How to Stop Letting Your Own Thoughts Make You Sick, Stressed, and Stuck with Dr. Ellen Langer

A

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.

B

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.

A

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. Dr. Langer's 45 years of research show us that that single distinction can dramatically reduce social stress. That's why she's often called the mother of mindfulness. She's a psychologist, Harvard professor, and author of the books the Mindful Body and Finding Happy, both of which argue that thinking differently is good for our mood and for our bodies. If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism. Mindfulness is really trendy right now.

B

Oh, it's been trendy for the last, I don't know, 30 years, but okay,

A

right now, mindfulness is trendy. And like many things that have nobody

B

knows what it is. That's exactly right.

A

The word gets overused to the point of corruption. Yeah, like authenticity. Like these things that actually are really important, but they lose their substance. And so just as a really good level set.

B

Okay, let's start by my telling your audience what is mindfulness?

A

There we go. What is it? Because it's not some ooey, gooey, hippie dippy thing.

B

No, it's not a hippie dippy thing at all. In fact, when people hear the word mindfulness, many think of meditation. And meditation is fine. Meditation is a practice. You sit quietly for 20 minutes twice a day, take yourself out of the world, repeat a mantra. And I did some of the early research on meditation. It's wonderful. But that's different from what I do. Mindfulness, as I study it, is not a practice. It's just a way of being that naturally follows from an understanding that uncertainty is ubiquitous. We don't know. We think we know. In fact, one of my definitions of mindlessness, the other side of this is that we're frequently in error, but rarely in doubt. You know everything. We're taught in school by our parents. The world at large teaches us absolutes, and these absolutes are invariably wrong part of the time. So, you know, I'm an A plus plus student. When I was a student, and I go to this horse event and this man says, well, I watch his horse for him because he wants to get his horse a hot dog. What, are you kidding? 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 the 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 think about it. Most of our facts are facts, at least that come from science. When you do an experiment, what you get at the end of this is a probability. And the probability is that if we were to do this exact same thing again, we're likely to get the same findings. So imagine we wanted to see, do horses eat meat? We'd have to pick what kind of horses. Not all horses are the same. How heavy are they? We'd have to decide when the last time they were to be fed before the experiment. How much meat would you mix with how much grain? And at the end, we'd find that most of the horses didn't eat meat. It's a mouthful, so it's shortened. Horses don't eat meat. But it's simply wrong. The other one that I'm fond of sharing with people is, okay, don't feel put on the spot. Simon, how much is one plus one? Everybody knows.

A

I'm going to take a wild guess and go two.

B

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

A

When you. 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.

B

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 know, but they think you might know. So they don't go near the situation, or they pretend nobody knows. And then everything becomes new again. That's top down. You just accept you don't know. Then you're going to be present. Bottom up is walk outside a place you've lived for 10, 15, 30 years, whatever, notice three new things. Notice three new things about the person you live with. You don't live with anybody. Three new things about a friend, 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.

A

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.

B

No, no. Our brains are taught to respond that way. People have also been mindlessly taught that evaluation is part of events. People are good or bad. Things are good or bad. Consequences are good or bad. But in fact, the valence of a consequence, whether it's good or bad, is in our heads, not in events. So stress. Everybody thinks they have to experience stress. They don't. All they need to do is to see that that situation that they're scared of first probably won't even happen second that if it happens, there are advantages to that. And this is a bigger one because people are, you know, they're just sure, this is awful, this is wonderful. You know, 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. Cause I know when I talk like this, people say, what the hell do you know from the ivory tower? You know, there you sit in Cambridge at Harvard, I'm always compelled. Wait a second, I, I'm now 79. You can't believe I haven't gone through lots of things in my life. So let me just tell you one that I write about 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 smoke. It was very scary. My dogs were fine. And the next day I called the insurance agent and he says in the 20 years he's been doing this job, this is the first time I, that the damage was worse than the call. So people always go, oh my God, oh my God. He gets there and you know, it's no big deal and. But to me, I had already lost everything. I lost throwing my sanity after. It wasn't going to help. But now the story gets really good. So I leave my friend's house where 80% of what I owned had been destroyed. I go to the Charles Hotel and with my two dogs and I'm a sight to be seen. I go out now, Christmas Eve, I come back and my room is full of gifts. Not from the owners or the management of the hotel, but from the so called little people, the people who park my car, the staff, the people, the waiters and waitresses in the restaurant. I mean, it took me almost a year, Simon, to be able to tell the story without it bringing happy tears to my eyes. Now here's the thing. Every Christmas I'm reminded of, of the basic goodness of so many people. And that brings a smile to my face and warmth to my heart. And I don't remember except for one thing. I remember nothing that I lost in the fire. So net. Net this thing that was more awful than what most people are stressed about turned out to be a positive experience. Now, I don't think that I'm saying, when I got there, I said, oh well, who the hell cares? So I don't have a house. You know, I suffered the way most people would suffer. But then talk to myself about it and it became a very different event.

