The Importance of Being Present

We get stressed by the story we tell ourselves of what could happen, which could be fact, but it could also be fiction. Mindfulness is a way of changing the story. If you are experiencing something, you have available to yourself opportunity to reevaluate it, to reframe it, to understand itly. And the more mindful you are, the more alternative ways of understanding it come to mind Is this a tragedy or an inconvenience? That's the question my guest Dr. Ellen Langer wants us to ask ourselves, the next time life goes sideways. Because most of the time, the bad things that happen to us, the things that feel like tragedies, like losing a job or a relationship if we're really, really honest with ourselves For most of us, they're not really tragedies They're just Really inconvenient doror Langer's forty five years of research show us that that single distinction can dramatically reduce stress That's why she's often called the mother of mindfulness She's a psychologist, Harvard professor, and author of the books The Mindful Body and Finding Happy. bothoth of which argue that thinking differently is good for our mood and for our bodies If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe This is a bit of optimism Mindfulness is really trendy right now Oh it's been chiny for the last I don't know, thirty years. But okay, right now But mindfulness is trendy and likeike many things that have Nobody knows what it. That's exactly right. The word gets overused to the point of corruption like authenticity, like these things that actually are really important, but they lose their substance And so just as a really good level set. Okay, let's start by my telling your audience what is mindfulness? There we go. What is it because it's not some redy hippie dippy thing No, it's not a heavy dpp thing at all. In fact When people hear the word mindfulness, many think of meditation And meditation is fine. Meditation is a practice. You sit quietly for twenty minutes, twice a day, take yourself out of the world, repeat a mantra And I did some of the early research on meditation. it's wonderifful that's different from what I do. Mindfulness, as I study it, is not a practice. It's just a way of being that naturally follows from an understanding that uncertainty is ubiquitous We don't know We think we know. In fact, one of my definitions of mindlessness, the other side of this, is that we're frequently in errab but rarely in doubt Everything we're taught in school by our parents, the world at large teaches us absolutence And these absoles are invariably wrong part of the time. So you know, I'm an A plus plus student when I was a student And I go to this horse event and this man says, Well, I watch this horse for him because he wants to get his horse a hot dog What are you chidding? I say yes because that's what the nice thing to do is, but horses don't eat meat. Nobody knows that better than I, the straight a student, the genius He comes back with a hot dog and the horse ate it. And that's when I realized everything I thought I knew could be wrong And most people would be worried about that, but for me it was very exciting because that meant all sorts of possibilities opened up that otherwise would be closed. And you know, think about it, most of our facts are our facts, at least that come from science When you do an experiment, what you get at the end of this is a probability And the probability is that if we were to do this exact same thing again we're likely to get the same findings. So imagine we wanted to see do horses eat meat We'd had to pick what kind of horses, not all horses are the same. How heavy are they? We'd had to decide when the last time they were to be fed before the experiment. How much meat would you mixed with? How much grain And at the end, we'd find that most of the horses didn't It's a mouthful, so it's it's shorten. horses don't eat meat But it's simply wrong The other one that I'm fond of sharing with people is Okay, donon't feel put on the spot, Simon. How much is one plus one Everybody knows. I'm going to take a wild guess and go too No, not always. So if you were to add one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry, one plus one is one. If you add one cloud plus one cloud, one plus one is one If you add one wat of chewing gum plus one wat of chewing gum won't And somebody sent me one the other day. If you add one pizza and one pizza, you have two pizzas. But if you add one lasagna And one wasaga you get one lasagna, just a bigger lasagna. So in the real world, it doesn't equal two. and this is very important because any time we give an answer based on our absolute understanding of things, we're no different from robots And you want to be different from a robot because robots don't fall in love, they're not happy, they don't have any agency. Now if somebody were to ask you, how much is one plus one All of a sudden you have a choice that you didn't have All right. And that means you're going to be present. You're going to pay attention to context and then decide But when you first answered, you know, it's just. R I mean, when you ask the question, of course, what my mind does is it goes back to, you know first grade or whatever it was when we learned basic math, I don't second grade, whatever it was. And I can see the very academic one plus one on a blackboard. and I think what you rightfully said, which is in the real world It depends. So when you don't know, you don't know, you pay attention. It's just that simple Right. And so since everything is always changing, everything looks different from different perspectives We don't know. And when you recognize that, nobody knows. You see right now people know they don't. But they think you might know. So they don't go near the situation or they pretend, noody knows And then everything becomes new again. That's top down You just accept, you don't know Th then you're going to be presressed. Bottom up is walk outside, place you've lived for ten, fifteen, thirty years, whatever, Nice three new things Notice three new things about the person you live with. You don't live with anybody, three new things about a friend Three new things about your work environment. And every time you do this, you're seeing that something you thought you knew, you didn't know as well as you thought you did And that eventually brings you to the understanding, hey, I don't really know anything. And you add to that the part, but that's okay because Simon and Ellen don't either What I'm curious about is our brains are constantly seeking clarity and certainty to help us not only make sense of the world, but also to help us but also to help us avoid danger. No. No, our brains are taught to respond that People have also been mindlessly taught that evaluation is part of events People are