- 3 months ago
What if everything you’ve been told about health, stress, and aging is wrong?
Today, the legendary Dr. Ellen Langer – pioneering Harvard psychologist and global mindfulness legend, renowned for her 50+ years of groundbreaking research – joins Mel for the conversation of a lifetime.
She says you can use your mind to heal your body, and she has 50 years of headline-making science to back it up.
You’ll hear about people healing faster when the clock on the wall sped up.
Elderly men getting stronger and younger by pretending they traveled back in time.
Hotel housekeepers losing weight simply by being told their work counted as exercise.
And that’s just scratching the surface.
Dr. Langer’s research shows that your beliefs and attention can boost your health, and today, she’s sharing exactly how you can apply this science into your daily life.
You’re going to learn how to use your mind to heal your body and give yourself the gift of a healthier, happier life – from the inside out.
You’ll also learn:
-The mindset shifts that can boost immunity, ease pain, and speed up recovery
-The famed research studies that will stop you in your tracks and make you rethink your health
-How to reframe regret and stop getting stuck focusing on the past
-What to do next time you or a loved one is facing a chronic illness or scary diagnosis
Dr. Langer says it’s clear:
You are more powerful than you think.
Your beliefs shape your biology.
This episode shows you how.
For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page: https://www.melrobbins.com/episode/ep...
Get tickets to Mel's live tour, Let Them Tour 2026: https://www.melrobbins.com/the-let-th...
Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram: / themelrobbinspodcast
I’m just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I’ll see you in the next episode.
In this episode:
00:00 Meet the Guest
03:40 How Mindfulness Can Improve Your Life
14:18 How to Stop Living on Autopilot
26:06 Hard Evidence the Mind Heals the Body
49:17 How to Stop Stress from Killing You
53:35 How Mindfulness Can Ease Chronic Illness
01:01:30 How to Make Any Decision the Right One
01:13:05 Create a Life You’re Truly Living
Today, the legendary Dr. Ellen Langer – pioneering Harvard psychologist and global mindfulness legend, renowned for her 50+ years of groundbreaking research – joins Mel for the conversation of a lifetime.
She says you can use your mind to heal your body, and she has 50 years of headline-making science to back it up.
You’ll hear about people healing faster when the clock on the wall sped up.
Elderly men getting stronger and younger by pretending they traveled back in time.
Hotel housekeepers losing weight simply by being told their work counted as exercise.
And that’s just scratching the surface.
Dr. Langer’s research shows that your beliefs and attention can boost your health, and today, she’s sharing exactly how you can apply this science into your daily life.
You’re going to learn how to use your mind to heal your body and give yourself the gift of a healthier, happier life – from the inside out.
You’ll also learn:
-The mindset shifts that can boost immunity, ease pain, and speed up recovery
-The famed research studies that will stop you in your tracks and make you rethink your health
-How to reframe regret and stop getting stuck focusing on the past
-What to do next time you or a loved one is facing a chronic illness or scary diagnosis
Dr. Langer says it’s clear:
You are more powerful than you think.
Your beliefs shape your biology.
This episode shows you how.
For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page: https://www.melrobbins.com/episode/ep...
Get tickets to Mel's live tour, Let Them Tour 2026: https://www.melrobbins.com/the-let-th...
Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram: / themelrobbinspodcast
I’m just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I’ll see you in the next episode.
In this episode:
00:00 Meet the Guest
03:40 How Mindfulness Can Improve Your Life
14:18 How to Stop Living on Autopilot
26:06 Hard Evidence the Mind Heals the Body
49:17 How to Stop Stress from Killing You
53:35 How Mindfulness Can Ease Chronic Illness
01:01:30 How to Make Any Decision the Right One
01:13:05 Create a Life You’re Truly Living
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00:00I can give you a test on any topic where you can do miserably.
00:00:04I can also give you a test on that same topic where you'll do well.
00:00:08It's all who knows, right?
00:00:10The whole thing's rigged.
00:00:11It's rigged against many people who just accept it.
00:00:15Hey, it's Mel, and today on the Mel Robbins Podcast,
00:00:18you're going to learn how to use your mind to heal your body
00:00:21from the number one Harvard psychologist and professor, Dr. Ellen Langer.
00:00:26She has been researching this subject and teaching about it for over 50 years.