A

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, living in

B

caveman time, first of all, but this

A

body we have as a legacy machine, it's still. It's still the same machine that the. That was back in caveman times trying to manage itself. In a modern day, I would say

B

you should be eating with your hands, that you'd be walking around even when it's cold out without shoes on. You know, there's a thing called progress. Some call it evolution. I don't. But things change.

A

Technological progress to make our lives easier, safer. All the rest of it is not the same as our brains reacting to a rustle in the leaves for fear that something might try to eat us or kill us or rob us. The modern interpretation.

B

Well, you're saying we were designed this way, and I'm saying as we're designed, we change.

A

But the human animal hasn't evolved. Our brains haven't evolved at all.

B

Oh, mine has.

A

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.

B

But wait a second. But all of this was theory. You're presuming that there wasn't a caveman who didn't respond this way when there was a rustle in the lead.

A

I think he got eaten. I'm pretty sure he got eaten.

B

No, that he didn't say to him, that's probably a squirrel or whatever lives in the woods out there. And then we get back to the horses, don't eat meat. You know, that we're fed theory and forget that it's theory. Theory is a guess. It's a smart guess, but it's still a guess, and it doesn't account for deviation.

A

I'm not disagreeing with the importance and premise. No, no, no, I'm not. I'm not disagreeing 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. 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's. And that stress response is not always. Is not always bad.

B

Okay, so let's say that once you feel, oh, my God, how long does it take you to say, oh, it's nothing.

A

Right.

B

All right. Okay. And I'm saying at the least, but I'm saying a lot more than this. The more mindful you are, the quicker you respond to anything. Because mindfulness, you're aware of change. When you're mindless, you're holding things still. When you're mindful, you're always aware that everything is changing.

A

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.

B

No, but it's not as extreme and the negative as you're saying either. But I gave you an extreme example.

A

Yeah.

B

Now, most of the time when people are stressed, it has nothing to do with anything that big. They're stressed because they forgot to make a phone call. They forgot to get the report in on time. They burnt the potatoes. They are told that they have to have some minor surgery. First of all, in order to experience stress, you need two things. You need to have a belief that something's going to happen and then that when it happens, it's going to be awful. Now, we can't predict. This is another thing that we've grossly misunderstood. You can predict for the group. You can't predict for the individual. So let's say I'm playing who's the biggest basketball person this day? These days, Michael Jordan was the first time I told this story. So if he's still big, we'll use Michael Jordan. So Ellen Langer is having a foul shooting contest with Michael Jordan. They each get to shoot one basket. How much of your life savings are you going to wager on Michael Jordan winning? Okay, so now. Oh, were you kidding? It's a slam dunk. You'd have to be foolish not to bet as much as you can. But let's step back a little. Michael Jordan on occasionally misses not frequently, but on occasion. You're talking about your whole life savings. Ellen Langer, although you don't know it more than on occasion, gets one in certainly nowhere near Michael Jordan. But let's say Michael Jordan had a fight with his spouse right before. Or Michael Jordan didn't get any sleep or, you know, he sneezed right before he took the shot. I mean, it could be a million things. And so for that one basket, I very well could win. But if Michael Jordan and I were each shooting 100 baskets, that's when you should put your money down. Okay, now that's all fine, but for all of us, we're trying to predict the single event. We're not trying to predict, you know, how correct the weather forecast is over time. It's when I walk outside today, are they going to be right or not? And everybody knows that they're often not right. 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. Three, if you're too lazy, three reasons why it might not happen so you immediately feel better. Because the first reaction, oh, my God, maybe it won't even happen. Now comes the harder part. Let's assume it does happen. How is that actually an advantage? And there's always an advantage. And if you can find the advantages, you don't become frazzled. I mean, my life is, you know, I'm human, so it's not entirely stress free, but it's virtually stressful. I mean, you have to hit me over the head very hard for me to react. 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? Right now, all right? So I'd go have lunch. You know, the funny thing was my Internet then went out. I don't just talk the talk. I walked the walk and I went and had lunch. But for a younger person, a person, oh, my God, this is a career maker of Britain. People talk themselves into, into all sorts of stressful events that could have been terrible. If you look back over the last, as many as you can remember, let's say last three times you were stressed, you're probably going to find the thing you were worried about didn't even happen. Yeah. 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 health.