good or bad, things are good or bad, consequences are good or bad. But in fact, The valence of a consequence whether it's good or bad is in our heads Not in events. So stress, everybody thinks they have to experience stress. They don't All they need to do is to see that that situation that they're scared of first probably won't even happen. secondecond, that if it happens, there are advantages to that And this is a bigger one because people are they're just sure, this is awful, this is wonderful I can look at it awful. I can take the thing that's awful and turn it around and experience it as wonderful. So in the mindful body, I tell a story because I know when I talk like this, people say, what the hell do you know from the Ivory Ter You know, there you sit in Cambridge at Harvard. I'm always compelled.' I'm now seventy nine. You can't believe I haven't gone through lots of things in my life So let me just tell you one that I write about in this book a few decades ago, around Christmas. I go out to a friend's house for dinner, I come back And all of my neighbors are outside because my house went up in sm It was very scary. My dogs were fine And the next day I called the insurance agent and he says, In the twenty years he's been doing this job, this is the first time. that the damage was worse than the call. So people are, Oh my go, Oh my God. He gets there and you know, it's no big deal But to me, I had already lost everything I lost throwing my sanity after it wasn't going to help But now the story gets really good. So I'm to leave my friend's house eighty percent of what I owned had been destroyed. I go to the Charles Hotel and with my two dogs and I'm a sight to be seen. I go out now Christmas Eve I come back and my room is full of gifts. Not from the owners or the management of the hotel, but from the so called little be the people who park my car, the staff, the people are the waiters and waitresses in the restaurant. I mean, it took me almost a year, Simon, to be able to tell the story without it bringing happy tears to my eyes.. Now here's the thing, every Christmas, I'm reminded of the basic goodness of so many people And that brings a smile to my face and warmth in my heart. And I don't remember except for one thing, I remember nothing that I lost in the fight. So net net This thing that was more awful than what most people are stressed about turned out to be a positive experience. Now, I don't think that I'm saying when I got there, I said, Ohh, well who the hellcares? so I don't have a house. I suffered the way most people would suffer. but then talk to myself about it and it became a very different event Can you separate for me? and I think you're touching on it because stress is important for survival. if we go back to caveman times, which is the you know're living in caveman time first. But this body we have is a legacy machine It's still it's still the same machine that that was back in caveman times, trying to manage itself In a modern day. I would say you should be eating with your hands that you'd be walking around even when it's cold that without shoes on. You know, there's a thing called progress. some call it evolution. I don't But things. Technological progress to make our lives easier safer or the rest of it is not the same as our brains reacting to a russell in the leaves for fear that something might try to eat us or kill us or rob us is the modern interpretation. Well, you're saying we're design this way. and I'm saying as we're designed, we change. But the human animal hasn't evolved. Our brains haven't evolved at all Evolutionarily, the population of homo sapiens is still the same homo sapien that was in caveman times as it is today. Otherwise we'd have a new species. and we don't wait a second, but all of this was theory. You're presuming that there wasn't a caveman who didn't respond this way When there was a russell in Mine, I think he got eaten. I'm pretty sure he got eaten. No, that he didn't say to himself That's probably a squirrel or whatever lives in the woods out there. And then we get back to the horses donon't eat meat You know, that we're fed theory and forget that it's theory. Theory is a guess. It's a smart guess, but it's still a guess. And it doesn't account for deviation I'm not Disagreeing with the importance of theacy of No, no, no, I'm not I'm not just disigning the importance and premise of mindfulness. What I'm trying to what I'm trying to understand myself is that that Theoretically, Our brains are wired to help us stay alive. And one of the things that helps us stay alive is to be alert when we hear a noise or see something we don't know, to put our guard up For fear that it may cause us or the ones we love harm And that and that stress response is not always, is not always bad. b Once you feel, oh my God, How long does it take you to say, o, it's nothing? Right, All right. Okay, and I'm saying at the least, but I'm saying a lot more than this, the more mindful you are. Qicker you respond to anything because mindfulness, you're aware of change. When mindless, you're holding things f. When you're mindful, you're always aware that everything is changing. But this is important because when your house burned down, it was the recovery that mindfulness helped, your recovery of you because you still were upset, you still got depressed, there's still loss You still have to go through the morning of the loss. You weren't just like, oh, my house burned down, you know, things happen, you know, I have to believe that wasn't the response. No, but it's not as extreme in the negative as you're saying either. But I gave you an extreme example. Yeah. Now most of the time when people are stressed, it has nothing to do with anything that big They are stressed because they forgot to make a phone call. They forgot to get the reported on time. They burnt the potatoes. They are told that they have to have some minor surgery. First of all, in order to experience stress, you need two things. You need to have a belief that something's going to happen And then that when it happens, it's going to be awful Now, we can't predict. This is another thing that we've grossly misunderstood. You can predict for the group you can predict for the individual So let's say I'm playing who's the biggest basketball? person this st These days Michael Jordan was the first time I told this story. So if he's still big, we'll use Michael Jordan So Ellen Langer is having a foul shooting contest with Michael Jordge They each get to shoot one basket How much of your life savings are you going to wager I'm Michael Jordan Okay, so now, o, will you kidding? it's a slam dunk You'd have to be foolish not to bet as much as you can, but let's step back a little Michael Jordan on occasionally misses, not frequent occasion you're talking about your