00:00:32The control we have over our health and well-being is enormous.
00:00:35Everybody accepts that a placebo is effective.
00:00:38I think it's our most effective medicine.
00:00:41So what's going on?
00:00:41You take this nothing, you think it's something, and then it acts like something.
00:00:46Everything that is was at one time a decision, which means it's mutable.
00:00:50Everything can be changed.
00:00:52If something doesn't work, change it.
00:00:53Most of 50 years of research has shown me virtually all of us are mindless almost all the time.
00:01:00And when you're mindless, you're not aware that you're not there.
00:01:05Okay, so you're not there, but you don't know that you're not there.
00:01:07No matter what you're doing, you're doing it mindfully or mindlessly.
00:01:11Most of us are sealed in unlived lives, and we're oblivious.
00:01:14As it is right now, we don't see what's right in front of us.
00:01:18We don't hear what's being said.
00:01:19We are oblivious to the choices that we have.
00:01:23Rather than waste your time being stressed over making the right decision,
00:01:27what we should be doing is simply make the decision right.
00:01:31Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
00:01:35Hey, it's Mel.
00:01:42My team was showing me that 57% of you who watch here on YouTube are not subscribed yet.
00:01:49Could you do me a quick favor?
00:01:50Hit subscribe.
00:01:51It's free.
00:01:52And that way you don't miss any of the episodes that I post here on YouTube.
00:01:56It also lets me know that you're enjoying the guests and you love the content that I'm bringing
00:02:00you because I want to make sure you don't miss anything.
00:02:04So thank you, thank you, thank you for hitting subscribe.
00:02:07All right, you're ready?
00:02:08I bet you are.
00:02:09So let's dive in.
00:02:10The legend, Dr. Ellen Langer.
00:02:14Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
00:02:16Thanks for having me.
00:02:17I am so thrilled you're here.
00:02:20I'm just, I can't wait to get into this.
00:02:22And I guess where I want to start is the person who is with us right now has made time.
00:02:28They have no time, but they've made time to be here with you, Dr. Langer, to learn from
00:02:33you.
00:02:33What might change about their life?
00:02:35Once you understand what I mean by mindfulness and how easy it is, it has nothing to do with
00:02:40meditation.
00:02:41No matter what you're doing, whether you're doing a podcast, reading, eating, taking care
00:02:46of a child, playing tennis, you're doing it mindfully or mindlessly.
00:02:51And the consequences of being in one state of mind or the other are enormous.
00:02:56Everything changes.
00:02:57I had this slide when I used to give these lectures, as I still do.
00:03:02And I say on the slide, virtually all of our problems, whether personal, interpersonal,
00:03:09professional, global, are the direct or indirect consequences of our mindlessness.
00:03:16Now, it's interesting because then I tell them, just among us and the other 10 million
00:03:21people I've said this to, I really mean all.
00:03:23So that's enormous, right?
00:03:25I'm saying all of our problems are a result of our mindlessness.
00:03:29So if we're able to get people to understand how easy it is to change their mind, to become
00:03:36more mindful, whatever ails them should dissipate.
00:03:40So what made you want to study the mind-body connection in the first place?
00:03:46Let me tell you three stories.
00:03:48Okay.
00:03:48Okay.
00:03:49So I got married when I was obscenely young.
00:03:53Don't tell anybody.
00:03:54And we go to Paris on our honeymoon.
00:03:57We're in this restaurant and I order a mixed grill.
00:03:59On plate was pancreas.
00:04:01So I asked my then husband, which of these is the pancreas?
00:04:04He was more sophisticated than I am.
00:04:06Points to that.
00:04:07I eat everything.
00:04:08I'm a big eater.
00:04:09Now comes the moment of truth.
00:04:12To interrupt myself, I still don't understand why I thought that being married meant I had
00:04:17to eat the pancreas.
00:04:18But somehow I felt as a young person, a sophisticated woman of the world, because I was now married,
00:04:25should eat it.
00:04:25I start eating it and I literally get sick.
00:04:30He starts laughing.
00:04:32I said, why are you laughing?
00:04:33He said, because that's chicken.
00:04:35You ate the pancreas earlier.
00:04:38Okay.
00:04:38So I had made myself sick.
00:04:41Now we go to my mother who had breast cancer and the cancer had metastasized to her pancreas.