A

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. I was trying to make before was I want people to have realistic standards that. 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. Or understand stress or get through stress in a healthier way, which is the standard here. That's the only reason I was pushing on the biology, which is. I just want people to recognize that the standard we're setting here is not. Is not that something actually happens.

B

Sure, sure.

A

And then the part that 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 happened or the thing that could happen. We get stressed by the story we tell ourselves of what could happen. And, and it's our own story, which could be fact, but it could also be fiction. That's what's generating the stress and the anxiety is the story. Mindfulness is a way of changing the story.

B

And not only that, but most of our stories were developed at a much earlier time in our lives. So at 30, do you want to be reacting to what you understood only partially when you were 20? That's dictate. Or when you were 15 at your age now, do you want to still be stressed by the things that bother you now when you're 60, without ever rethinking them? But yes. I didn't mean for people to think that, you know, that's why I use the example of my house burning down. There are real things that happen, although most of our stress is not a function of things at that level, if you are experiencing something, you have available to yourself opportunity to reevaluate it, to reframe it, to understand it differently. And the more mindful you are, the more alternative ways of understanding it come to mind. Next time you're stressed, ask yourself, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience? And almost instantly, people realize, yeah, it's not a tragedy. And then you breathe more easily.

A

I want to share a story. I've told this story a bunch of times, but I love it. I was watching the Olympics, and I noticed that the journalists were all asking the athletes the same question. Are you nervous or were you nervous? And all the athletes all gave the same answer, no, I'm excited. No, I was excited. And it got me thinking, which is, if you think about what the characteristics of nervousness are, it's like your heart starts pounding, your hands get clammy, you start envisioning the future. But if you think about what excitement is, your heart starts pounding, your hands get clammy, you start envisioning the future. And the reason the journalists were asking, are you nervous? It's because they would be nervous, because they're not elite athletes. They would be nervous, which is why they asked the question. And all the elite athletes had learned to interpret this data not as nerves but as excitement, which is one of the reasons they're Olympians in the first place, which is they have this mindset of, let's give this a try versus let's run away from it. I was so interested by the simple mind shift interpretation that I decided to test it out. I was on a plane and the plane hit very severe turbulence. And ordinarily I got. I, you know, sort of get like this and my heart starts pounding and I start envisioning the future and I get nervous. And I literally said under my breath out loud to myself, this is exciting. And instantly I was fine.

B

Yeah, that's great. That's. Well, you know, it turns out all emotions are biochemically similar in the way you just described. You know, so let's say you're going out on a date on first date, and you see yourself as anxious versus you see yourself as excited. The same thing you're explaining now. You posture yourself in very different ways, and chances are you're more likely to have the second date if you saw yourself as excited. And so what people don't understand is that emotions are choices, okay, Biochemically similar, then you can call it by one of several different things. And what you call it will determine basically how you respond and subsequent feelings about it.

A

And whether it's a date or a job interview or a conversation with your boss when you come into it, 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. 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.

B

Yes, for sure. But, you know, to go back to what you were saying before, if a person can't do it and seems a little crazed, it's fine. If you're so sure the person you're talking to is seeing you that way, then you call it by that, say, boy, I guess I'm more nervous about this than I thought I would be. Yeah. Then it's a non event.

A

Then it relieves the tension, doesn't it?

B

Yeah. Yeah. And the person can no longer evaluate you by that because you've stolen his thunder in some sense.

A

So. So we've lived a life of doing the opposite of what you recommend most of us.