whole life savings. Ellen Langer, although you don't know it, more than on occasion gets one in. certainly nowhere in Michael George But let's say Michael Jordan had a fight with his spouse. right before Or Michael Jordan didn't get any sleep or you know, he sneezed right before he took the shot. I mean, it could be a million things And so for that one basket I very well could w. But if Michael Jordan and I were each shooting a hundred baskets That's when you should put your money down, okay. Now, that's all fine, but for all of us, we're trying to predict the single event We're not trying to predict, you know how correct the weather forecast is over time. It's when I walk outside today, are they going to be righter And everybody knows that they're often n Let's go back to stress. So we're saying that to be stressed, you have to believe something's going to happen. So now give yourself five reasons, threeree if you're too lazy three reasons why it might not happen you immediately feel better because the first reaction, oh my Godd, maybe won't even happen Now comes the harder Let's assume it does happen How is that actually an advantage And there's always an advantage. And if you can find the advantages, you don't become frazzles. I mean, my life is, you know, im human, so it's not entirely stress free, but it's virtually stress free. I mean you have to hit me over the head very hard. for me to react. Okay, so I'm on a podcast and I'm explaining this And I say, look, let's say that my internet went out, right Allright, so Id go have lunch. You know, The funny thing was my internet then went out. I don't just talk the talk. I walk the walk and I went and had lunch. But for a younger person, a person, oh my God, this is a career makeaker break. people talk themselves into all sorts of stressful events, that could have been terrible. If you look back over last as many as you can remember. Let's say last three times you were stressed, you're probably going to find the thing you were worried about didn't even happen So now we're throwing good time away for no reason that if it ends up happening, there's time to deal with whatever it is. But all the time you're wasting worrying about it and then it doesn't happen is wearing the system down, it's certainly not good for your mental health. and it turns out, I have a lot of evidence, it's not good for your physical Look, I agree with all of this stuff and I try to live my life comfortable with uncertainty. I sort of appreciate chaos even I find creativity in chaos. Without chaos, there's no creativity. The point I was trying to make before was I want people to have realistic standards that This is not a switch you turn and instantly you have no stress, that we're still human, we have human reactions And I just want people to recognize that it's their ability to recover from stress or understand stress or get through stress in a healthier way, which is the standard here. That's the only reason I's pushing on the biology, which is I just want people to recognize that the standard we're setting here is not is not that something actually happens. Sure. And then the part that I want to I want to double click on because I think it's so interesting what you're saying, which is we don't necessarily get stressed by the thing that happens. or the thing that could happen. We get stressed by the story we tell ourselves of what could happen and it's our own story, which could be fact, but it could also be fiction That's what's generating the stress and the anxiety is is the story. Mindfulness is a way of changing the story And not only that, but most of our stories were developed at a much earlier time in our lives. So at thirty, do you want to be reacting to what you understood only partially when you were twenty That's dicttale when you were fifteen At your age now, do you want to still be stressed by the things that bother you now when you're sixty without ever rethinking But yes, I did mean for people to think that, know that's why I use the example of my house burning down. there are real things that happen although most of our stress is not a function of things at that level If you are experiencing something, you have available to yourself opportunity to reevaluate it, to reframe it, to understand it differently. And the more mindful you are, the more alternative ways of understanding it come to mind. Next time you stress Ask yourself is it a tragedy or an inconvenience And almost instantly people realize, yeah It's not a tragedy. and then you grive more easily. I want to share story. I've told this story a bunch of times, but I love it I was watching the Olympics And I noticed that the journalists were All asking the athletes the same question Are you nervous or were you nervous all the athletes all gave the same answer No, I'm excited. No, I was excited And it got me thinking whichich is if you think about what the characteristics of nervousness are, it's like your heart starts pounding, your hands get clammy, you start envisioning the future But if you think about what excitement is, your heart starts pounding, your hands get clammy, you start envisioning the future. The reason the journalists We're asking, are you nervous? It's because they would be nervous because they're not elite athletes they would be nervous, which is why they asked the question. And all the elite athletes had learned to interpret this data not as nerves, but as excitement. whichich is one of the reasons they're Olympians in the first place, which is they have this mindset of let's give this a try versus let's run away from it I was so interested by the simple mind shift interpretation. I decided to test it out I was on a plane. and the plane hit very severe turbulence. And ordinarily know sort of get like this and my heart starts pounding and I started envisioning the future. And I get nervous. And I literally said under my breath out loud to myself This is exciting Instantly, I was fine Yeah that's great That's well, you know, it turns out all emotions are biochemically similar in the way you just describe. you know So let's say you're going out on a date on first date and you see yourself as anxious Vversusus you see yourself as excited, the same thing you're explaining now posture yourself in very different ways And chances are you're more likely to have the second aid if you saw yourself as excited And so what people don't understand is that emotions are choices That's good. Iochemically similar then you can call it by one of several different things. And what you call it will determine basasically how you respond and subsequent feelings about it And whether it's a date or a job interview or a conversation with your boss, when you come into go, I need this. Oh my God, I want this. I want to get married, I want the promotion. I need