilities.

Those probabilities are translated as absolute facts. An example I used before is I was at this horse event, this man asked me if I'd watch his horse for him because he wants to get his horse a hot dog. Haha, I laugh being a straight A student. Horses don't eat meat. He came back with the hot dog and the horse ate it. All right, now to make this a little different

from the last time, imagine having to say in school or wherever you're taught this, rather than horses don't eat meat, you say these kinds of horses, given this kind of meat mixed with this kind of grain under these circumstances, after not having eaten, 80% of them don't eat meat. It's a mouthful.

And so we take a shorthand, but that shorthand, we then presume is more real than we otherwise should. It's not that horses don't eat meat. It's not that people need eight hours of sleep. None of these things are true for everybody all of the time. And so the idea is to recognize when it's not true for you, that's probably fine, rather than then lose more sleep because you can't get enough, you know, get to sleep.

Another thing about sleep, I've always found funny and I've done this myself. So let's say I have to make a very early flight. So I have to get up at five in the morning, four in the morning, make it more dramatic. I try to go to sleep very early the night before. And of course I'm not gonna be able to sleep because the amount of sleep I need

isn't determined by the future, it's determined by the past. But I think that, you know, it depends on how you're spending the day, I would think, as to how much sleep you actually need. If you're mindful, you know, so that the neurons are firing and you're feeling very alive, my guess is you don't need as much sleep

as if life is a drudgery. Well, it gets into this idea of mind-body unity that we talked about last time, this notion that we need eight hours. If you don't get it, then you're suddenly gonna feel like, oh, I'm behind, or I'm not at the peak of my powers today. And what does that mindset do to how you feel

and how you behave and how you make decisions throughout the day? How much of that is purely physiological because you didn't get eight hours versus the impact of your mindset on your body? Exactly, so you know, we did a study in a sleep lab. There are two parts of this that are interesting. One is all I wanted to do with the study

was to have people wake up, see a clock, the clock tell them that they had two hours less sleep, fewer than they had, or the amount of sleep they had or two hours more sleep. I could not get the scientists all over the country who ran, I didn't want to set up a sleep lab, it just, you know, too involved to do the studies. Well, you know, they say, it's not gonna work.

I said, well, then just change the clock if it's not gonna work, it's not gonna upset any of the other measures you're taking or the reason you're running the study. And eventually I got somebody to agree to do it. But it was an interesting thing because the medical world, everybody there said, it's not gonna work. In my department and discussing it with colleagues, everybody said said, it's not gonna work. In my department and discussing it with colleagues,

everybody said, of course it's gonna work. But without any doubt on either side. Anyway, so people wake up, they think they got more sleep than they got. And all of the cognitive and biological measures we took revealed that they were fine. Your body follows what your mind believes essentially. Now, I don't know how far you can push that.

If you sleep only one hour, well, first of all, I don't know if you slept one hour, we'd be able to persuade you that you actually slept eight. But all I know is that the limits we presume to be true, I think are vastly under. Well, that's the core thesis of all of your work pretty much, right? Everybody can be happier, healthier,

do more than they think that they can. On that notion, just to extrapolate it, you have this idea that perhaps the entire notion of fatigue is a mindset situation. Yeah, so we have what I call the two thirds effect. And it's not always exactly two thirds, but you're doing some activity, you know approximately how long it's gonna take.

You don't consciously think about all of this, but you've been through it before. And around two thirds of the way through, you start to get tired. Now, I think you start to get tired because you want to get out of the activity. Right before we started, and I asked you how long are we gonna go?

And you gave me a time, I said, for me, I'm so bizarre that I get more and more excited and more and more energized so that I could go on, not endlessly, but certainly for a longer period of time than anybody would want me to. So how do you end the activity? And so to bring closure to things, it works very nicely for everybody to get tired

two thirds of the way through. So what we did, in the first study here was very simple. You know, we just had people doing a hundred jumping jacks and tell us when they're tired. So they get tired around 70, right? Now we have another group of people doing 200 jumping jacks. Tell us when you get tired around 70, right? Now we have another group of people doing 200 jumping jacks. Tell us when you get tired. They get tired at 140.

And we do this across lots of different activities. And it seems that we organize ourselves so that oddly we're going to make ourselves tired. Then the question why, and I don't have evidence for this, it just seems to me it's a way then to exit. Start doing something else. It's our relationship to the completion, to the destination that dictates like how we meet out

our energy and our perception of how fatigued we are. Right, I mean, if you go to faculty meetings or any kind of business meeting, that things start off slow, then you get the big information out, and then eventually, okay, we've said it all, because the meeting is going to end. People don't give you their best right up front.

It's curious as an athlete to think about fatigue as something that's rooted in the mind, because obviously if you could unlock that or help people reframe their relationship with fatigue in an athletic context, that would be like this unlock to performance enhancement. Yeah, well, so there was a study that was done forever ago where a person was supposed to, as a participant,

you write your name and you just keep writing your name and you write your name. And at some point you just can't take it anymore. You're writing, you're writing, and then you give up. And the person who, the experimenter then says, okay, just sign this form and you can leave, and then you write. So the point is that you change the context

and everything changes. There was a wonderful study that Frank Beach did way back when, this will surprise you if I hadn't told you about it already. So you have a little boy rat and a little girl rat and they will copulate. And then the little boy rat needs a refractory period. He can't take anymore.

However, if immediately after you introduce a new little girl rat, he can go on. So the idea is, you change the context and all of a sudden you have renewed energy. And so you can do that when you're running, that start thinking of something new or have somebody join you at this later point, or I don't know if you could change the scenery,

but you could if you were doing it on one of those bikes. But we're hardwired to, you know. Oh, you keep talking hardwired. I don't think we have any idea what are wired. Let's say we have a tendency, maybe, is that better? Based on my observations, or maybe just from, I'll share my own personal experience. Okay, here we go.

If we sort of wanna predict into the future when things are gonna end or what those destination points are so that we can then make decisions about how we're going to approach it, correct? In the context of like athletics, there are these adventure races where the race organizer won't tell you

how long it's gonna go. And there's something particularly maddening about that. Like you don't know, it could be days, it could be hours. And that has a tendency to like break people mentally, right? When they don't know like how many challenges they're gonna have. So like, how would that fit into? Well, it fits in beautifully, don't you think?

You know, that I don't know how to organize myself. Should I go full out? You know, if I'm gonna run a hundred yards, then I'm gonna go full out right from the beginning. But if I'm gonna go five miles, you know, I have to hold back. And all of that is based on an assumption of how much you can do.

You know, that if I think that if I go full out, I can't do that for the five months. I personally can't do it. We make decisions about our own limitations that then predict those outcomes. And those decisions then become self-fulfilling prophecies. Yeah. The other ripple in this conversation

around decision-making is the importance of different types of cognition beyond like the intellectualization that kind of monopolizes how we make decisions or the fact that we kind of overlook the other aspects that are truly informing how we're making decisions and then hang our hat on these intellectual rationales. As for example.

So we have a decision to make, for example, are you gonna be a professor at this college or this college? And we make a list, here's all the pros and the cons. And then we sort of believe that we're making a decision based upon those when in fact, there's something else going on. Well, yeah, that you make this list

and you see the school you really wanna go to is losing. So then you change the advantages and disadvantages. Change the. So implicit in what you just said is that it's the emotional piece that is really the driver of how we actually make decisions. I think that people make the decisions the right way and are led to believe by the experts

that they're doing something wrong. And the only way you can assess whether it's right or wrong is by the outcome. And if we go back to my original statement that you articulated, you know, that rather than worry about making the right decision, make the decision right. So if you make the decision right,

then whatever the process was worked for you. So in other words, I think that in some level, people know that they can't do what people are telling them to do. You know, to do a cost benefit analysis makes no sense once you recognize that every cost is a benefit, every benefit is a cost. So it's gonna add up to zero.

And they say collect information, but how much information? There's always more information that could change the sense of what you're doing. You know, we have the feeling that the more information, the better. And I think that that's a problem. If there were in fact, 100 pieces of information, right?

And you collected 90, you'd be in a better position than if you only collected 50 pieces of information. But there's not a hundred pieces of information. It's almost infinite. You know, I'm trying to make a decision. I can say, well, is this thing going to be good for me now? Is it going to be good for me in two weeks? Is it going to be good in a year?

Is it going to be good in five or so on? Is it going to be good for my family? Is it going to be good for the world? It potentially can go on and on. I mean, every decision we make is doing something for us on some level, whether we're conscious of it or not. But I imagine somebody listening to this might be thinking,

well, if this is just about making every decision that I make right, then does that not rob me of the ability to look into the rear view mirror, assess the decisions I've made in the past and kind of do a forensic analysis and try to figure out like how I can make better decisions going forward. Like if I'm just like, well, I just make it right

and it was the right decision, then you're never really reflecting upon your decision-making ability at all. But it doesn't have to work that way. You can do all the reflecting with an awareness that it really doesn't make a difference. It doesn't make a difference with respect to making a better decision, but it is informative.

It's also fun to do, can be quite mindful. It's just not going to lead to a better decision. I mean, and that's hard for people to understand. People think there are good decisions and bad decisions. And, you know, that once you've made the decision, again, you don't know what the alternatives would have been. It also depends on the timeline.

Yes, yeah. And not only that, but we make decisions because we think we can predict. Once you realize that prediction itself is an illusion, then even if it's a simple thing like, should I have this candy bar? Well, you're a health nut. Okay, so I can have this protein bar.

I'll have one of those once in a while. Go ahead. Versus this other protein bar relies on an assumption that it's going to taste to me the same way they both tasted in the past. And then I say, well, which of these tastes do I want right now? But my biochemistry is different today than it was yesterday.

And so even that assumption is wrong. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, for whom'm saying? Yeah, yeah. For whom and when? Yeah, exactly. So if you can't predict, then what sense does making the decision make? Now people have a hard time understanding

that they can't predict because I think in general, people confuse predicting for the group with predicting for the individual. You can't predict the individual case. So an example I used the other day. So let's say we're gonna go to a Mercedes shop. All right. And you get to start, pick any Mercedes there,

and you're gonna turn the key. And if it starts, I'm gonna give you a million dollars. If it doesn't start, you're gonna give me your life savings so far. That's pretty good bet, but nobody's gonna take it because everybody knows there are lemons. Everybody knows that none of us are perfect, no matter how good we are,

nothing we've produced is perfect. So while in general, those Mercedes are likely to start, certainly more likely than if you go to a used car lot, any particular one, no. So people on some level are aware of this. Now, for all of us, what we're trying to predict is for ourselves, right? It's wonderful you tell me,

I'm trying to see, should I have this operation? And you say, 80% of the people who have this operation do just fine. I'm happy for them. But am I gonna be a part of the 20% or part of the 80%? And there's no way of knowing. And if there's no way of knowing, then how do you make the decision?