B

Yeah.

A

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?

B

I mean, the first thing is really to try to garner a healthy respect for uncertainty, which, you know, just know you don't know. So every time you're thinking, you know, and that's hard because when you think, you know, you're not there to know that you're not there to make the change. So do then noticing three new things, five new things. But there's something else that I have some extraordinary research findings. You know, we're able to help people with chronic illnesses turn back time somewhat, heal our wounds fast. I mean, lots of. But the one thing after all these years that has become more important to me, seeming more important than any of these, is the simple idea that behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective or else the actor wouldn't do it. And you're an actor. So every time you do something and then you look at it and you think, oh, God, how could I have been so stupid, clumsy, aggressive, whatever it is, 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 that barking. And you just sort of respond as foolishly as the dog is. If you said to yourself, why 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. But the dog is afraid. And if. Imagine if you say to yourself, my dog is afraid, therefore I'm going to hit him. No, I mean, only the cruelest among us would do that. You know, we can't change these behaviors. This is what I found most interesting. So I could come to you, Simon, and say, please help me. I am so gullible it defies belief. We both agree I'm gullible. And so I'm going to make a commitment. I'm going to do whatever all the experts Say to do, but it's never going to be effective. And why is that? Because going forward, I'm not being gullible. Going forward, I'm being trusting. And as long as I value being trusting, there are times I'm going to see gullible. An example I would use is, Simon, you are so damn inconsistent. It must drive everybody who knows you crazy. Oh, my God. Look, I did all those, you know, 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.

A

I mean, I love this.

B

That would make people more mindful, because part of our mindlessness. Well, first of all, whenever we're being evaluative, we're being mindless. Right. We're seeing what this behavior is rather than realizing it can be understood in multiple ways.

A

Yeah.

B

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 follow the script.

A

What's nice about talking to you is you're reinforcing a lot of the lessons I've learned along the way. One thing which has helped me as an entrepreneur is embracing uncertainty. When I was young, as an entrepreneur, I thought I 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.

B

Well, you see it now, I think that the posture that a successful person should have is to be confident but uncertain. And that's the way you were describing yourself. And in the world today, confidence and uncertainty are conflated. I mean, 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, the way I've always

A

described myself, as strong opinions loosely held. And because I speak in hard words and because I sound like this is the answer, I think people think that I'm close minded to some things. But I love when somebody has a good argument to prove me wrong. And people who want to debate or fight with me, what they often don't is I'm actually listening. I'm actually listening. If their logic makes sense to me, I'm all in. And what's really funny is I, 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.

B

Well, so what we should do is start the buzzword. You know, when anybody is being certain, somebody should, you know, call them mindless, you know, just have a little buzzer. And you should see the response when I would ask somebody, how much is one plus one? You know, what are you, an idiot? You know, why are you asking me this? And they would tune out.

A

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

B

Studying for a PhD, you come to learn more and more about less and less until you know all about nothing.

A

I mean, isn't that beautiful? But how much of is this, what we're actually describing is the, the value of getting older and just wisdom. And how do young people embrace what you're talking about more readily?

B

I teach a large class on health psychology at Harvard. And so every year I'm addressing this issue. You know, I said, here's what happens if. But why wait now? But before I do that, make that clearer. Little kids, you know, you take a little kid and you Put him in a room and all that's. There are cardboard boxes and he's going to make games out of it or shea 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. I think that once, especially when there's some language, little kids are very mindful and we teach it out of them, which is very, very sad. And then there are people who are so stubborn in their thoughts that they don't experience the wisdom of getting older, but in a more general way. Yeah, I think that, you know, all you need to do is a little reflection, you know, so you're two years old and you scrape your knee and you're screaming bloody murder. And then you're five years old and you're really too old for that. I mean, it hurts, but you know, it's going to stop hurting. But now you're seven years old or however old it is, and Jamie or Johnny didn't send you a valentine, you know, in the class, and, oh, my God, the world's going to. No one's going to love me. And then you become 15, 16. And so if you're doing the looking back, you notice that, yeah, all the things you were expecting to happen that no longer happen, that pimple didn't mean you were going to be forever, you know, marked as somebody unattractive, as you were marking yourself. But there are some people who probably don't do that. But surely, you know, don't become wiser with age. Then. Then it's very sad.