this. I got to have this. You know, we've all said that employee or that person you're going to date with that reeks of desperation You know, it's not and we can feel it. we can see it. versus the confidence of excitement, which is this would be great, but it's okay if it doesn't, it's okay if I don't get it also. And that calm is incredibly attractive Yes, for sure. But you know, to go back to what you were saying before, if a person can't do it and seems a little crazed It's fine. if you're so sure the person you're talking to is seeing you that way, then you call it by that Boy, I guess I'm more nervous about this than I thought I would Yeah then it's a non event. Th thenen it relieves the tension, doesn't it? Yeah ye. And the person can no longer evaluate you by that because you've stolen his thunder someet. So we've lived a life doing the opposite of what you recommend, most of us And so what is the first step to mindfulness To living a mindful life versus a mindless life. What is the first step that we can all take? I mean, the first thing is really to try to garner a healthy respect for uncertainty with, you know, just know you don't know. So every time you're thinking you know, and that's hard Because when you think you know, you're not there to know that you're not there to make the change So do than noticing three new things, five new things. but there is something else that I have some extraordinary research findings you know, we're able to help people with chronic illnesses turn time somewhat, heal our woundness fast. I mean, lots of But the one thing after all these years that has become more important to me, seem me, more important than any of these, is the simple idea that behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective O else the actor wouldn't do it and you're an actor. So every time you do something and then you look at it and you think, o God, how could I have been so stupid, clumsy of whatever it is, you know that that wasn't motivating the action. Every time you're judgmental of somebody else Even you have a dog. And the dog is barking. And so what do most of us do? We have stop at barking and you just sort of respond as foolishly as the dog is. And if you said to yourself, whyy is the dog barking So dogs don't just bark for no reason People aren't just awful for no reason. From the dog's perspective, the dog is afraid. And imagine if you say to yourself, My dog is afraid, therefore I'm going to hit him. I mean, only the cruelest among us would do that. you know, we can't change these behaviors. This is what I found most interesting. So I could come to you, Simon and say Please help me. I am so gullible it defies belief. We both agree. I'm gullible. and so I'm going to make a commitment. I'm going to do whatever all the experts say to do It's never going to be effective And why is that Because going forward, I'm not being gullible, going forward, I'm being trusted And as long as I value being trusting, there are times I'm going to see gullall. the example I would use is Simon, you are so damn inconsistent It must drive everybody who knows you craise it. Oh my Godd, look, I did all those you know. And but you're never going to change that because from your perspective What you wear is flexible. So if you want to change yourself or somebody else, you have to change it from the perspective from which they were enacting the behavior. change and find out what they value And if they value being flexible, they're going to appear inconsistent. If you value being spontaneous, you're going to seem impulsive, each and every negative description. that we apply to ourselves or somebody else has an equally strong positive alternative. No matter what it is. I mean, this is I love this. I make people more mindful because part of our mindlessness, well, first of all, whenever we're being evaluative We're being mindless,. We're seeing what this behavior is rather than realizing it can be understood in multiple ways When you and I now understand each other better and care more about each other, it's I'm more open to be mindful, I'm less afraid you're going to hit me over the head You know, if I don't fo with a script What's nice about talking to you is you're reinforcing a lot of the lessons I've learned along the way. One thing which has helped me as an entrepreneur is embracing uncertainty. When I was young as an entrepreneur thought I thought I had to not only know the answers, I thought I had to get the answers right. And now when I make decisions, I'm very comfortable with that every decision I make could absolutely be quote unquote, the wrong decision. And the results that I hope to get from this decision might actually go the opposite way. And so even though I want to make the best guess that's informed by data and a little bit of gut you know, and a little bit of, you know, sort of checking the wind. I'm very comfortable with the fact that I might get it wrong and then we'll change I think that the posture that a successful person should have is to be confident but uncertain. And that's the way you were describing yourself. And in the world today, confidence and uncertainty are conflated. And you think that if you're confident, it's because you're certain. And now we should just turn that around. You see somebody who's acting like that and you know you're. The way I've always described myself as strong opinions is loosely held And because I speak in hard words and because I sound like I, you know, this is the answer. I think peopleeople think that I'm clos minded to something, but I love when somebody has a good argument to prove me wrong and people who who want to debate or fight with me what they what they often is I'm actually listening. I'm actually listening if their logic makes sense to me I'm all in. And what's really funny is when when the logic doesn't make sense to me, I start asking lots and lots and lots of questions, which then somebody who wants certainty and isn't comfortable with uncertainty gets very, very defensive, very, very quickly Whereas I enjoy being questioned and I'm only asking questions not to prove someone wrong, but I'm looking for information to see if I'm wrong Well so what we should do is start the buzzword, you know, when anybody is being certain someomebody said in a call them mindless just have a little Hmm, a little buzzer And you should see the response when I would ask somebody how much is one plus one You know What are you an idiot? You know Why you asking me this? and they would tune out. So how much does age play into this, right? Because When we're young, we're carrying a lot of insecurity that we want to be liked, we want to be right, we want to be smart, we want to be perceived as all those things because it'll benefit our careers And I think that onene of the things that you