And more broadly, how do we make peace with uncertainty in general? Well, again, the way I make peace with uncertainty is that whatever happens, I find the advantage to it. And so it's fine. If we paid more attention to why we're doing what we're doing, I think we'd be a lot easier on ourselves.

So let's say I decide, you know, all I want to do today is stay home and maybe watch some movies on television, just take it easy, right? And the reason I need this is because of whatever I've been traveling, I've been doing podcasts after, and I really just wanna be by myself. Okay, and then I find out that if I had only gone to whatever this event was, it could have been life-changing. Now, as long as I know why I chose what I chose, I'm not likely to regret not having chosen something else. But if I'm not aware of why I'm doing what I'm doing,

I'm just sort of mindlessly being, and then somebody says, oh, you missed this great thing. You know, yeah, then I will feel regret. But it makes it easier to say no when you have clarity on those things. Yes, oh sure, exactly. Because you're not captured by this fear of missing out all the time.

Exactly, exactly. But too often we don't know why we're doing what we're doing. We just end up in one place or the other sort of mindlessly. Yeah, well, maybe provide, once again, you did it last time, but your definition of mindfulness. Okay, so when I'm talking about mindfulness, it has nothing to do with meditation.

And meditation is fine. It's just very different process. Meditation is a practice you engage in to result in post-meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness as we studied is more immediate. It's a simple process of actively noticing things. When you're actively noticing the neurons are firing, decades of data show that it's literally

and figuratively enlivening. There are two ways to become mindful. One, as we've been talking now, is top down. Once you recognize that you don't know, you pay attention. You know, if you were to come to visit me in Cambridge, you wouldn't have to practice anything. You'd walk in, you'd say, you've never been there before.

Everything would be new. You'd look at the paintings, you'd wonder, did she do that painting? What is she reading? What is that strange thing over there? And it would be fun. That's what we do when we travel, for example. The other way, rather than top down is bottom up,

which is walk out your front door and notice three new things. Notice three, five new things about the person that you live with, if you live with anybody, or three new things about Notice three, five new things about the person that you live with if you live with anybody or three new things about what's happening at work today. Each time you notice new things about the things you thought you knew, you come to realize, gee, you didn't know it

as well as you thought you did. It's a practice of disabusing us of our certainty. Exactly. And that gets to the predictability piece also. Yeah. Exactly. And so do you have a formal practice of meditation to inhabit this mindfulness state of mind? Or you just, yeah, like you sort of short circuit

right to the purpose of meditation. Well, you know, once I had that horse experience and my whole life changed. Now, Rich, where the horse is going to eat the hot dog. And I've said this so many times, I don't even remember if it's true or not. This is your spiritual experience. But it feels true that, you know,

it just made me question everything. And, you know, so, and I have one of the titles that I was playing with before I came up with the mindful body was who says so, which you can do with almost everything, that every fact that we're given is contextualized and we lose the context and act as if it's absolute. So the example I gave you last time,

I asked you how much is one plus one. So this is the fact everybody thinks they know, but it can be many things. It can be two, if you're using a base 10 number system, it can be 10 if you're using a base two number system. It can be one if you're adding things that are hard to describe. You know, you take one puddle and you add one puddle,

you have one puddle. Somebody sent me this, that if you take one pizza and you add one pizza, you have two pizzas. But you take one lasagna and you add one lasagna, one plus one is one, it's just larger. On top of each other. One cloud plus one cloud is one cloud. And so in the real world,

it doesn't equal to as a more often as it does. The point of the whole thing though, has nothing to do how much is one plus one. As soon as you realize you don't know you have choices and life becomes interesting again. Somebody now asks you how much is one plus one? Why you say, gee, I can give them the answer that, I can say two and pass the test.

I can say one and be a smart ass. I can say 10 to show that I have some mathematical knowledge. I think there's a deeper philosophical inquiry here, which is, and this relates to mind, body, unity. Like the end point on some level of mindfulness is to realize the oneness of everything, right? That the self and our notion of identity is this illusion and we're all entirely connected.

And at its like end point, the equation of one plus one isn't even a question that you would ask. It wouldn't make sense because there is only one. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, if you say, you know, we look at science and you do experiments and then they lead to more experiments and more, you're never gonna get the final answer

because things are always changing. Or you could just say, if you were religious, God did it. The answer is God and then the game is over. And so there's always some attempt to find that middle path that gives us an opportunity to think about things. But to think we've gotten the final answer, as soon as you have that answer,

you no longer pay any attention. And then, you know, if you're, in my view, if you're gonna do something, you should show up for it. And you're not gonna show up for it if you think it's uninteresting and nothing. I have this, some talk I was giving, and I have this slide that I show, which is something Mark Twain said.

And he's described, I don't remember it well enough to make it fully interesting, but it's beautiful. Or he's just talking about water. And the point is, the point I make with it is anything can be made interesting. Anything can be made uninteresting. And when we think we need to know, we don't look closely and it's not interesting.

Sure, anything is interesting if you're paying close enough attention to it. Yeah, you know, it's like you can decide, wouldn't it be fun to collect teacups? You know, not particularly interesting to me, but once I start it and I notice these subtle differences and you get into it, you know, not particularly interesting to me, but once I started and I noticed these subtle differences and you get into it and, you know, and it becomes fun. But as soon as you think you've captured

whatever the game is over. We're brought to you today by AG1. When it comes to goals and habit change, one of the things I'm constantly banging on about is really focusing on the tiny things, drilling down on the small daily things that, while they may seem like nothing, are actually everything when it comes to advancing you towards your goals. And one of those tiny things is my morning ritual with AG1, which is just a non-negotiable part of my life

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So whether you're exploring alcohol-free options or simply looking for a better beverage choice, check out gobrewing.com and use code richroll for 15% off your first purchase. One of the things that I practice, particularly when I'm feeling stressed, it's like a stress reliever is to close my eyes and you think, well, it's just black. You don't see anything.

But if you're in a dark room and you close your eyes and you really pay attention, there's a lot going on. Things are happening that appear without any willfulness whatsoever. And it becomes this kaleidoscopic like odyssey of weirdness, right? And the closer you pay attention, the more kind of mysterious and magical it becomes,

which disabuses you of the certainty that like everything is dark when you close your eyes. And like, what does that actually mean? That's interesting. It's in a different way. It's you come to know more and more about less and less until you realize you know all about nothing. But then there's the opportunity to learn all of that.

But it's this seeking this final answer that I think gets people crazy, leads people to be unnecessarily competitive, leads to a world that too many people are unhappy. Right now, I think how much are people paying for antidepressants and therapy and books like mine to help them? You know, that, and I don't know, it might sound naive,

but it's all easier than people are acting as if it is. You know, you want all these people who are competing, you know, I've got to make more billions than you've made and, you know, get higher grades and run faster and so on. What is the point of that? I believe the point of that eventually is so that I'll think well of myself and respect myself. So I'll be happy.

And, you know, there are easier ways to get to that place, which takes me to something that I mentioned last time, but it's so important to me, Rich. I feel like I have to keep saying it as if every time I say it, I'm gonna influence somebody. I don't know if anybody has ever influenced by this, but that everything we do makes sense or else we wouldn't do it.

And when you recognize that, that gets rid of all of the personal dislike, the way, you know, one of the things that people do is some people blame themselves, you know, that they take themselves to task because they're not very good at, or they've done something. And then you get a group of people well-meaning and say, no, no, forgive yourself for that.

And I think that it's that sort, it's much better to forgive yourself if you're blaming yourself, but it's better still to understand why you did what you did. Yeah, with understanding, there's no need for forgiveness. Exactly, exactly.

And so do we end up in a different world where we go back to that little song I wrote for my grandkids. Everybody doesn't know something, everybody knows something else, everybody can't do something, everyone can do something else, rather than the presumption that life is a normal

distribution, you know, there are some of us all the way over on, you know, the tail end and most people in the middle and some on the other end, say which is the better end, you know, some people can do it really well, most can do it moderate, and then you have those who just know good at it. Without questioning who decided the criteria. And so lots of people walk around

feeling bad about themselves. And that's sad to me. Yeah, trying to measure up to some standard. They have no hand in creating. Without even knowing that the standard was artificial. Poorly calibrated. Yeah, you know, when I wrote the, I'm Becoming an Artist book. So I started painting when I was about fifth day

and great fun. So many things came to my mind then. The first was what mark could I have put on a page as a young kid, wherever teacher would lead me to believe I have no creative ability. When you think of Mondrian versus Rembrandt, the art that we all appreciate is so different one painter from the next.

And so then I think that I can't do it. Then the art, I don't know if you know this, that the impressionists that people pay millions of dollars for was rejected in its day. You know, and you start seeing, and you come to the point of, yeah, who's deciding this? Who's deciding what's good or bad? And you change the actors, you change the criteria.

An example, so remote from this, but it comes to mind, people have to decide whether a drug is going to, you have some medication, whether you're going to be reimbursed by insurance. Now, it's not as if something comes down from the heavens and say, these disorders to be reimbursed by insurance. Now, it's not as if something comes down from the heavens and say, these disorders should be reimbursed and not these there. It's just people making these decisions.

And when people make decisions, remember the fact of a decision means there's uncertainty. If there's no uncertainty, there's no decision, which means it could have been other. So the example I use, imagine that you have a group of 50 year old lusty men versus a group of nuns making the decision.

And the decision is whether Viagra should be reimbursed. It's going to get a whole different answer, right? And so it is with virtually everything. And when you think about this long enough and enough different contexts, you recognize that everything is mutable. Everything can be different from what it is. And so if it doesn't work, change it.

But people take what is as if it's supposed to be that way. And very simple things. When I gave a talk when I was young, I walk into this room and the stage is very far back from the audience. And I knew that would make me nervous, you know, too much distance. And so first thing I did is I'm moving all the furniture,

I'm moving all of the chairs, which is also interesting because I guess I could have left the chairs and just stood closer to people, but I move all the chairs. If you asked anyone, any speaker, could have left the chairs and just stood closer to people, but I move all the chairs. If you asked anyone, any speaker, could you move the chairs? Everyone's gonna say yes, but it doesn't occur to us. We take what is as if it's supposed to be that way

without realizing that what is was somebody's decision. They lived at a different time. They had different biases, different needs. And also the more different you are, I believe, from the person who made the decision, the person who wrote the directions, who came up with the instructions, the more important it is for you

not to mindlessly blindly follow them. Right, well, these rules, whoever dictated them, at least with respect to issues related to social order are generally created and enforced by those who hold power and have an investment in the status quo. Right, exactly. And so, with some of these things, it may be fine to leave the rule as it is,

but not to feel bad when enacting that rule doesn't put you at the head of the class. So I play tennis. If I designed the game, you'd have three serves. Cause the first one, I'd kill it. Cause that would favor you. It wouldn't go in. Right, and the second one I learned from the first

and then I have my followup was third serve and I wouldn't fault. It's two serves, okay. So if you're gonna play with me, we're probably gonna play three serves. But if I'm playing, you know, in normal circumstances, it's gonna be two serves. And so if I'm evaluating my tennis ability,

I have to recognize that it's determined by somebody who meets that goal more efficiently than I myself do. Not that I can't do this. I can't do it the way it's best for you to do it. And if you're in charge, so be it. You see what I'm saying? So there are two things there. One is you can change the damn rule,

which I do all the time. The older I get, the more I do it. Or I can follow the rule and recognize that it's not going to work as well from me as if I created whatever the rules of the game are. What is the difference in your mind between a rule breaker or somebody who is contrarian versus being open-minded and wide-eyed and curious?