A

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. Our parents and overcoming how our parents, you know, screwed us up.

B

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 and 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 box. So it's always interesting. So there's that learning conditionally. Second is recognizing that everything can be understood in multiple ways, and teaching young people, people at any age to become comfortable with uncertainty 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, you know, and we have so much data, Simon, that, 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 mindful. Here's another thing, only tangentially related. So when I give these lectures in person, I ask, is there somebody really tall out there? Six, five. And I don't know why, but I always seem to have a six footer in the audience. I invite him to the stage and there we stand. And I'm five, three. And we look silly together, right? And so all I just stand there, let everybody see us, and then I say, should we do anything physical the same way? Probably not. It's ridiculous. His hand is three inches larger than mine. So now here's the rule. The more different you are from the person who wrote the rule, wrote the directions, wrote the instructions, the more different you are from that person, the more important it is for you not to mindlessly do it the way they're telling you to do it.

A

I want to go back to the very beginning of this conversation, which is context, context, context, right? Because without the context, there is a point where somebody will just become annoying to hang out with because they're, they're like, you know, like the one 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 Bruder, he taught his kids this very lesson, right? Which is to question what think, what the world means. And he was standing at a crosswalk with his kids and he started to go and, and, and he, and the kids pointed out and says, but dad, it says don't walk and 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.

B

That's great.

A

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, and, and, 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 get hit by cars. And it actually means stand still.

B

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 would. I had this guy that I was dating very briefly right after graduate school and. Wonderful man. But we got to a crosswalk, there was no traffic.

A

Yeah.

B

He stopped and I'm walking, and I just said, it's just not going to work.

A

I mean, like, I'm a New Yorker where jaywalking is just part of the culture, you know, but the drivers are used to it, so they expect it. If you go to a city where they're not used to it, it's actually more dangerous. But it is funny to me when I go to a city to your point, when it says, don't walk and there's no traffic in any direction and everyone's standing there. And I was like, I don't understand. But what. There's nothing. You know, I start walking and somebody says to me, simon, you're going to get us killed. I'm like, with what car?

B

Right. So the worst example, or the best example is in London, where they know everybody mindlessly is looking to the right.

A

Right. Look left in the street. Yeah.

B

Whatever it is. And yeah. And they have big signs 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.

A

The big takeaway from this conversation is context. Context, Context.

B

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 were 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 it's very important because whoever determined the context is controlling your behavior. So let me give you immediate.

A

Well, hold on. Let me make my argument for context

B

first, because your argument holds after I give you the example, if it does.

A

But I didn't even say you start. You interrupted and started disagreeing with me before I made my point. All I did was say a word.

B

No, but I know what the word means to you. Okay, go on. I'll be quiet and I'll even try to listen.

A

For me, when I say context, what I mean is, is like. And it goes back to the don't walk. The context is, is this sign a suggestion? Or is there a reason for this sign? And if I go to my. My reaction to a personal situation when I say, what's the context here? Which is like, am I reacting to Reality or am I reacting to the story I'm telling myself? 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 100% certain this has happened? Am I 100% certain this is going to happen? And eventually that logic falls down if the answer is no.

B

Okay, so when we think of context, consider, you know, you're at a football game and a football game, it's great to get up and yell and scream and whatever, versus you're in a library, right? In the library, that context demands that we be quiet so as not to influence other people. Right? Okay, so now I'm in the hospital. They have visiting hours. A hospital is like the library. My mother is. 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, okay, 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, 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 grass. Now assume instead that sign says, Ellen Langer says don't walk on the grass. All of a sudden you realize that that grass belongs to somebody. Maybe I can negotiate with them. Maybe she's not home. Maybe they don't care now because things have changed since you put okay. So the point is, everything that has been created was created by people. And once we put people back in the equation. Yep. 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. But just as surely when you want people to feel more room to make decisions, you put people in. One of the names that I was going to use for the Mindful Body book was who says so? I say we should all become our three year old selves. Because when you say who says so? All of a sudden you realize you have options.