and I have the benefit of is we've lived a few years And as I got older, I realized I know less than I thought I did In fact, when I was young, I thought I knew so much, now I't realize that I know so little. Thatudy being for a PhD, you come to learn more and more about less and less until you know all I mean, isn't that beautiful. But how much of is this what we're actually describing is the value of getting older and just wisdom? And how do young people embrace what you're talking about more readily? I teach a large class on health psychology at Harvard. and so every year I'm addressing this issue. You I said, here's what happens if Why wait Now, but before I do that make that clearer, little kids, you know, you take a little kid and you put him in a room. that's there are cardboard boxes and he's going to make games out of it or sh and have great fun until The parent somehow teaches them that's just a cardboard box and let me go spend a lot of money on a toy think that once especially when there's some language, little kids are very mindful and we teach it ad which is very, very sad And then there are people who are so stubborn in their thoughts that they don't experience the wisdom of getting older But in a more general way, yeah, I think that You know, all you need to do is a little reflection. you know, So you're two years old and you scrape your knee and you're screaming bloody murder. and then you're five years old and you're really too old for that. I mean, it hurts, but you know what's going to stop hurting But now you're seven years old or however old it is, and Jamie or Johnny didn't send you a valentine' you know, in the class. and oh my God, the world's going no one's going to love And then you become fifteen, sixteen. And so if you're doing the looking back, you notice that yeah, all the things you were expecting to happen, that no longer happened. That pimple didn't mean you were going to be forever marked as somebody unattractive as you were marking yourself U But there are some people who probably don't do that But surely, you know don't become wiser with age than Th it's very second So I'm curious how you think about sort of you know therapy and that who we are and our anxieties and our insecurities and the struggles we're having are the result of our parents. and overcoming how our parents, you know, screwed us up. I would say it's our parents, our schools, every institution that we experience have taught us to be mindless And so how do you get out of it? Well, there are several things. First is most of our learning is absolute. Horses don't eat meat. One in one is two. Right, right. So if no matter what you're taught, you make it conditional allowing that there are other ways and never closing the book. So it's always interesting. So there's that, learning conditionally. Second is recognizing that everything can be understood in multiple ways and teaching young people people at any age to become comfortable with uncertainty. And then how to evaluate outcomes so they're not letting other people's misdeeds or things that happen by chance determine your well being. It's really right there for in front of us. And we have so much data, Simon, that when you're more mindful, the neurons are firing and it's literally literally and figuratively enlivening when you're having fun You know, you can't have fun unless you're mindfulall. Here's another thing, only tangentially related. So when I give these lectures in person, I ask, is there somebody really tall out there? six, five I don't know why, but I always seem to have a six footer in the audience. So I invite him to the stage. and there we stand and I'm five, three and we look silly together, right? So all I just stand there, let everybody see is And then I say, shouldh we do anything physical the same way Probably not. It's ridiculous His hand is three inches larger than mine. So now Here's the rule. The more different you are from the person who wrote the rules wrote the directions, wrote the instructions The more different you are from that person the more important it is for you not to mindlessly do it the way they're telling you to do I want to go back to the very beginning of this conversation, which is context, context, context, right? Because without the context, there is a point where somebody will just become annoying to hang out with because they' they're like, you know, like the onene plus one example is fun in an academic situation like this one where we're sort of debating what one plus one actually means, but there are practical applications. So one of the things that I love, my dear friend and mentor, Ron Brouder, he taught his kids this very lesson right, which is to question what the world means. And he was standing at a crosswalk with his kids And he started to go. and And and the kids point out it says, but dad it says, don't walk It means we have to stand here And he said to them he goes, how do you know it doesn't mean to we have to run ' great That's great. And but you know, which is which is which is which is a great lesson, which is a great lesson that don't accept the world as it is and and it's all the things you're talking about However The reason they came up with that system was so that people don't hit by cars and it actually means stand still. The answer is not to mindlessly stand still, mindlessly run or walk The answer is to notice You know, so if there's not a car in sight You know, I had this guy that I was dating very briefly right after graduate school. Wonderful man But we got to a crosswalk. There was no traffic Yeah. He stopped and I'm walking and I just said it's just not going to work I mean, like I'm a New York where Jaywalking is just part of the culture You know, But the drivers are used to. so they expect it. If you go to a city where they're not used to it, it's actually more dangerous. But it is funny to me when I go to a city, to your point when it says don't walk and there's no traffic in any direction and Everyone' standing there. and I was like, I don't under But what? There's nothing You know, I start walking and somebody says to me, Simon, you're going get us killed. I'm like W what car Right. So the worst example or the best example is in London where they know everybody mindlessly is looking to the right. right look left on the street. Yeah Whver it is and ye and they have big science that. So no, I don't think you should walk run or stand still, I think you should be sensitive to the ongoing situation and let that determine. the big takeaway from this conversation is context, context, context, right? Yeah. But here's no, it's bigger than that. It's bigger than that, Simon because Yeah, it is. Okay, so my colleagues for forever, it used to be one's personality mattered. Then social psychologists would saying no, it's context. And