Well, it depends. If the rule breaker is breaking the rules just to be a rule breaker, you're not gonna end up with much respect for them. The person who is open-minded, wide-eyed and whatever else you said is somebody who will be following rules when it makes sense to follow them and change the rules in subtly or not so subtly

when that's to everybody's advantage. And not afraid to question them. Yeah, yeah. You know, that we have, people don't recognize the difference even between legality and morality. They're very different things. And so you follow the law, oftentimes,

because you're afraid of the consequences of breaking the law, but there are times that you don't want to, if the law is, you're not allowed to marry somebody of another race, you're not allowed to be gay for some people, in the past when during prohibition, you can't have a drink even if, these sorts of things,

you see that they don't make a drink, even if you know, these sorts of things, you see that they don't make a whole lot of sense. And then breaking it is whether you're willing to pay the price, you know, I mean, so I put money in the meter and now I'm having lunch with you and it's so exciting. And the meter is gonna run out. And they make it a choice. Do I want to end the meeting with you,

go put the quarter in the meter or run the risk of getting a ticket? It's not a moral issue. There's not a morality judgment on whether you, but there are with plenty of other laws. Although, when I say that, or you say that my mind always goes to the other place. In some sense, every decision has a moral component.

Even a decision, should I have M&Ms or, I don't know, a baby Ruth? Do they still make baby Ruth? I think so. Okay, good. I know they make M&Ms. That seems to be a decision that has nothing to do with morality.

On the other hand, if I were a leader in this world and I'm choosing the M&M, so I'm influencing everybody to choose the M&Ms, I'm helping to put the Baby Ruth people out of business, that means people will be out of jobs and so on. You can add a moral element or eliminate it from anything you're talking about. Well, this notion of being a rule follower

is ingrained into our educational system. Yeah, and let me say something. This is important to me because I seem like such a free spirit. I can't tell you that, you know, basically growing up, it was very conservative. I mean, the only time I would, the way I would break the rule was to get the highest grade,

for instance, so that then I could deviate. Yeah, I mean, I asked the question of contrarianism versus open-mindedness, because I suspect that perhaps you're accused occasionally of being- All the time. You're just rule breaking, contrarian, when everything that I, when I experience you, I just think of somebody who's really curious

and has the audacity to kind of, well, what if we looked at it from a different perspective or a what if, you know, kind of question as opposed to. No, but I think that very often with my seeming to be breaking rules is because I don't know the rule. So I'm oblivious to the fact that I'm breaking it, which reminds me of this funny thing as a little kid. It's so interesting, you know, I'm 77 years old

to think about which things I remember from my past and which I'm totally oblivious to as of some interest. But I met this dentist, a little kid, and my mother comes in and the dentist tells my mother, what a good patient I was. And all I'm thinking is what were the other kids doing? You see what I'm saying? So it wasn't that I was being good

because I thought morally that's how you should be, or I was being good because I was too scared not to be. I was being an oblivious mindless to alternative ways of being. And lots of the time I'm seeming to break the rules is because I don't know them. Naivete. Naivete, stupidity, whatever you wanna call it.

You talk a lot about this idea of embodied cognition. And it has me thinking about enhanced cognition and different definitions of cognition or intelligence, I guess. And I've been listening to this podcast that's blowing my mind called the telepathy tapes. Have you heard of this? It's a docu-series, like, I guess. And I've been listening to this podcast that's blowing my mind called the Telepathy Tapes. Have you heard of this? No. It's a docu-series, like, I don't know,

eight or nine episodes that are about 45 minutes each, in which this documentary filmmaker spends time with neurodivergent individuals, autistic, nonverbal individuals, and goes on this exploration of their telepathic powers, their ability to communicate with their moms and with each other. And it's one of the most fascinating, mind blowing thing.

And like, I'm not a scientist, is this real? I don't know, but I can't stop listening to it. And just to ask the question, is this possible? Like, is it possible that by some, you know, reason that we can't quite fathom right now that there is a different form of communication? Like just brought it, like, if you really think about what that means and what that says about

the nature of reality itself. Yeah, no, I think that we only know a very small bit of what's possible. And I had this experience. First, when I was writing the Mindful Body, I had a chapter in it that I called the Woo Woo Chapter. The publishers asked me to get rid of a lot of it, but it was really interesting to me.

All of these things, everybody's had these strange experiences. And then we're supposed to call them coincidences or whatever, which doesn't really explain anything. But I had one where I had just come back from a trip and we were discussing and I say, let's go to, and I couldn't remember the name of the place, but then we both realized I was talking about Kuala Lumpur,

I had never been there, it sounded exotic. And then we said, well, we just spent all this money, which I don't understand how it even say that since most of these trips are paid for by other people. But then I said, I don't know why, Rich, I said, maybe I could get the Harvard club to pay for it. This was so bizarre. I had absolutely no interaction get the Harvard club to pay for it. This was so bizarre. I had absolutely no interaction with any Harvard club.

I didn't even know what the Harvard club was, except it was something related to Harvard. Okay. Okay. Now, the next day, the next day, I get a letter from the Harvard club of Kuala Lumpur inviting me to give a lecture. And, you know, how did this happen? Now, I didn't know, was I picking up information

out there on the ether? Did I control it, make it happen? I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with very sophisticated statisticians where we start talking, they walk away from me. You know? And somebody would say, well, you probably saw the piece of mail

and forgot that you saw it. No, because I'm very efficient in certain ways and I never open a piece of mail twice. I open it, I do it, you know, and if I can't take care of something out of the time, I don't open it until a later time. So I knew that that wasn't true, how it happened and to say coincidence,

what does that mean? So what do you make of it? I don't know, I know that the things that we have, a very small world that we look at ignoring everything else and we call everything else noise. And I think probably most of the interesting things that we'll find out in the future are part of that noise. I had this other, this thing,

maybe it'll reveal too much about me, but I went to see the psychic. Friends had gone to the psychic, I thought, okay, this is fun, why not? And the psychic said to me that my book, this is before the mindfulness book was written, was gonna be a great success. And she also said that beware of somebody

who wears three piece suits and that I have a crack in the foundation of my house. Oh, and then I have a gas leak, a slow gas leak. That's very specific. Yeah, and now in today's world, this was before the internet, today's world, you look me up, you can get maybe even this information.

But that was when a time when that didn't exist. And so I'm thinking about it. And the first thing I do when I get home is I called the gas company to come to check for a gas leak. And they say, why do you think there's a gas leak? I said, nevermind, I get off the phone because I'm in Paris. Okay, so then I go to my house in the Cape

and I'm in the garage and the cement is cracked. I go out and there's a construction worker, I bring him in, does that count as a crack in the foundation? He said, yes, yes, my book's gonna be a hit. Wow. Gas leak though? Well, the gas leak I never found out about because I was too embarrassed.

And the person with the three-piece suit, that's an easy one to explain psychologically. I mean, if you know anybody with a three-piece suit, then you start thinking about them in such a way where, you become- Sure, I mean, true or not, I think the greater point is just to appreciate or have humility around the limitations of our senses.

Exactly, exactly. And to understand that, you know, that not only is it possible that there's other things going on, you know, like, I know you don't like probabilities, but like the probabilities are that there's quite a bit going on on that we're just not, you know we're not developed enough to notice or fathom.

Yeah, you know that when you think of how many universes there are and that how little we know about different galaxies and so on, perhaps there's life out there, you know, that I become I remain agnostic with almost all of these things. And knowing that some people would then peg me in a way I wouldn't like to be pegged, you know, rather than open-minded, but you know,

somewhat weird or whatever. But we just don't know. I pay a lot of attention to the things that I don't know, not in order to learn them, but, you know, to remain open. One of your ideas that I think may fall into the contrarian category has to do with delayed gratification.

Yeah, yeah, all right. So state your thesis on this. Okay, well, I'm not sure how I stated it and where you've read it, but essentially essentially there's a belief that there are good things, there are bad things that what people should do is, you know, you work hard, so you get the pleasure afterwards. And we go back to what I've said now several times, things in and of themselves are not good or bad.

I think it's crazy to delay gratification. Delaying gratification suggests that there's no way to enjoy whatever you're doing. And I think that's the way we keep certain people in miserable jobs, you know, that they should do these things because of something after that will result. Yeah.

I think there's different context for that. And perhaps the premise is a little bit flawed because there's different types of gratification. There's a sort of immediate pleasure gratification or the greater gratification of having like delayed like sort of short-term pleasures for meaning and purpose that comes with working towards difficult goals. One can take any idea and break it up into,

we can talk about 20 different kinds of mindlessness or whatever, but in general, the idea is that there are certain things that are unpleasant, right? And so, you should do those things that are unpleasant for some loftier goal or some reinforcement in the future. And what I'm suggesting is that the way we do what we do

is more important than the what we're doing. Anything can be done mindlessly or mindfully. And when we do it mindfully, it's exciting and fun. So in other words, it's about the perspective that you have about the thing that we're calling difficult or uncomfortable or a delayed gratification act. So in the context of maybe running a marathon, oh, you're gonna have to do all this training.