00:04:50That's the end game.
00:04:52Okay.
00:04:53So the medical world was no longer treating her.
00:04:55She became crippled because they weren't going to exercise her limbs, which made sense
00:05:02if you assume she was going to die.
00:05:03And then magically, the cancer was totally gone.
00:05:07So somehow I made myself sick.
00:05:09She made herself well.
00:05:10And of course, during those times, I hadn't yet conceived of mind-body unity.
00:05:14But I had another story that was kind of fun.
00:05:17I think I tell it in The Mindful Body, but I haven't told it on a podcast before.
00:05:21So when I was about, I guess I was 14, I had a friend and I lived in Westchester and I had
00:05:28a friend who lived in the Bronx and she was 15 or 16.
00:05:32So she was in charge because she was the older woman.
00:05:35And I would go visit her every Saturday.
00:05:37And every Saturday, for whatever reason, we'd go and have, she would have, a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.
00:05:44Now, I was always on a diet.
00:05:46So I never had it.
00:05:48Nevertheless, while she was eating, I was eating it with her in my mind.
00:05:53And I swear to you, Mel, that when she was finished, I was full.
00:05:58These things together suggest in each case that here I'm thinking that I'm eating, but
00:06:04I'm not eating and my body is feeling satisfied.
00:06:08I think I'm eating this pancreas and it's chicken, which I love, and then I get sick.
00:06:14Or my mother, however she did it, where the pancreatic cancer goes away.
00:06:22So do you believe your mom healed herself based on her thoughts?
00:06:25You know, it wasn't based on anything the medical world could explain.
00:06:29So what else is left?
00:06:31So those are examples of things that happened before you could articulate this theory about
00:06:38mind-body unity.
00:06:39So how do you articulate the theory now?
00:06:41Yes, your mind, people have no idea, I think, in general about what we're capable of.
00:06:48The power is enormous.
00:06:50And so the way I encapsulate this to make clear it's our physical well-being as well as our
00:06:57emotional and mental way of being is to question what people mindlessly accept without knowing
00:07:08they're accepting it, which is mind-body dualism.
00:07:10Mind-body dualism?
00:07:12Dualism.
00:07:12What does that mean?
00:07:12Exactly.
00:07:13Nobody knows what it means, but everybody acts-
00:07:15That's why you're here.
00:07:16Exactly.
00:07:16Everybody acts as if this is true.
00:07:18You have a mind and you have a body, as if these are separate.
00:07:22All right?
00:07:22And so if they're separate, you run into the problem of how do they speak to each other?
00:07:28Now, everybody knows that the mind is affecting the body in some way.
00:07:34Well, we know that because if you're stressed out, if you're ruminating, if you get really
00:07:38negative, you know that it makes your body feel bad.
00:07:41Yeah, but you see somebody vomiting and all of a sudden you feel like you're going to regurgitate
00:07:47and there's no reason except that person has stimulated this.
00:07:51So you're walking down the street in the fall, a leaf blows in your face, and all of a sudden
00:07:55you're startled.
00:07:56Your blood pressure and pulse increase until you say, oh, it was just a leaf.
00:08:00So we have lots of experiences like this, but way back when, the medical world believed
00:08:08that psychology was independent of health.
00:08:13And I'm sure doctors in the past still wanted you to be happy, but I think that they believed
00:08:19it was totally separate from the disease process.
00:08:23In the medical model, the belief was to get a disease, you have to have the introduction
00:08:28of an antigen.
00:08:29Without that, you know, okay, now people, and I think that I might have had some part
00:08:37in bringing it about, although people still get it wrong when they talk now about the
00:08:41mind-body connection.
00:08:42What do they get wrong?
00:08:43That's better than we have two separate things, now they're connected.
00:08:45Well, the reason it's wrong, how are they connected?
00:08:48How do you get from this fuzzy thing called a thought to something material called a body?
00:08:54And you can't explain it.
00:08:55I say, wait, these are just words.
00:08:57You know, this is going to sound silly, but you could have had mind, body, and elbows.
00:09:01And then we consider people in a different way.
00:09:03I say, let's just put mind and body back together.
00:09:07You're one person.
00:09:08It's one thing.
00:09:10Now think of it.
00:09:10If it's one thing, wherever you're putting one, mind and body, you're putting the other.