A

I'm not sure I agree with this because let's go back to the hospital example, right. Which is what we do not want to create or confuse is that mindfulness means that you get to do what you want, when you want because your context is your context and it's not their context. And then, and then you have a, you just have a society of people. Just sort of like the way I think about context, which is, I understand that rules were passed for good reason when they were passed and they may or may not be relevant anymore. Right, I understand that. But sometimes rules are enforced because they are on the books, even though we've lost sight of why they were passed. So go back to the hospital example. Visiting hours are between seven to seven, whatever it is right now. I understand, I can ask somebody 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. And overnight the staff goes down and they need to put all their attention on the patients and they just can't deal with all the guests. And so there might be a very good reason. And because nighttime you want the patients to sleep and there's less noise. And so if, if you're with your mom who's, who's, you know, has metastasized cancer, you know, it's not like I'm gonna 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. And so it's.

B

Simon, you're right. You're right.

A

It's a negotiation which is like. And. And. And you've said it. Which is appealing to humanity, which is. I understand the rules. And what I'm asking is, can we please make an exc. I understand.

B

That's exactly. Of course, I didn't, you know, come on.

A

Like a. I don't want to.

B

I think you're completely right. I should not make it seem that way. I should not make it seem that way. But I do have very strong feelings about rules. This comes across well because it's been, you know, I mean, all these years, I. I see people heard, depressed, unpleasant. Because of rules that make no sense.

A

Yes. So when I was quite young, when I was in my sort of. Oh, I probably was maybe 13, 14 years old, I started to become really curious about mind over matter. Somebody had used the phrase, or I heard it, you know, mind over matter. And I did an experiment in my bed. So my bed was up against a wall. And once that 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 looking out into the room, and I closed my eyes and imagined what if I was on the other side of the bed, still on my left shoulder, what if I was on the other side of my bed? And. And if I were to open my eyes right now, I would see wall. And the reason I picked that is because wall is an easy thing to imagine, right? And I just lay there concentrating, concentrating, concentrating that if I 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 the wall is 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.

B

Yeah. So, you know, and the reason you're talking to me about this is because of my work since 1979, about mind body unity. So the idea that you have a mind and a body, then you have a question. How do they talk to each other? How do you get from a fuzzy thought to something material? No one's been able to answer that. And I thought, well, this is silly. Mind, body, they're just words. If we make it one unit, then wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting the body. And I had two very early experiences. The one, I was married when I was obscenely young, and I go to Paris on my honeymoon, and I order a mixed grill. On the mixed grill is a pancreas. I asked my then husband, which of these is the pancreas. He points, I then, 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. It 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, why are you laughing? He said, because that's chicken. You ate the pancreas a long time ago. So I had made myself sick. Now, to go back, the other pancreas story I have, most people don't have a single one. I have two good pancreas stories.

A

I don't have any.

B

My. Well, you can buy one. Don't borrow. 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, you know, 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, you know, what's going on, the findings of these studies, you know, the. The one that many people know about, the counterclockwise study. And the reason I think people know about it is because if you tune in to the Simpsons, go to Havana they talk about the study, you know, you've made it, Simon, what's the Simpsons?

A

I have not been mentioned on the Simpsons yet. I'm still working at it.

B

All right, anyway, so this was a study where we retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier. We had elderly men live there as if they were their younger self. So I put their minds back 20 years. Okay. So they would be discussing past events as if they were just unfolding. And five days, in five days, that'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 chambermaids how much exercise you get. They say 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 tired. We take a ton of measures. Then what we do is we divide them into two groups. One group, the important group, we tell them, your work is exercise. Making a bed is like working at this machine at the gym. So we persuade them in a short discussion that their work is exercise. Now we do our follow up measures and 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 changed their minds. Now, see, their work was exercise. They lost weight. There was a change in waist to hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure came down. And some way that really says more than most people understand, it speaks to what we call the nocebo effect. So everybody knows a placebo. You take a nothing, you think it's something, and it does the work of the something. A nocebo is you take a something, but you think it's a nothing, and it takes away the effects there. Yeah. So as you were saying, you know, that it works, we can bring about good or bad for ourselves.

A

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.