It's gonna be really hard. You're gonna suffer, but the choice to label it as suffering or to perceive it as hard is a choice. Exactly, exactly. And also we said before, when we were talking about fatigue, that the way you're going to do this marathon

will determine in part the enjoyment of it. you know, that if you see yourself, oh, you know, I can't make it or, you know, I make everything again. But how would you put that into practice without kind of labeling it as Pollyanna? Like, okay, I do wanna do this. It is hard. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Let me just set it up. What's wrong with Pollyanna? No, I've been called Pollyanna many times and what I would do this, it is hard. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second. I know, but let me just set it up. What's wrong with Pollyanna? Okay. No, I've been called Pollyanna many times and what I would do is immediately. Just be positive about this or why can't you just enjoy what you're doing? Like I'm trying to, the brass tacks of actually like putting that into practice when the alarm goes off at 4.30 in the morning tomorrow

and your instinct is to groan because you're tired. But Ellen says like, just, you know, how can you like be grateful and be excited that you get to wake up so early in the morning? Okay, what do you say? It's probably too early for me to say anything, but nothing is dictating how we feel our understanding of events, you know,

that if I say, oh my God, I'm gonna miss the plane, you know, then I'm gonna be all nervous and, you know, and jump out of bed and not be happy. Or I can get up and look forward to a cup of coffee or something. I don't know, it's hard for me to think about 4.30 in the morning, but in general, that any event can be done

so that it's tedious or it's enjoyable. So we did this simple little study. We had people doing things that they don't like. So we have women watching football who hate football, people listening to what kind of music, classical music who don't like classical music or hard rock, classical music, who don't like classical music or hard rock, you know, whatever, who don't like hard rock,

people looking at paintings who know nothing about art and who care less, okay. So we have many different, we have people doing things that they don't like. One group just does it. Another group notices one new thing about it. Another group notices three new things about it. Another group notices three new things about it. Another group notices six new things.

The more you notice, the more you like it. That's the way you get into an activity. So if you're thinking of something as tedious, you're sort of looking at it as this whole, rather than looking at individual parts to it, getting engaged in it. We're brought up to wait for something to excite us, whether it's a person and activity.

And all of that, I think is wrong, that anything can be made exciting. You take a prisoner, okay, so we have the Birdman of Alcatraz in California now. And, you know, all of a sudden there are pigeons in that little window that he has in the cell and he gets into pigeons. This is somebody who you,

the last person you would expect would be a bird lover. But starting to notice the different things about, and makes friends with the pigeons. And all of a sudden he's a happy camper. You know. So mindfulness, paying attention is always the practice. Exactly, exactly. The more you notice, the more you like what you notice.

We did this, one of my students did the study with Godiva chocolates versus an inexpensive chocolate. And the chocolates are wrapped in Godiva wrapper or inexpensive wrapper. Okay, so you have you're eating expensive chocolate, but you think it's inexpensive, cheap. You're eating cheap chocolate, but you think it's expensive or you're eating the correct label and what happens is that when people, it's not surprising, people enjoy the Godiva

more for halo effect for nothing other reason. But what was interesting was when they were eating what they thought with the expensive chocolates, they spent more time eating it, enjoying it. You go to a museum, all right, you have a painting in a museum. If you had that same painting in your friend's house, you know, and in your friend's house

and you don't think they know anything about art, you don't pay any attention to the painting. Now this painting is in the museum, it must be wonderful. You start to pay attention to it. You go into a gallery, you have a painting that's $500, and you have a painting in the next room that's $50,000. So somebody is telling you, this thing is good. Now you engage it.

But these are all stories to every experience we bring a story that we've constructed based upon our past experience that we then use as a predictor of how we're gonna experience some present or future event. And mindfulness is that- It's not, but these are all stories. It's these are all stories.

These are all stories. It's different because the but sounds like, what is the alternative? The reason I use the word but is to underscore the fact that they're fantasies or illusion. All of these stories are untrue. No, none of these stories are untrue. They're only true to the extent that we have decided that they are. Well, they're neither stories are untrue. No. They're only true to the extent that we have decided

that they are. Well, they're neither true nor untrue. I mean, you know, whatever the experience you're having is can be understood in multiple ways. I can see you now as charming and drawing out of me, interesting things to say, I could see it was hostile. I could see you as interested in me or only interested in the podcast.

But there's nothing objectively true about any of that. That's my point is that it's a story. Yeah, no, so what is the point about it being a story? Well, the point is that- The butt said that there was something wrong with it being a story. Well, it's just to illustrate that we use these stories to make sense of the world around us.

And when we enter into an experience, we rely upon that story as a sense-making kind of affair that then becomes a predictor of how we're going to experience it. And mindfulness is a means to disabuse us of this because when you're fully present, you're not living in the past. In other words, you're not marinating in a story

and you're not thinking about what it means to you in the future or what it's gonna do for you. You're just in experience. Right, and that it doesn't have to be a new experience. You can be adding to the experience, but it's not being so sure of how it's going to unfold so that you're actually in the present and creating the story.

It's not just that you're experiencing the story, you're making that story, and when you realize that you can add whatever ending you want to it, it becomes a very different kind of living. If you are truly desiring of mastering your plate, but you feel like you lack the skill in the kitchen or the time or the culinary acumen you believe you require, I can't stress enough how much our Plant Power Meal Planner can help you out. It truly is an extraordinary product I'm so proud of.

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the kitchen, and the Plant Power Meal Planner is an absolutely extraordinary tool in supporting you in achieving your health and fitness goals. So to learn more and to sign up, go to mealplanner.richroll.com and use code POWER20 for $20 off your annual membership. Well, let's talk about relationships. Let's talk about them.

Because I think stories play a big part in how we think about and participate in talk about relationships. Let's talk about them. Because I think stories play a big part in how we think about and participate in our various relationships. I know you're hosting a couples retreat in March. So I'm curious, you know, cause this is a little bit, this is outside of what was in the mindful body book. How do you think about relationships?

What is your kind of thesis on this? Well, there's so much to say, that there are some people who believe, we've been together for 20 years, it's sort of almost boring, or you've been working at a job for 20 years, pick whatever number, and it's boring. And so before Thanksgiving, I say to my students,

you know, cause they're going to go home and are their parents going to say to them that they're boring cause they've known them for 20 years that, or you don't even do that with a favorite plant, you know, and the difference between the marriage or the relationship and the relationship to a child or a plant is you expect the child to a child or a plant is you expect the child to grow.

You expect the plant to be changing and that's what keeps it lively. And so in relationship, once you think you've captured this other person, they become less and less interesting and they're changing and you're changing. And by this awareness and this presence in the relationship keeps it lively.

And then, you know, so we go back to what you were saying before about how we want to hold things still so that we feel we have some control over them. We do that in relationships. You are so damn selfish. So, whatever we call each other and no relationship. In every relationship, there's something about the other person

that's not exactly as you yourself would want it to be. So, if I think you're selfish, I'm going to notice when you're selfish and it's gonna irritate me more and more. And I'm not gonna notice all the times you're not selfish. We have this with everything, a tendency to confirm our hypotheses. And so you have to be careful what you ask yourself

because no matter what you ask yourself, you're going to find evidence for it. And so if you're looking for the person's faults, you're gonna find them. Now, I think that another aspect of relationships that's probably important is recognizing what we talked about in the past, and I've brought it up again here,

behavior makes sense or else the person wouldn't do it. So rather than casting aspersions, if we ask why is the person doing this thing that's driving us crazy, how is it actually an advantage for them? And then we'd understand them and rather than get ourselves to try to forgive them for whatever it is.

So, why is a new relationship exciting? A new relationship is exciting because it's new. But an old relationship should also be new because today is different. Today, you're different people than you were in the past. And you have all these potential adventures to explore. Long-term relationships, it's curious what you just said. Like I've been with my wife for 25 years

and it's work to keep it, it's a dynamic living thing and it can only thrive when you're continuing to nourish it. In long-term relationships though, there is that thing like, well, this is who we are, you're you and I'm me and this is how we do things. And we, no matter how well we know the person, we're still projecting some notion of who we think they are onto them and vice versa.

My wife said to me the other day, she's like, I don't know who you think you're married to in the sense, not in like, whatever's in your mind, like, you know, that's not who I am. It's just a construct, right? Not in like a pejorative sense, just an observation. But then when they divert from that or they do something different or they grow and they evolve because that's what we do, it's like, you've changed

or like, you're not the same person. It's like, of course we're not, right? So it's like, we don't want it to stay the same and be stale, but then when we grow and evolve, like the tendency is then what you often see is like resenting that person because they have, they're different than they were when you first met them. Yeah, no, so when I first met you,

not in reality, but in our relationship, if we were together, that I love, just love the fact that you're so stable. It gives me an anchor. And then eventually I can't stand it, that you're so boring. It's the same thing, right? I love that you're so spontaneous. The other end of the relationship, you're so boring. It's the same thing, right? I love that you're so spontaneous.

At the other end of the relationship, you're so impulsive. I love that you're so trusting of everybody. I can't stand that you're so gullible. And so we take, you're gonna find whatever you want to find. And the idea is to recognize that whatever way you're characterizing it has an equally potent, but oppositely valence to alternative.

That that negative thing that's driving you crazy was the very same thing that perhaps was exciting. There's something else that happens in relationships. That it's very unlikely, I think, although I don't have data for this, seems to be true, that if you're a neatnik, you really like things neat, that you're gonna be involved with somebody

who's an ultra slob. It just doesn't happen, right? So we choose people from the outset that are similar to us in whatever ways that we value. But over time, no two people are going to be the same. So we're not gonna be equally neat. We're not gonna be equally able to deal with money. We're not gonna be, and so the difference

starts to become apparent. So I'm with you oblivious to the fact that part of the reason we're together is because we both value a certain kind of order. But you're a little bit of you oblivious to the fact that part of the reason we're together is because we both value a certain kind of order. But you're a little more ordered. So now I decide you're neurotic or you decide that I'm sloppy. Making in other words, the wrong comparison.

Or there's a deeper shared value. That's more important than the fact that like I'm neat and she's messy. So we give space for each other. We kind of allow that, you know, transgression that works in both ways. But over time, those little things start to feel more meaningful and they feel like more,

they feel more egregious, right? And then there's the risk of developing like resentment and frustration, but fundamentally, like what's beneath the resentment? Like what is really going, like resentment and frustration, but fundamentally like what's beneath the resentment. Like what is really going, like you're not, are you really mad that this person is messy? You know, they've always done this way. So, you know, what is your own kind of internal sense

of impotence or what is the fear that is motivating you giving voice to this otherwise meaningless thing? Yeah, you know, interesting that if, so the little argument starts, I might say to you, are you saying I don't love you? Which puts the name to it right away. No, you're not saying that. You know, somehow we're into some minutiae

and with that and awareness that the world impinges on us and sometimes we bring that into the relationship. I think that if we just take a deep breath, we need to treat ourselves the same way, to recognize that what we're doing makes sense or else we wouldn't do it. And I think that we have so many in the book, remember I talk about that there's a better than better way.

And I think that we need to appeal to that almost all the time. People think they should forgive themselves for their faults. I don't think you should forgive yourself for your faults. I don't think you should see them as faults. You should understand why you're doing what you're doing, that there's always some sense to it.