00:09:16What that means is that our minds have enormous control over our bodies.
00:09:24And once we recognize that, then we can harness some of our own power and cure many of the disorders
00:09:32or certainly help along many of the problems that afflict too many of us.
00:09:39So when you use the word mindful, though, you're not talking about meditation.
00:09:42You've got a very different definition for what mindfulness is when you're talking about
00:09:49the power of your mindset and its ability to influence your body.
00:09:54Dr. Langer, what does mindfulness mean to you?
00:09:57Okay, yes, very important.
00:09:59So when people hear the word mindfulness, in spite of the fact that I've been doing this
00:10:02for over 50 years, people still think of meditation.
00:10:06Meditation is fine.
00:10:07It's just different.
00:10:08Okay, to meditate, you take yourself out of the world and you sit still for 20 minutes
00:10:13twice a day.
00:10:14It's a practice.
00:10:16And what it's supposed to do, it's not mindfulness.
00:10:18It's supposed to lead you to become more mindful.
00:10:22Mindfulness, as I study, it is not a practice.
00:10:24It's just a way of being.
00:10:26And it results from a deep, deep, but easy, appreciation of the power of uncertainty.
00:10:32You know, we're taught by our parents, by schools, everything you read are giving us
00:10:38these absolutes, these rules, as if we know that this thing is true right now is going
00:10:44to be true forever.
00:10:46Everything is always changing.
00:10:47Everything looks different from different perspectives.
00:10:50So we can't know.
00:10:52Now, this came to mind to me years ago, but it's really, for me, was a very important incident.
00:10:58I met this horse event, remember that I'm a straight-A student, obnoxiously so, right?
00:11:04And this man asked me, can I watch his horse for him because he wants to get his horse a
00:11:09hot dog?
00:11:09Wait a minute.
00:11:10Horses don't eat hot dogs.
00:11:12They eat carrots, they eat grains, they don't eat meat.
00:11:16But I say yes, because I say yes to virtually everything.
00:11:20He came back with the hot dog and the horse ate it.
00:11:22And that's when I realized that everything I thought I knew could be wrong.
00:11:27Now, a normal person would be scared about that.
00:11:30For me, I was thrilled because that opened up a world of possibilities.
00:11:34And then I thought about it.
00:11:35And people don't know a lot about science.
00:11:37But what's very important for people to understand is science only gives us probabilities.
00:11:42All right, so if you were to do this experiment with horses, you'd have horses of this kind
00:11:50weighing this amount on this particular day who've been not eaten for this amount, this
00:11:56number of hours, given this amount of grain mixed with this amount of meat.
00:12:00When you do all of that, most of them don't eat meat.
00:12:04It's a mouthful.
00:12:05So it's shortened, horses don't eat meat.
00:12:07Correct.
00:12:08And that's the way we live our lives.
00:12:10And the hard part is that everything you mindlessly took in when you were younger is firmly there
00:12:17guiding your behavior when you're older.
00:12:19And just think about it.
00:12:20Do you want your 30-year-old self, what you're doing, to be dictated by your 15-year-old self
00:12:27or your 30-year-old self to dictate what's coming when you're 40 and 50 and 60?
00:12:33And we're oblivious to all of this.
00:12:35So years of research, close to 50 years of research, has shown me virtually all of us
00:12:41are mindless almost all the time.
00:12:43And when you're mindless, you're not aware that you're not there.
00:12:48Okay, so you're not there, but you don't know that you're not there.
00:12:50And so if you were to say, do horses eat meat?
00:12:54You'd say, no, horses don't eat meat.
00:12:55It would just be a natural response, but it would be wrong, at least in some contexts.
00:13:00Dr. Langer, when you become more mindful, what benefits do you see in your life?
00:13:04Well, the first thing is that you're engaged.
00:13:08You're awake.
00:13:09You're no longer responding like a robot.
00:13:11So you are.
00:13:13And, you know, I wrote a book a while ago on becoming an artist and shared the journey.
00:13:20And as you start to paint or do some new activity, if you let yourself become totally engaged,
00:13:27it's exhilarating.
00:13:29And then, let's say, the phone rings and all of a sudden your mood changes.
00:13:32And so you realize, wow, how you are more typically.
00:13:36People take as a baseline being mindless.
00:13:40When you're not feeling energetic, excited, or at least peaceful, you're not being mindful.