B

Yeah. And I think that being a fighter is a bad metaphor. You know, I was giving a Talk to about 5,000 people who were dealing with cancer, and this was very early on in my work, and one man objected strenuously, and he said his wife was a fighter. You know, she fought the cancer, and you Know, and I got through the, the day with that, making sure he was okay. And everybody understood more fully what I meant. And I thought about, and I thought, you know, if a little kid was pulling on your pants, look, you wouldn't see yourself as fighting the kid. Right. It's an annoyance. And so when you bring out the full artillery fighting the cancer, you already raise the opponent to a very big position. Oh. So let me just tell you about this. The next to last study, we inflict a wound, a minor wound, because they wouldn't let us do the study, and I don't want to hurt people anyway. And then we put people individually in front of a clock. Unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged. So for a third of the people, the clock is going twice as fast as real time. For a third of the people, it's going half as fast as real time. For a third of the people, it's real time. Now, most people would assume that wound is going to heal when the wound heals. I mean, what's the difference, right? But no, in fact, the wound heals based on clock time, perceived time. So we have demonstration after demonstration of the extraordinary control we have over health and well being. I mean, we had 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.

A

So I used to wear an oura ring.

B

Yeah.

A

And my aura ring used to tell me more often than not that, that I wasn't getting enough sleep.

B

Right.

A

And then I got something called eight sleep, which are these sheets. I got them because they can cool your bed. That's really why I got them, because I like a cold bed. But they just happen to measure sleep, which I don't care about, but they happen to measure it. And the sleep score I get from eight sleep is always fantastic. I'm like the favorite now, by the way. My sleep habits 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 was more efficient than keeping the air conditioning on all night.

B

Right.

A

And I honestly can say that I sleep better now, but I don't know that I'm actually sleeping better. But because I'm being told that I'm sleeping better, I believe it.

B

Yeah.

A

So I believe. So the stress created by the oura 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.

B

Okay, so I have one. That's the negative bragging if there is a trigger. So I had believed always that if I have coffee, caffeine, but it has been coffee after 12 in the afternoon, it keeps me up till 3 o' clock at night. However, if the last cup of coffee I have is at 10 of 12 in the afternoon, it has no effect on me.

A

Right.

B

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. All. All of us. Almost all the time.

A

Yeah.

B

Yeah. And you know, when you're mindless, you're not there to know you're not there

A

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.

B

Now. That's very good. You're trying to hoist me by my own petard and I didn't even know I had a petard. Whatever. Petard.

A

I can tell you what a petard is. You know, in cartoons, the little, the little bomb that's round with a little fuse, that's a petard.

B

Oh, is that a petard?

A

Yeah, that's a petard. So to be hoisted by a petard.

B

Why would anybody have their own petard? It just. Yeah, it just means, you know, that

A

means you blew up. You're blown up by your own grenade.

B

Yes.

A

Hoisted by your own petard.

B

At any rate, 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.

A

But you're still talking about likelihood. Because even your research, there is uncertainty.

B

Of course. Of course. So it's interesting because people say to me, you know, Ellen, 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 traffic? And then I say to you, Simon, if you are mindful, she wouldn't have ended up in the traffic in the first place. Second, if you're going to pull her out, you know, you don't know whether the driver sees you pulling 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.

A

I think I would find. I would recommend finding a different example, because we can't make it revisionist, right? If, if something bad is bound to happen and we say, well, if you were mindful, it wouldn't have happened 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 is. Okay. No, And I will come up with a really good example.

B

But good. You think, while I talk for a second. Because no matter what you're doing, you can do it mindfully or mindlessly. If you're doing it mindlessly, you're not there. The neurons aren't firing. There's no advantage to doing it.

A

Wait, hold on. Your definition is two things now, because. Because mindlessness in your, in your car example is about reaction and an automated response.

B

And so that doesn't have to be an automated response, though. What I'm saying is I grab you quickly because you're my little child now.

A

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.

B

I'm sure at your age, you've been protected from something that was actually good for you because the person misjudged.

A

And I've also been protected from things that were actually bad for me.

B

Yeah, but who's to say before the. Before the protection.

A

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.

B

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 athlete? Because the robot you see has only been programmed for certain things. And if you're uncertain, we know something that hasn't gotten into the program could be operating.

A

I'm gonna. I'm gonna end right there. Ellen, so much fun. Thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

B

I enjoyed it. Simon, you stay well.

A

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, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsey Garbinius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. And if you want more cool stuff or just to find out what I'm up to, visit SimonSinek.com until next time, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.