And then you maintain respect for yourself. And then it's easier when you feel good about yourself to feel good about your partner. I live with somebody who leaves the cabinets open. This at first drove me crazy, you know, because cabinets deserve to be closed. And then I thought about it, I thought, well, this is ridiculous to get crazy.

It takes me three seconds to close the cabinet, you know, rather than let it irritate me. But the alternative is also to say, why is the cabinet open? You know, if you're cooking, you know, and the cabinet is, you know, where everything is. I open it and close it. You know, and then I thought, you know,

so I mentioned before that I'm an anti-crasinator. I do everything early. And I'm involved with somebody living for many, many years with somebody who waits to the last minute. And I noticed that there really is no advantage to one way versus the other. I will get the, never not get the seat on the plane

because I'm getting the ticket so early, but I'm also not getting the best price for them. There are times I'll be doing something early and then the event will be changed. You know, maybe not the best examples, but it's interesting because the world says that procrastinator is wrong. This whole thing about procrastination is crazy also.

Every time I hear somebody putting somebody down themselves or somebody else, I stop and say, wait a second, what's going on there? You know that no matter what you're doing, no matter what it is you're doing, there are all these other things you're not doing. And you can see yourself as procrastinating because you're not doing them, or you can pay attention to what you are doing.

Adam Grant talks a lot about that. Yeah, he got, Adam was my student. Oh, he was? Amazing, yeah, he's been speaking a lot about the, like the important, there's a value in procrastination. There's something going on in your unconscious mind that is doing some problem solving for you. And you need that, like the attention away

from the problem at hand in order to best solve it. And so there is a productivity aspect to it. Yeah, but there are lots of ways of understanding it. The one I just said, which is that if you know why you're doing what you're doing, then you don't take yourself to task for not doing these other things. As long as it's not an excuse to keep doing the thing

that is not, I mean, there's a reason why the alcoholic drinks, it's serving a need, right? And it doesn't mean that you don't redress the problem, but you also need to address the underlying need that is driving the errands behavior. Well, yes, but if you do that with respect, then you have the strength to make the change. So in one book I had asked people,

so you're anxious and you do X and that relieves your anxiety. Is it a good thing to do X? Yes, everybody would say, but then when you put in, you know, what you're doing is having that drink or that third drink, then all of a sudden it seems bad. And so then you take yourself to task for it, but you shouldn't because it serves the purpose that you needed.

Then with that strength, you now can look and say, is there some other way I can meet that need without having the negative effects of the first chosen alternative. So in the context of you being an anti-procrastinator and needing to get to the airport three hours early, on some level, I suppose there's a stress reduction aspect of that, like there's some, yeah, like I need to get there

early because I don't wanna freak out or have to deal with long lines or be stressed out about not getting through security on time, right? Yeah. But to the extent that your way of travel is at odds with your partner and it's creating relationship problems, then is there a different way for you to mitigate

your stress so that you don't have to be there three hours early. I think that if we each describe why we're doing what we're doing, so it made sense to the other person. And it's not that I'm doing this, my doing this is not because I wanna irritate you, which is the way in relationships we often think of these things.

I think that the problem tends to go away, but my mind is consumed now with a story just to make clear how crazy I am with respect to this anti-crasso nation. I, many years ago, you, if you were going to Canada, you needed to have just a driver's license. I don't remember when this was. So I'm going to give a talk in Toronto.

I get to the airport and they say, no, you need a passport. Nobody told me what you used to be able to go just for the driver's. I had enough time to go home, get my passport. But this is ammunition for your argument. Exactly. This is why you're right. Well, no, I'm right for me.

Do you wanna be right or do you wanna be happy? Yeah, no, no, no. Sadly, people think that that's the choice. Yeah, the alternative is I could go to the airport early and you come, but it's good for you. But this is a story. Okay, remember that time when I got there early and I had to go back and I had, you know, get my passport

and I was able to do it. And this is why I'm correct. And this is why it's a good idea to always be early, right? It can be weaponized in a relationship. Exactly. And that's a mistake. Again, it comes back to people believing there's only a single right answer,

a single way of doing things. And we're taught that, and with respect to everything, you're in school, you're asked a question, you're expected to give one answer. And life would be so different if in fact, you were asked for three reasons for this, five reasons, and why these reasons are good, why they're bad, you know, and so on, rather than now we understand it.

It goes all the way back full circle to our attachment to certainty. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. Or it can't be exactly, almost exactly. In some cases. So when you do these couples retreats and people show up and air out their malfunctions and resentments, et cetera, like what is the council?

Like how do you, is that how it works? Well, this is gonna be the first. So I can't tell you how it has worked, but it's a matter of giving people a very different way of appreciating each other and activities that we get to the point where almost everything we do is for show. And the older you get, I think that changes

where finally you realize none of this stuff matters. And if you can do that earlier in a relationship, the relationship is going to unfold and be more fun. Let me give you an example. This is not an example that we'll use, but not so different from it. Did I tell you last time about what I tell my students about shoes?

Okay, so- I can't remember, maybe. Yeah, well, then you can't remember. We talked about this, like I never remember. Yeah, okay, that's fine. Indulge me. But I tell them, and the classmates, Tuesday and Thursday. And on Tuesday, I tell them they can't come to class on Thursday unless they're wearing two different shoes.

Now, this is very hard for a lot of people. So some are just not gonna come, very few. Most of them wear two different shoes where the shoes look almost exactly the same. The two black shoes. And then you have the people who really get into it and they're wearing a red shoe and a black shoe or whatever, where it's very clear. The point of it is once they get there,

nobody noticed and if they notice, nobody cares. Yet we're so hung up with it. And I said this wonderful thing happened. This one of my students comes in, Professor Lang, you won't believe what happened. I said, watch, I'm in the elevator. This man looks at my shoes, looks at my face, looks at my shoes, looks at my face,

points to my shoes and says, is that intentional? You know what I did? No, what did you do? He says, I looked at his shoes, I looked at his face, I looked at his shoes, I looked at his head, I pointed at his shoes, I looked at his face, I looked at his shoes, I looked at his head, I pointed at his shoes and said, was that? And because everybody knows in some sense that you can't be sure.

The problem people have is that they think other people do know. So you know you don't know, they're pretending that they do know. And that makes all of us uncomfortable. Who decided we should wear the same shoes? You know, socks more important than shoes. Cause shoes, you can make an argument

that if the heels are not exactly the same, maybe it's unsafe or whatever. But, you know, most people's washing machines are built to eat the socks. I don't know. You put, you know, five pair in and somehow you come out with three pairs on the other end. But if you wanted to wear two different socks,

most people would be afraid to. There's something sort of socially transgressive about it for no reason whatsoever. Exactly, but who decided? Who decided and I think you did share this, but the other point, maybe this is what we kind of flushed out previously is it disabuses you of this notion

that everyone is thinking about you and judging. Exactly. Like you're glaringly wearing two different shoes. And for the most part, no one even notices, nobody cares. Maybe the guy in the elevator will say something, but for the most part, we believe that people are thinking about us for a time and they're not, they're thinking about themselves.

Exactly, exactly. In fact, so many different stories come to mind. I was doing therapy when I was at Yale, just briefly, and it was wonderful for me because I realized how everybody is so worried about what everybody else thinks that I never worried again, because I'm not worried about what everybody else thinks that I never worried again. Cause I'm not worried about what you're thinking of me cause I know you're worried about what I'm thinking of you.

But you know, so we're doing this research on mindful contagion and we were using these monks are helping us. And so I'm in conversation with the head monk whatever he's called. And what we need are these monks to be dressed like undergraduates, because we want to see if their mindfulness

will have the effect without people knowing that they're monks, right? And he said he doesn't know if they'll be willing to give up their robes. And I thought, oh my goodness, this is sad, you know, that even people who are supposed to be reasonably evolved or trapped in- By their own attachments.

Yeah, yeah. And so part of the, you know, at the retreat was, it would be to free these gonna be wealthy people. And, you know, can these wealthy women, for example, at the retreat would be to free these gonna be wealthy people. And can these wealthy women, for example, who spend a lot of time on their clothes, allow themselves to wear something that is inexpensive, that doesn't look particularly good? There's a lot of news now about how social media

is bad for people, and there is a way. And the data are such that undergraduates, for instance, who spend a lot of time on social media end up with lower self-esteem. But it's not social media. It's never the technology. It's always the way we're using the technology. And so I say to these people,

why your Harvard students, for goodness sakes, you've got such a head up over most other people, why only post the picture where you look wonderful? Why not change the norm? And you wouldn't believe how bad I looked last night. You wouldn't believe how I spent the night worrying about this or that rather than just your successes or for people to realize that the successes

that people are posting are in fact unusual for them or else they wouldn't post them. It's a funny thing with reinforcement that people think, you know, say you're playing tennis or whatever your sport is. And, you know, so I hit a fabulous serve and then you say, wow, and then crowds, it's never true, but the crowds are roaring for me.

And then I screw up the next shot. And the assumption people mistakenly make, it was because of the praise that now I'm too self-conscious. But what happens is you get the praise for the unusual event. If every time I serve that way, people would not be applauding.

Well, I would not be applauding myself, right? It's because it's better than usual. And so there's always a regression to the mean. If I do something extraordinary, the next time it's going to be less extraordinary without anybody saying anything. And if it's not less extraordinary, then that becomes the new mean, you know, so there'll be something even better that will move towards that spot. And so people could assume that the posts that people are making are in fact unusual,

in which case, you know, you'd already feel better. You say that- Yeah, I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. I guess when I think of social media, you know, there's something uniquely pernicious about it in the sense that A, to your example or experiment about wearing two different shoes

to show that like people aren't really thinking about you. When you post on social media, you're opening up yourself to all manner of crazy opinions and people are very quick to judge and say mean things. And if you're sensitive or you're already somebody who spends too much time, you know, kind of captured by what other people think of you, this is not gonna be good for your mental health

because you're gonna be, no matter what you post, you're gonna be on the receiving end of all kinds of stuff. And these platforms, by dint of their algorithms and business models, amplify content that is intended to outrage and divide. And those voices tend to be ones that are very certain, right? They're locked into an ideology

and they wanna tell you why they're right and you're wrong. And it's pitting people against each other and dividing us apart and creating a tremendous amount of loneliness and unhappiness. Sure, if you're afraid of that, then you're not going to post. I'm talking about the person who's looking at other people's posts and feeling bad by comparison.

And if they were aware that that other person wouldn't post it if it were the norm for them, they would appreciate it differently. But they're still in St. Barts and you're not, there's always that. Yeah, it's interesting because- Or you're missing out. No, no, I understand.

You see your friends doing things, you weren't invited. No, for sure, for sure. But that raises the issue of if you're making the moment matter, you can't do more than that. And it doesn't matter if you're in St. Barts or you're in Malibu doing a podcast.