a debate between the two of them For so long, my view, a question is who determined the context And that's very important because whoever determined the context is controlling your behavior. So let me give you a mediate hold on. let me make my argument for context first because see your argument holds after I give you the I didn't even say you start you interrupted and started disagreeing with me before I made my point. All I said was say a word know what the word means to you, okay, go on For me, When I say context, What I mean is is like and it goes back to the don't wall. The context is, is this sign at a suggestion or is there a reason for this sign? And if I go to my reaction to a personal situation When to say, what's the context here, which is like, am I reacting to reality or am I reacting to the story I'm telling myself And those things tend to be pretty easy to solve And it's not me determining the context. It's me saying, can I be, you know, you know, I have a belief that this is going to happen. Am I one hundred percent certain this has happened? Am I one hundred percent certain this is going to happen? And eventually that logic falls down if the answer iss no Okay, so When we think of context, consider You know, you're at a football game and a football game, it's great to get up and yell and scream and whatever versus you're in a life Right in a library, that context demands that we be quiet so as not to influence other people Now, I'm in the hospital. they have visiting hours. A hospital is like the library My mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer that's now metastasized. And I go in and the rule is somebody decided that visiting hours are from X to Y, whatever time frame they give. I make clear to the powers that be there. Okay, so if I'm in put my head as you would do in the hospital context, saying, well, these rules were decided, they make some sense. So when they say I should leave, I should leave You're a New Yorker, Simon, and if you were caring for me in the hospital, I know you wouldn't do that And I say to the powers that be there that because my Mother, the maternal context I brought to bear. o, I'm in the hospital, That's one context. I let myself think of another context, my relationship with my mother. And that was going to take precedence. And I said, I will be here for as long as my mother wants me to be here And we can fight about it. You can try to get rid of me. We can make it a whole big show Or you can turn the other way or you can just smile and let me be but that's what I'm going to do. And they let me be. Let's say you're walking by and you want to cut through this person's lawn and there's a big sign that says, don't walk on the grass And so most people unless you're from New York are not going to walk on the gress. Now, assume instead that sign says Ellen Langer says Don't walk on the grass. All of a sudden you realize that that grasp belongs to somebody. Maybe I can negotiate with them. Maybe she's at home. Maybe they don't care now because things have changed and she o. So the point is everything that has been created created by people And once we put people back in the equation, All sorts of control for us opens up. So if I say to you, smoking causes cancer Okay, so you know not to smoke. If we put people back in the equation and you say, a study by Simon and Ellen found that for most of the time, people under these conditions More of them are like, more smokers are likely to get cancer. And you give the actual papers. Yeah It's all of a sudden less persuasive. So when you want to persuade somebody of something, you take people out of the equation Just as surely, when you want people to feel more room to make decisions, you put people in. One of the names that I was going to use for the Mindful Body book was whoo says so I said we should all become our three year old selves Because when you say who says it, all of a sudden you realize you have options. I'm not sure I agree with this. because Let's go back to the hospital example, right which is What we do not want to create or confused is that mindfulness means that you get to do what you want when you want because your context is your context and it's not their context. And and then you have you you just have a society of people just sort of like the way I think about context, which is I understand that rules were passed for a good reason when they were passed, and they may or may not be relevant anymore. Right? I understand that But sometimes rules are enforced because they are on the books, even though we've lost sight of why they were passed. So go back to the hospital example. Visiting hours of between seven to seven, whatever it is, right? I understand. I can ask him but he say Okay, I can either assume Or I can ask, why are visiting hours? Now, maybe because there's more staff, because there's more staff, they can handle not only the patients but the guests Overnight, the staff goes down and they need to put all their attention on the patients and they just can't deal with all the guests And so there might be a very good reason And because nightime, you want the patients to sleep and there's l noise,. And So if you're with your mom who's know has metastasized cancer You know, it's not like I'm going to be here, you take it or leave it. You can ignore me or not. because what you're creating is a situation where that other person who their job may be on the line to help enforce those rules Right? And so I don't know the politics and the anxieties that they carry. And so it's you're right, you're right. It's a negotiation, which is like and you've said it, which is appealing to humanity, which is I understand the rules What I'm asking is Can we please make an I understand That's exactly. Of course I didn't going come on like a I don't want to I think you're Paseind I should not make it seem that way I should not make a se my way, but I do have very strong feelings about rules. This is ac cross. Well, because it's been you know, B and w. I mean all these years, I see people heard, depress, u unpleasant because of rules that make no sense. Yes. So when I was quite young, when I was in my sort of, oh, I probably was mayaybe thirteen, fourteen years old I started to become really curious about Mind over matter. Somebody had used the phrase or I hadd heard it, you know, mind over matter. and I did an experiment in my bed My bed was up against a wall. And one out of my bed was just wall, it was white And the other side was looking into my room, obviously And so I laid on my shoulder, on my left shoulder lookingking out into the room And I close my eyes And imaginine, what if I was on the other side of the bed, still on my left shoulder? What if I was on the other side of my bed? And if I were to open my eyes right now, I would see