If it's good, it's good. And so you don't need to envy anybody else. It doesn't, you know, I was on this panel in Australia, a lot of heavy lifters and we each give our talks and they bring us out. And the person in charge, I knew this was happening, it was going to happen, asked everybody about their bucket list. So I'm the last one there. So the first one goes on and now comes to me. And so I've had some time to think about it.

And I'm thinking, what's the matter with me? I don't have a bucket list. But of course, knowing who I am and how I'm going to be, I'm gonna say, that's a good thing. So how is it a good thing? That if you're enjoying what you're doing, you don't need to be doing something else. And then I thought, you know,

if you only had one question to ask people to see how mindful they are, I haven't tested this, but it might be about work. How much do you need a vacation? Needing a vacation means that you're working mindlessly. Enjoying a vacation is a different story. And so again, a bucket list suggests, I'm not so happy now,

I just wish I could be doing these other things. And so if I'm not so happy now, I just wish I could be doing these other things. And so if I'm a happy camper and I'm looking at other people in all other parts of the world, that's great. I don't have that same feeling, you know, the one- Well, need is the real pivot here, right? Because it's fine to have things on a list that you aspire to experience.

It's the idea that you need to have those experiences in order to feel like a fully developed human or whatever, or you can't be happy until. Right, right. And so it goes back to the point of why do we need all of these awards, money and so on. We all want love and approval. Exactly.

And we want some sense of immortality, I guess, that we attach to that. Oh, that's interesting. I don't know about the immortality part, but the love and approval from others, mainly so that we'll feel it about ourselves. And then I go back again to, if you know why you're doing what you're doing,

you'll feel fine about yourself. If you do it mindlessly, then you're potentially vulnerable to other people's understanding of why you're doing what you're doing. So that you go to the airport early, that's because you're neurotic. And maybe so.

But that's not the reason we do what we do. And, you know, and I think that people have taught us sort of accept your shortcomings. And again, I think this is a big mistake. Certainly better to accept your shortcomings than to, you know to regret your shortcomings. But better than better is to understand how they're not shortcomings.

We call them long-goings. They're not deficits. Well, you can't change anything until you first accept it. But acceptance is like the first piece. But no, but accepting still sounds like, here's this negative. There's a guilt or a shame. Yeah, there's something negative about it is like the first piece. But no, but accepting still sounds like, here's this negative- There's a guilt or a shame.

Yeah, there's something negative about it that I'm gonna just accept rather than, well, this is actually a good thing. Now, how is this thing that seems bad to everybody actually good? And it depends on what the thing is, but certainly with all of the behavior descriptions that we've talked about,

you're impulsive, you hate yourself for being impulsive, that's because you value being spontaneous. You're inconsistent, what's the matter with you, you're so inconsistent, that's because you value being flexible and so on. And to get to the point where you let other people tell you why you did what you did and ignore the other alternative, it's very sad to me.

But that's the way most of us are. And then we have some people who pretend to know. Then how do you think about the role of suffering in growth and evolution? So first, let me just set it up with an example. Okay. Okay. No, I'm super curious,

because this is personal. So I'm in recovery, I've been in recovery for a long time. And when you're talking about like acceptance, I think of alcoholism. I think of it in that context. And it brings me right back to the hitting bottom and making that decision,

okay, I can't live this way anymore. I need to find a new way to live. And I'll fully admit a tremendous amount of guilt and shame, accompanying that and a lot of suffering. And I could have made the choice in that moment to be excited, oh my God, I'm finally accepting that I'm an alcoholic and this gives me this incredible opportunity to like grow and change my life.

How exciting that was not my experience. But I will say that the suffering, the pain of that experience created a willingness that didn't exist prior that motivated a series of actions that changed my life. And so I look at suffering as positive. I don't think of it as a negative attribute. It was something that motivated

and instilled energy in me to like make this change. Yeah, okay. So I said succinctly, no pain, no gain. And I don't agree with that. I think if you're in pain, surely it's to your advantage to find a way to gain from it. But one can gain without the pain. Why is it so much more difficult to gain without the pain?

So for example, you can't stop eating cake. You know it's not good for you. You take pleasure in it, So for example, you can't stop eating cake. You know it's not good for you, you take pleasure in it, but now you have type two diabetes. And so once you get ill enough or your body feels poorly enough, maybe you're motivated to make a change and invest in your wellbeing. But the choice remains well in advance of that

when you took that first piece of cake to say, I'm not gonna do that anymore, it's not good for me, it's just more difficult to make that choice at that stage. I think that by saying that you shouldn't do it makes it more appealing to do it. Then you think less of yourself for having done it, which makes it even harder to change the behavior. I think that, again, what you're doing makes sense

or else you wouldn't do it. And let yourself have a stupid piece of cake. But if you have the cake and you think you shouldn't have the cake, now you're a type of person who's not strong enough to resist the cake, which makes you want the cake even more and thinking less of yourself. And so it's like, you know, new year's resolutions

or we're not so far from everybody's making these resolutions. People make the resolutions and then almost never do you follow up with it. And the reason for that is the thing that you're doing makes sense to you. You know that, oh, I should go to the gym. Why should you go to the gym? oh, I should go to the gym. Why should you go to the gym?

Who decided you should go to the gym? You know, so somebody gives you this idea that this is the only way you're going to be healthy. You really don't wanna go to the gym. You sabotage yourself and you don't go to the gym. And I think that you should question the commitment in the first place. You know, you wanna be healthy,

there are lots of ways to be healthy. You know, that years ago when I was your age, what people should be doing is having cottage cheese and carrots and celery. And if you go on this kind of diet, it's not gonna last. And so deprive yourself that, so for me, why should I admit this, but I do, if I have a big plate and you give me a, it's full, I'm gonna eat everything that's on it.

If you give me a small plate, I'm gonna eat everything that's on it. If you give me a small plate, I'm gonna eat everything that's on it and I'm gonna be just as satisfied. By not depriving myself, I find that I just eat less. But again, who says you should or shouldn't have this or that? If you pay attention to the science, it keeps changing. All of it, it doesn't matter whether you're supposed

to breastfeed, bottle feed, have coffee, don't have coffee, wine is good for you, wine is bad for you. And that all of that misses the point that in some sense, a certain amount of it is going to be good or bad for some people, not for other people. And you have to decide that for yourself. I'm not, you know, I'm a scientist. I am not putting down science.

I just think we have to appreciate it for what it is and not go beyond what it is. And that we need to learn from it, take advice from it, but not let it dictate, you know, so that piece of cake, why not have the piece of cake? Really? I mean, is your life gonna change so terribly if you have a piece of cake? No, what happens though, is that because you thought

you shouldn't have the piece of cake, now, your so-called willpower, which doesn't exist either, is diminished and you go on a diet, you break the diet, then you do the kitchen sink, you eat everything. Well, I think there's a couple of pieces there. I mean, there is a neurochemical thing when you indulge in a certain habit and then you become sort of, you know,

more powerless to it's wiles in the future. And then there's the mental piece, which is like, well, I already broke it, so who gives a fuck? And like, here you go, like down the thing. And then there's the emotional piece, which is I'm a piece of shit. I can't do anything right. And you go down the shame spiral,

which reinforces the loop. And then you have to have the cake. And then you have to have it to feel better, right? Like this is the nature of addiction. And there's a lot of science on how mindfulness can help us with these patterns and loops because the more we're paying attention, the less we're in this context,

like prone to overeating or indulging, et cetera. Mindfulness is a means to which you can break about habit and form a new one, I suppose. But you're saying like, well, let's just go up to 10,000 feet and say, who cares, right? Like you're asking the bigger question about like, why is it that it is important to you to break this habit or form a new one in the first place?

Well, the forming the new one, I take issue with it back then working on that in a new book. Habits are, so a good habit is better than a bad habit, but there's a better than better way. As soon as you're doing something habitually, you're not there anymore. You're not taking charge of it. You're not enjoying it.

You're not modulating whether it should be a little more, middle, less of, you know, whatever. And, you know, people want to have good habits because they're afraid to let themselves just be, you know, that if I don't go to the gym every day, then I'm not gonna go to the gym at all. Why? You know, that, you know, if you have multiple reasons for doing things, then I'm not gonna go to the gym at all. Why?

If you have multiple reasons for doing things and if you go to the gym, why should you go to the gym if it's aversive? I don't get it. But it shouldn't be aversive. You make it fun while you're there unless you have a tiny person who believes unless it's aversive, I'm not gaining anything from it. That's back to your no pain, no gain.

I don't know. I think that we just make things very complicated for ourselves and then you get older and it all becomes easier again. All the things you worried about seem so silly. I wrote this thing a while ago, you're two years old and you fall and you scrape your leg and you're screaming bloody murders

if the world's gonna end. You're seven years old, Johnny or Janie doesn't send you a Valentine and oh my God, the world's gonna end. You're 13, you have a pimple, oh my God, I'm never gonna look good. You're 18, and it just goes on. At some point you look back on all of it

and say, how stupid it all was. And the culture allows it in some sense, almost promotes it, I'm not sure why, but at the end of it, there's always somebody who's profiting. Meanwhile, yeah, you look back on it and say how silly, but at the same time, the fact that you like didn't get that Valentine

when you were in seventh grade or whatever, create some neural pathway in your brain that 30 years later, you're still acting out on as a result because it's some form of trauma that remained unhealed. Yeah, you know, but to recognize that other people's responses to us are a function of their needs. They say nothing about us.

Every compliment you give me is not really about me. It's more about you. Yeah. Every insult. My need for you really about me. It's more about you. Yeah. Every insult. My need for you to like me. Yeah, every insult and so on. And if we were brought up to understand those things, even a seven-year-old can understand them

if they're spoken in kiddies, then Johnny doesn't give you the Valentine. So Johnny didn't give you Valentine. It doesn't have to, you know, you go from that, you didn't you the Valentine. So Johnny didn't give you Valentine. It doesn't have to, you know, you go from that, you didn't get the Valentine, therefore nobody likes you, therefore your life is going to be a failure. It's silly, right? I mean, how do we communicate these things to the children?

Somebody says, how many Valentine's did you get, Mary? And you got more than Susie, so therefore you're a better person. Where Susie say, yeah, but I've got the Valentine's from the most important people. That's all crazy. It's crazy, yeah. It's all crazy.

I talked to you about how that pancreas story, that I still can't, this was a story where I'm not gonna eat the pancreas, but I feel I have to eat it because now I'm a married woman at this very young age. And I still can't figure out why I thought that, that there's so many things that are communicated to us. If you're sophisticated,

these are all the things that you'll do. And it would go back and people, I don't know, it's become my new mantra, who says so? And when you recognize the three levels that I talked about, where level one and three look the same, but they're very different. Level one, two, three thinking, maybe explain that. Yeah, well, the easiest example,

I keep using the New Yorker. It's a wonderful magazine. And this example doesn't shine, but so be it. Level one, we have people who don't read the New Yorker. Level two, people who read the New Yorker. Level three, people who don't read the New Yorker anymore. Level one and three look the same, but they're very different people.