wall. And the reason I picked that is because wall is an easy thing to imagine And I just lay there, Concentrating, concentrating, concentrating, that if I open my eyes, I'd be on the other side of the bed looking at the wall. And lo and behold, like a switch, I would have put money down. I would have bet anything. that I was on the other side of the bed until I opened my eyes and I realized I wasn't. I did it a few times, and then I pushed my experiment even further which is what if instead of being on the other side because my weight was still on the left shoulder, what if I was actually on my right shoulder? So now I'm looking out at the room, but on the same side of the bed, just on the other shoulder You know, So here I am lying facing the room and I'm imagining facing the wall because a wall iss an easy thing to imagine But this time I'm imagining being on my other shoulder And I concentrated on that thought And lo and behold, I would have put money down that my weight was on the opposite shoulder until I opened my eyes to realize I was actually staring out of the room And this is when I became convinced that our minds are so powerful that I can trick my body that my weight was on the wrong shoulder that if I could do that with my mind then I could trick myself good or bad into anything. Yeah, so you know. I mean the reason you're talking to me about this is because of my work since nineteen seventy nine about mine buddy un today. Yeah. So The idea that you have a mind and a body then you have a question, how do they talk to each other How do you get from a fuzzy thought to something material? no one's been able to answer that. And I thought, Well, this is silly. Mind body, they just words. If we make it one unit, then wherever you're putting the mind you're necessarily putting them. And I had two very early experiences. The one I was married when I was obscenely young. And I go to Paris on my honeyment and I order a mixed grill. on the mixed grill and is a pancreas I asked my then husband Which of these is the panreas? He points Hi Van, I'm a big eater. Having a wonderful time, now comes the moment of truth Can I eat the pancreas And I start eating it and I literally get sick. All right, would have been easier to imagine the wall on the other side of the room And then he starts laughing which is not good at any time. Honeymoon, very not good. And I say, whyy are you laughing? He says, Because that's chicken. You ate the pancreas a long time So I had made myself sick Now to go back the other pancreas story I have, most people don't have a single one. I have two good pancreas stories. I don't have any My well you can borow don't bow borrow the first one not the second. When my mother's cancer had metastasized to her pancreas, that's the end game And then magically it was totally gone and the medical world couldn't explain it. So, I had made myself sick, she had made herself well, and that was going to lead to decades of my research trying to figure out know what's going on? The findings of these studies, you know, the one that many people know about the counterclockwise study. And the reason I think people know about it is because if you tune into the Simpsons Go to Hents They talk about the stuff. You know you've made it, Simon onnce the Simpsons are. I have not been mentioned on the Simpsons yet I'm still working at it. All right. Anyway, so this was a study where we retrofitted a retreat to twenty years earlier. We had elderly men live there as if they were their younger self. So they put their minds back twenty years. Okay. So they would be discussing past events as if they were just unfolding And five days in five days it's pretty short time Their vision improved, their hearing improved, their strength, their memory, and they look noticeably younger go to the second one. So what we did was ask Chambermae how much exercise you get. They said, they don't get any exercise That's because To them exercise is what the surgeon general says you do after work and after work, they're just too tight We take a ton of measures Then what we do is we divide them into two groups. So one group, the important group, we tell them Y work is exercise Making a bed is like working at this machine at the gym. So we persuade them in a short. discussion that their work is exercise Now we do our follow up measures we find out, has their eating changed? No, The two groups are still the same. Has the effort they're putting into their work changed? No Nevertheless, the group that has changed their mindset Change their minds. Now see they work this exercise They lost weight. There was a change in waist to hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure came. and some way that really says more than most people understand, it speaks to what we call the nobo effect So everybody knows a placebo, you take a nothing. You think it's something and it does the work of the something A no sebo is you take a something, but you think it's a nothing and it takes away The effects there. Yeah So as you were saying, you that it works, we can bring it about good or bad for ourselves. You always hear in hospitals, right? Doctors always say, you know, she was a fighter. he was a fighter These people of medicine, they often refer to the mindset of the patient, you know, when they talk about these remarkable recoveries And I don't even think they realize they're saying it when they say it. And I think that being a fighter is a bad metaphor You know, I was giving a talk to about five thousand people who were dealing with cancer And this was very early on in my work. And one man objected strenuously. and he said, hisis wife was a fighter She fought the cancer. And you know, and I got through the day where that making sure he was okay and everybody understood more fully what I meant. and I thought about it. I thought, you know, if a little kid was pulling on your pants, You wouldn't see yourself as fighting the kids. It's an annoyance And so when you bring out the full artillery, fighting the cancer, you've already raiseed the opponent to very big position. Oh, so let me just tell you about this the next to last study. We inflict a wound minor wound because they wouldn't let us do the study and I don't want to hurt people anyway. And then we put people individually in front of a clock Unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged So for a third of the people The clock is going twice as fast as real time For a third of the people, it's going half as fast as real time For a third of the people, it's real time Now most people would assume that wound is going to heal when the wound heals. I mean, what's the difference, right But no, in fact, the wound heals based on clock time perceivive time So we have demonstration after demonstration of the extraordinary control. we have over health and wellbeing. I mean, we have people in a sleep lab and they wake up and they think they got more sleep than they got, less sleep than they got. and biological and cognitive functions follow perceived amount of sleep. Wow So I used to wear an aura ring And my auroring used to tell me more often than not that that I wasn't getting enough sleep Right And then I got something called eightight sleep, which are these sheets. I got them because they can cool your bed. That's really why I got them because I like a cold bed But they just happen to measure sleep, which I don't care about, but they happen to measure it And the sleep score I get from eight sleep is always fantastic. I'm like the favorite by the way, my sleep habits have not changed Some will argue that because the sheets are colder, I'm doing better. But I would keep the room very cold. you know, I just thought this is more efficient than keeping the air conditioning on all night And I honestly can say that I sleep better Now But I don't know that I'm actuallyleeping better, but because I'm being told that I'm sleeping better, I believe it So I believe the stress created by the Aura ring was you suck at sleep And I was always tired. And now I'm always well rested because I'm a champion sleeper, according to my sheets. Okay, so I have one that's the negative bragging there is a tor. So I had believed always that if I have coffee, caffeine, but has being coffee After twelve in the afternoon, it keeps me up tntill three o'clock at night However, if the last cup of coffee I have is at ten of twelve in the afternoon, it has no effect on me, right The most important part of all of this is that All of these decades of research has made clear to me virtually all of us are mindless almost all the time. Yeah. And you know when you're mindless, you're not there to know you're not there. And you're not invalidating the research, but as you said right at the beginning, which is it is preponderance, it's predictability, it's en masse. It's like more likely when these studies are telling us likelihoods We are interpreting it as certainty. Now, that's very good. You're trying to hoist me by my own patard and I didn't even know I had a patard, whatever a patard. I can tell you what a patard is. You know in cartoons, the little bomb that's round with a little fuse, that's a patard Oh, is that a patar? Yeah, that's a pitar but it to be hoisted by a patard. Why would anybody have their own patar? It just Yeah, it just means, you know, that means you you're blown up by your own grenade. Yeah. Woisted by your own batard. At any rate. to in defense of my petardlessness that when you've done four decades worth of research you know, leading to the same conclusion, it's a little different than a single study You're still talking about likelihood because even your research, there is uncertainty So it's interesting because people say to me You know,, Isn't there a time being mindless is better And I say no and I say it unequivocally. and how could that be? How could she speak with certainty? You know, it's like everything is uncertain except You know, So then I say, imagine, Simon, you're in the park with a little three year old. And the three year old starts walking into the traffic. You'd say, isn't it better that I mindlessly just pull her out of the trash? And then I say to you, Simon, if you were mindful, she wouldn't have ended up in the traffic in the first place. Second, if you're going to pull her around, you know you don't know whether the driver sees you pulling around or is himself starting to you know swerve in the opposite direction. You want to make sure you're pulling her away from the traffic. rather than I think I would find I would recommend finding a different example because we can't make it revisionist, right? If something bad is aboutound to happen and we say, well, if you were mindful, it wouldn't have happen in the first place, which is kind of a mean thing to say that because things do happen and I think there I think I think there are things that mindless ess is okay No. And I will come up with a really good example, but Gad, you think well I talk for a second because no matter what you're doing, you can do it mindfully or mindlessly. If you're doing it mindlessly, you're not there The neurons aren't firing, there's no advantage to doing it. W hold on. yourour definition is two things now because mindlessness in your car example is about reaction and an automated response And so that doesn't have to be an automated response, though. What I'm saying is, I grab you quickly because you have my little child now. But human reaction, it's like the same reason why when you touch a hot stove, your body says, move your hand and then you feel the heat. But the reaction when your child is about to be hurt that is automatic that you grab someone and hopefully it works out the right direction and works out the right way. You know, But I think and then you realize, oh my God, what just happened. It happens afterwards. That is our minds That is our mind protecting before before the understanding happens. I'm sure at your age you've been protected from something that was actually good for you Because the person misjudged. And I've also been protected from things that were actually bad for me Yeah, but who's to say before the before the protection The point is all I can say is that sometimes it worked out well and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it was I wish it happened and sometimes I wish it didn't. Still. You can do things mindfully or mindlessly no matter what you're doing and the overwhelming evidence Theoretical and practical is to be there If you're going to do it, be there for it. And when you're mindless, you're not there. You're no different from a robot And would you like in fact, if I said to you, your kid is in the road, Do you want me to send a robot to get the kid out of the road or an Olympic athletes Because the robot you see has only been programmed for certain things. And if you're uncertain, we know something that hasn't gotten into the program could be oable I'm going to I'm going to end right there Ellen So much fun. Thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it I enjoyed it, Simon, you stay well You too. As always, thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, please do remember to subscribe to a bit of optimism wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And remember, new episodes drop every Tuesday A bit of optimism is a production of the optimism company loovingly produced by our team, Lindseay Garbinius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson And if you want more cool stuff or just to find out what I'm up to, visit Simonsinic. com. Until next time. Take care of yourself takeake care of each other