You can have them read it again, but that makes the story too complicated. You know, you have a young kid is uninhibited, the rest of the world is inhibited. And then you get to a certain point, we say, who gives a damn? You know, and you become disinhibited. But when they accuse the older person

of being like a child, they're not, they're very different. The child doesn't know the rule. The older person knows the rule and thinks it's silly. You know, and I remember, you know, Ken, this is so silly, but if I had gotten spilled something on my shirt, you know, I'd be walking around like this, so nobody would see it without realizing how ridiculous

this itself looks as if every moment is, this is gonna describe who we are for a lifetime that people won't realize, yes, you can have dirt on yourself one minute, doesn't mean that's the way you wear your clothes, you're wearing two different shoes. Doesn't mean you don't know that there'll be a different response to wearing the same shoe.

Oh, everybody worrying so about what other people think and everybody knows they themselves don't know. And the joke is thinking that other people do know. And so you're always guessing at what's the right thing to do. And I'm here to inform people, nobody knows. And nobody can know because everything is changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives.

And it's okay not to know because there are other things you do know. And so if we stop evaluating, here are the great people, here are the miserable people, and you're always trying to make sure you're more on the top than on the bottom, I think that we need to take this vertical line and make it horizontal.

And it almost happened briefly during COVID when the person who was delivering the toilet paper was all of a sudden more important than the architect, you know, and so it just didn't last. This level one, two, three thinking, you know, naivete to certainty and back to like kind of awe and wonder, right? And it's earned through life experience, et cetera.

You finally arrive at this point where, you know, you can call it like the, you know, I don't care anymore phase, but it's really like, it's more a function of like, I know who I am. I know who my friends are. I know what I care about. I invest my energy in the things that are important to me and everything else really doesn't matter.

But it's also, no, that's perfect, Rich, but it's also knowing that all of those things change. That, yeah, my person, my friend felt this way then, but the day before felt the other way. Because you've lived enough to see the ups and the downs and how everything kind of- And to see that it doesn't matter. Right, the pendulum's always swinging. But as I'm trying to do,

so when I lecture to these kids, you know, these undergraduates, there's no reason for them to have to wait- This is the question I was getting at. Like, how do you expedite, you know, getting from two to three with a young person who doesn't have that life experience, who's still trying to figure out who they are

and what they stand for and what's important to them and are easily captured by the opinions of other people and influenced by that. And it creates this insecurity where you really do think the stain on your shirt is important, et cetera. Well, I think that if people were aware of multiple ways of understanding any situation,

they were aware of how any outcome that's bad is also good in some other context, that everything becomes more fluid. The kind of growth we're talking about would happen naturally. You know, that if you, I don't know, so somebody asks you to do something and you say yes, cause you're afraid of not doing it, right?

Then you get a little older and you've had experiences where you're freed from that and you can say no nicely. But if you ask yourself in the original context, what are the advantages of doing it? What are the disadvantages of doing it? When would it matter? When would it not matter? Why should it matter?

Why should it? You know, just make this thing that's made so simple broader in its potential meaning is very freeing. And when I know that if I do it, if I think if I do it, good things will happen, if I don't do it, bad things, if on the other hand, I think here are the good things that could happen from my not doing it, good things that could happen from my not doing it,

good things that could happen from my doing it, then doing it, not doing it just becomes simpler. I'm curious around how this is received by your students because on some level, if you're at Harvard and end up in your class, it's a self-selecting population to the extent that you get to Harvard by being very good at following rules.

You learn how to take the SAT test, you know how to get good grades, you know how to study and perform on tests. And that's about like high performance in a very narrow kind of construct that is all about like rule following. Yeah, I have very often won the best teacher award. So there's something that they appreciate.

You know, I don't know. And sometimes, you know, you tell people things and you think they're understanding what you're telling them. Years ago, I'm in Manhattan, I'm walking down the street and this woman comes up, running up to me. She's so excited because I had apparently given her therapy at an earlier time. It's very important to me because I had apparently given her therapy at an earlier time.

It was very important to me because I asked her, what did I tell her that was so important to her? And she told me, and I know there was no way that I actually said those words, so that again, it goes back to the way we're talking about relationships. People can understand what's being said in so many different ways.

I think the, well, I think that they get from this that a little bit of being an iconoclast and just questioning what they hadn't questioned before. Because it happens over and over again, with whatever we're talking about, but here are the five other ways we might look at that. And so some of that must rub off. What are your thoughts on romantic love?

Because we talked about long-term relationships, but your students are there at the beginning stages of trying to be in relationships. Like in that same story around, having a story projecting an idea onto another individual and kind of embarking on a relationship when you're both just trying to impress each other and you're in that kind of honeymoon period.

Yeah, and they ask when there are problems and then it's always coming up with another way of looking at the issue. I think that people come to see who they are from other people, right? The way I am and your eyes tells me who I am. And so then I become very vulnerable. And at the beginning, you want to really care about me

or lead me to believe you really care about me. So that makes me feel good about myself and so on. Part of that is what is exciting. I'm not sure, you know, I feel like there's something behind your question that I'm not saying. I guess I'm just curious, you know, because you're with young people all the time, if you had a perspective on kind of dating

and relationships in those early stages that might be iconoclastic or a different lens on what you usually hear about, you know, about how to navigate these. Yeah, the assumption is every belief I have is counter to whatever the world believes. It's not a bad guess, but I remember my stepson was in college.

So he's like 43 now. So it was a few decades ago. And I saw that the kids were doing, were very different from when I was in college, that they did everything as a group, which was very nice, not pairing off. And I don't know what the case is for the students today. You know, so when I was young,

if you didn't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you felt very bad about it and so on. And I don't know if that's still the case. I think it's changed significantly. Yeah, I'm sure it has. I think the problem is that's still the case. Yeah, I think it's changed significantly. Yeah, I'm sure it has. I think the problem is that when I'm with these students, I'm doing all the talking. So you're leading me to believe I should do more listening,

but if they're not talking about their relationships, I'm not gonna know the ins and outs of it. I don't think the problems change very much, you know, sadly, from when you're 15, 20, 30, you know, at some point, hopefully by the time you're 50, most of it has come together and you realize that a lot of the things you worried about were not worth worrying about. Much of a relationship is,

all of the relationship really is in your head, right? You know, that I don't really know what your smiles mean, whether they're meant to fool me, to impress me, or you're just really pleased. You know, so many understandings of any behavior that you're really in control of the relationship in ways you're not aware of. And, you know, a simple thing,

I talked about this forever ago, you know, let's say you're at a party and there's somebody there who's ignoring you. You feel ignored. You could feel that the person is a snob looking down on you, in which case you might feel bad about yourself, dislike them and so on.

You might assume the person is shy. The shy person and the snob are gonna behave pretty much the same way, a level one and three in some sense. If you assume that they're shy, then you might go over and befriend them. And then even if they were a snob, they may now become a friend of yours.

So the ways we understand people, we create our own relationships more than people assume. They assume it's two separate people come together and then they either hit it off or they don't. And I think that two people come together and you either make it work by the different thoughts that you have or not based on whatever your individual needs are.

Yeah. I wonder whether our tethering to our devices, especially with the younger generation, is impacting that ability to read social cues in complex contexts, right? Like if you spent most of your formative years engaging with people through a device and text, are you as kind of skilled at like reading those cues

that you're getting in person from people that are subtle? But it might be that whether you are as good or not, you don't believe you're as good, which then makes you pay more attention. Oh, that's interesting. Because if I think I'm so good at reading you, I need very little information and then I'm off on my own thoughts

and Rich is this kind of person and so on. Again, I think that it depends less on what we're doing than the way we're doing it. And if we do it mindfully, there's a lot of information to it. Looking at your phone, there's nothing about the phone that's an advantage or a disadvantage.

I know that people are accused of being on their phone too much by people who want them to pay more attention to them. And I have this hypothesis, maybe you can test this eventually, which is, let me go back. I was giving this talk in South Africa on this news show. I'm not sure why I was there,

but before we started, the person said to me, Professor Langer, can I ask you something separate from whatever we're gonna talk? I said, sure. I said, ask me, but I'll answer honestly, which may or not be good for you. And said, should kids be spending all this time on their cell phones?

And I said, you're not gonna like my answer, but that parents want kids to get off their phones. The only way they're gonna get off their phones is if they're presented with a meaningful, nurturing, fun alternative, that if you're great fun, I'm gonna rather speak to, I don't wanna be on my phone right now because I'm having fun with you.

But if it wasn't fun, I'll play words with friends. Or just chastise a child and say, you need to be off your phone and it's, and then, well, what am I gonna do now? Well, you need to be bored right now. Exactly, exactly. So the idea is not to tell kids to get off their phones, but for parents to up their games.

Same thing in relationships. One person is spending too much time doing whatever they're doing. The alternative, it's not to yell at them, look, you're ignoring me setting code, but rather to make it more interesting to be with you. You said that meaning is extrinsic. In other words, imagine the person who says,

I'm trying to find meaning in my life or I'm on the search for meaning or I don't know what my purpose is. Okay, but this is like a common thing. Like they feel, they put that pressure on themselves, that guilt and that, why don't I know what my purpose is? Yeah, you know, the meaning of life, it's the hokey pokey. Isn't it?

That's what it's all about. Okay. Yes. You know, yeah. It's interesting, you know, not everybody asks those questions. And so if we look at who's asking them and who's not asking them,

the not askers probably are level one and level three. You know, level one where it wouldn't occur to them to even know that there's supposed to be some meaning and level three where the meaning is whatever you're deriving from the interaction, there's no larger meaning. What is the counsel to the person who says, I would like my life to have purpose.

I don't feel purposeful. I don't know, I don't feel like there's meaning in what I'm doing. So bring it to a much smaller level and just actively notice, you know, that so for those people who are women who are watching a football and by noticing new things end up liking the football game, it doesn't matter whether they're noticing

the rear ends of the football players, the crowd size, as long as you're actively noticing that makes you engage. And when you're engaged, you're not asking those questions that are all suggestive of you not being involved. Getting involved is not something people, too many people are led to believe, you know, some, I have a calling for this, you know, and so they're waiting to be called rather than you can engage anything,

like the Birdmen of Alcatraz, use that example. You notice new things about something, you become engaged, that becomes a passion, that becomes the reason you're doing what you're doing. And I don't think if you're actively engaged in one thing, that it's any less important than an active engagement in anything else. So remarkably, what I'm saying,

so give you something to disagree with, that if you're mindfully cleaning toilets, it's as meaningful as if you're deriving some new theory of relativity. The only advantage to the theory of relativity is that it doesn't have a presumed, false, but presumed end to how many things we can notice about it and how grand we can make the theory.

The toilet, you're led to believe now it's clean, that's the end, but it can always be cleaner change. There's always more to do or not. But in either case, the meaning is a product of- Of noticing. Of noticing, but also taking action, right? Like the idea that you're waiting around

until you get struck with some epiphany about like what your purpose is, it doesn't work that way. Like the purpose is revealed in the doing and the exploration and the trying of things. Right, exactly. What is your most controversial take on things? Yeah, or the one that people give you grief about.

I don't know if I scare them away so they don't give me grief or they give me grief and I'm oblivious to it. I don't experience a lot of grief giving. I don't know, it depends on the audience, you know, that if I'm speaking to medical people, the idea that we can control these chronic illnesses probably doesn't sit well with a lot of them.

I don't know, Rich. I think my manner in stating all of these outrageous ideas is so soft that it's easy for people to accept. Well, you're very endearing. Yeah, thank you. So. But most of the time I find myself, I'm not selling. Right.

I'm sharing. And so it leads me to behave differently and probably for the information to be received differently. If I'm saying, this is the fact, then it's going to get you crazed and showing me how it's not the case. Whereas I'm saying one way of looking at it might be- It's a perspective or-

But I'm sure that there are people who think- It might be possible. I mean, we know there are people who think I'm outrageous, but I'm sure there are people who think that I'm totally wrong. I remember way back when, I mean, this is what, 40 years ago, maybe more, I was speaking to some people

about the first nursing home study that we did, you know, and this was the beginning of mind-body medicine in some sense, where we take people in nursing home, we give them choices to make make a plan to take care of encouragement to be making these choices. And then we go back and find out that the group given these choices, which eventually became mindfulness live longer.

And I was speaking as Nobel prize winner who just dismissed it. I mean, it wasn't nice. It would have been a nice conversation if he told me why it can't be true, but then more and more people in the culture believe it. Or if he said, I disagree, but tell me more. Some anything, rather than just dismiss,

but that was the only time I remember having that experience. I'm sure there are people who disagree in the same way he did, but they're not face to face. And now I'm older and I care less about some of these things. And it's fine, we'll see. We'll see if you believe that your thoughts don't matter. And, you know, this negativity is the rule

rather than the exception for you. Somebody out there can evaluate our lives down the road and make some judgment. I think that our thoughts determine most of our physical, psychological health and that, as I said before, everything is mutable so that I'm happy with the world I live in because as soon as it doesn't work, I change it.

So I don't walk around bitching about this or that, all of these complaints. It wouldn't occur to me because I'm enjoying the thing that you're complaining about. If I'm not enjoying it, I change it. And I do tell my students that. I said, you know, when I was younger and people spent a lot of time going to movies,

which now you watch the big movie, you know, on the big TV at home often enough, that they would sit there for two hours and then they'd leave complaining about what an awful movie it was. And to me, either find a way to enjoy it or leave. Life's a short. It's like implied contract that you have to stay at the end.

Yeah, or, you know, there's a funny line, it was a Henny Youngman goes into this restaurant, he says, the food was awful and the portion's so small, you know, and it's supposed to be funny because if the food is awful, why would you want a lot of it? But I mean, I understood that, yeah, give me a lot, doesn't matter how good.

So I could imagine, you know, staying, I think that people are led to believe by criticizing that they're discerning. And, you know, that I don't think people appreciate how hard it is in some sense to make things sound simple. You know, we have a level one and level three again. And so it seems, my goodness, how silly she is with these views. Either you believe that your thoughts have an impact

on your wellbeing and your behavior and the world around you, or you don't. And if you do, what are the implications of that? Yeah, the implications are that you don't have to be miserable. The implications are that you don't have to be miserable. The implications are that whatever exists can be improved and whatever has happened can be understood in multiple ways where the other individual is just saddled with this is a terrible thing.

You know, there are people who believe, I'm sure you're not one of them, but that, you know, stress is all around. It's a normal thing, you have to be stressed. Work has to be hard. There are terrible things out there. Like it's a dimension of the universe or something. Yeah, yeah. I think it's terrible that people are taught

to accept stress. The baseline should be being at ease. Then when you're dis-at-ease or diseased, you notice it very early on, you know, and take care of it. I mean, it's, we just don't pay attention, you know, it's sort of somebody might gain a pound, three pounds, and they don't notice it because they're oblivious to everything.

And you don't notice it until you've gained 10 pounds or need a larger size. It's much harder to lose the 10 pounds than the one or two pounds. And we do that with most things. We don't notice the small things. The relationship is falling apart, but you're oblivious to it until the damage,

you know, is very big. It's like the garage mechanic, I'm making this up, I would assume that if he or she were in the car with you, they would notice that the engine doesn't sound quite right, where most of us would be oblivious until there's some big problem. And what is it, prevention, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

You know, I think it's probably an ounce of prevention is worth 10 pounds of cure. I think that mindlessness or that disconnection where you're not even aware of, you know, the stress you carry or, you know or how your behaviors are impacting your own life in a negative way, we're also detached from or unaware of the extent to which they impact the people around us. So you do this study with monks

and this notion of mindfulness being contagious, mindfulness in a room, the monks leave and there's a residue of mindfulness being contagious, mindfulness in a room, the monks leave, and there's a residue of mindfulness that other people can feel and it impacts them. But conversely, the same would apply for mindlessness, right? If a room full of stressed out people, it's gonna impact you if you're there, you're gonna feel that stress.

And what is that doing to you when it wasn't even you that kind of created the stress in the first place? Yeah, no, I think negativity spreads as quickly as positivity. And when people talk, people have to understand things are not positive, things are not negative, things are things. And our understanding of them creates our experience.

You don't understand. You don't understand how bad it is and how hard my life is. and our understanding of them creates our experience. You don't understand how bad it is and how hard my life is. Have you been watching the news, Ellen? You need to be concerned and like, what are you doing about this? I mean, that's sort of our pervasive kind of like- Oh, no, for sure, for sure.

I live with somebody like that. And I'd say, look, this is crazy that either go do something or stop thinking, you know, think about something else that the chicken little, the world is, you know, is going to explode. Everything is awful. There's no evidence for that.

There's a lot of agitation at the moment. There's a lot of people celebrating. There's a lot of agitation at the moment. There's a lot of people celebrating. There's a lot of people very upset. There's a lot of polarization, division, acrimony, fear, uncertainty, right? Like what is gonna happen? Yeah, but I think a lot of that stem from the naive realism that I talked about before.

There's one view. And so if I have this view and you believe other, you must be wrong. Rather than recognizing and asking the other side how they come to the views that they have to see that, you know, it's reasonable. It's hard to imagine now with some of these alternative views as having some sense behind them.

I mean, you take an anti-vaxxer. Okay, well, you know, my God, how can you not get a vax? It's so simple, you get the stupid injection and then you're safe, you know, whatever. And so you conceive of this person as less than on so many dimensions. And you just ask them why they believe that. And you know, there was a time,

I have another friend who we agree on everything almost, except when she said that she wasn't going to get the vaccine and the COVID shot. And it was because, what was the, a polio, yes. And there were people who were given the polio vaccine who actually got polio. And you could imagine, of course, that's gonna be the case, you know.

And so for that reason, she doesn't want the vaccine. Now, at no time do you know whether this vaccine is going to give you the disease or protect you from the disease. And you can't be sure, but it's not irrational to- Right, it affirms this point that like, everyone's making a decision for their own reasons. Exactly.

And we're better to investigate understanding than to judge and dismiss. Yeah, I mean, to assume that we know negates the all the evidence, there's no evidence. You know, we go back to the one in one is not always two that, you know, we have smoking causes cancer. You can't test that, you know, it's only correlation. No, we can't take people who don't smoke,

randomly assign them to the smoking condition or the non-smoking condition and then see what ends up happening. And, you know, and for how many people is this true? I mean, we have everything we believe, I think needs to be, you know, and it's heresy. You want me to say these things where I'm at odds with the whole world. Everything we believe I think needs to be, you know, and it's heresy. You want me to say these things

where I'm at odds with the whole world. No, I don't want you to speak your truth. I'm not trying to push you towards like- And of course not, of course not. You're trying to reveal what's really there. No, I understand that. But you take, let's take people in nursing homes. You know, when I started studying people in nursing homes,

they'd be sitting there like this, sort of not fully alive, even though they were very much alive. And, you know, have them smoke, have them gamble, because these things are stimulants. You know, what does it mean that something is good for you or bad for you? For whom, when, under what circumstances?

And as soon as we have these rigid rules, then we come down hard on the people who seem to violate them. You know, rather than, I have a dearest person to me who if given dexedrine, puts her to sleep. Wow. But you see this up close and you say, wait a second, you just can't be sure.

And when you're not sure, then you pay a different kind of attention. And which we should all be doing with any medication, anything we're doing to see what is our individual response to it. That doesn't mean we have to argue against everything that the world is offering,

but I don't think we should just be mindlessly accepting it. I think that's a good place to end it. You thought, huh? That's why I said it. Yeah, is there anything else? What did we leave on the table? Any like burning desire to share anything else before we wrap it up here?

There's always more. Remember, I told you the more I talk, the more I want to continue. Let's leave the audience wanting more. All right, then I'll come back. Will you come back? Of course. Great, that was wonderful. I adore you, I appreciate you coming today.

That was really fun to talk to you. And you have this couples retreat coming up in March. In March, right, in Mexico. In Mexico. Where can people learn about that? Just contact me. On your website. Yeah. Okay.

Awesome. Well, thanks a lot. I also have a new, I have a children's book that's gonna come out. Oh, you do? But I'll come back and we'll talk about that. What's that called? The name keeps changing. The current name might be Where's Happy.

Is this inspired by the song, the lyrics to the song? That's in it, it's in it. And the message is, this is my key to happiness. And I end every class with a slideshow of the paintings, the one-liners, that ends with glado. It's all about glado. What is glado?

Okay, be generous, loving, authentic, direct, and open. Each of these comes about by our being mindful. Each of these leads to our being mindful. Each leads to the other. And that's the way to be happy. Be generous, loving, authentic, direct and open. So the new book is a children's version of this. Glado.

Glado, easy to remember. We'll come back and talk to me some more about that. I'd be happy to. Peace. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links

and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode link in the description. I'm sure you'll find a lot of information about the conversation. I'm sure you'll find a lot of information about the conversation. I'm sure you'll find a lot of information enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com

where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voice of Change and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do

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Plants. Namaste.