00:13:49So to feel any of those things, when you're happy, a robot isn't happy, a robot isn't relaxed,
00:13:56a robot isn't serene.
00:13:58So anytime you're feeling not like a robot, you're experiencing the joys of being mindful.
00:14:03And again, it's so easy.
00:14:05All you need to do is be there and recognize that the world we've been brought up in has
00:14:10taught us how not to be there, not be there, I think, in some ways to turn control of our
00:14:16lives over to other people.
00:14:18You know, for somebody that may be listening somewhere around the world, and they've never
00:14:24even considered that what they're experiencing in terms of their day-to-day life is that sort
00:14:33of robot mindlessness that hasn't even entertained the thought that there's an entirely different
00:14:42way to experience your life starting today.
00:14:46Yeah.
00:14:47When people, you know, if you're rushing someplace, just slow down, not as a rule, just to see
00:14:53that everything is still going to work.
00:14:56You know, you still have the same eight hours at work or 24 hours to be alive in a day, and
00:15:02your mood, your racing is not going to make it happen any better, any faster.
00:15:08Just to recognize you have options.
00:15:10Every time you call something by some name, call it by a different name.
00:15:15Take every taste that doesn't appeal to you and make it tasty for yourself.
00:15:21It's, I don't know, it seems to me so sad that people just go about their business oblivious,
00:15:31oblivious to all of the joys that are right before them.
00:15:35This is a nice takeaway that people often seem to get lost not realizing.
00:15:41Life only consists of moments.
00:15:43That's all it is, moments.
00:15:45And so, what am I going to do for the next 20 years now that the kids are out of the house?
00:15:49Or, what am I going to do now that I'm retired?
00:15:52Just take care of the moment.
00:15:54And then the next moment, and before you know it, you've had a life lived well.
00:15:59Wow.
00:16:00When you're mindless, you have no choice.
00:16:02When you're mindless, you're no different from a robot.
00:16:06The only difference is that you unintentionally programmed yourself where a robot is programmed
00:16:11by the programmer.
00:16:14And, you know, just think, are robots happy?
00:16:16No.
00:16:17Do robots have choices?
00:16:19No.
00:16:19Why would we want to live our lives like that?
00:16:22And so, as a result of not questioning this sort of thing, people end up sealed in unlived lives.
00:16:28Right.
00:16:29When we're mindless, we just think we know.
00:16:32And so, we're oblivious to all the ways things could be different from what we know.
00:16:37You know, so, if you're playing a sport and you're taught this is the way you hold the tennis racket,
00:16:43for many people, they think that is the way, but who decided?
00:16:47You know, when I give lectures, sometimes I'll ask, is there a tall man in the audience?
00:16:52And for reasons I don't understand, Mel, there always is.
00:16:54A six-foot-five guy.
00:16:56I ask him to come to the stage.
00:16:57So, here I am at five-three.
00:16:58Here he is at six-five.
00:16:59We look ridiculous together, right?
00:17:01I ask him to put his hand up.
00:17:03He puts his hand up.
00:17:04His hand is three inches longer than mine.
00:17:07Then I just raise the question, should we do anything similar, anything the same way, anything physical the same way?
00:17:14And I don't think so.
00:17:15Now's the important point, especially for your female listeners.
00:17:18If he created the rules for how to do this, the more different I am from him, the more important it is for me not to do it exactly that way,
00:17:32for me to change it ever so slightly so that it more meets my own needs, physical being, and so on.
00:17:41And yet we just go through the world.
00:17:42We just, this is the way you do it.
00:17:43This is the way.
00:17:45And, you know, so one of the titles for the book that you have there that I'm very excited about, The Mindful Body,
00:17:51you know, when you write a book, then you have to think, what should you call it?
00:17:54And one of the names for the book early on was Who Says So?
00:17:58And that's what one of my pieces of advice to all of the adults listening, at some point, become your three-year-old self again.
00:18:06Who says so?
00:18:07Who decided this?
00:18:08Because it turns out that everything that is, everything, was at one point a decision.
00:18:14That means somebody said it should be like this.
00:18:19And as I'm saying now, the more different you are from that person, the more important it is for you not to mindlessly fall in line.
00:18:26Just accept that everything is uncertain.
00:18:30Not just that two and two, one and one doesn't have to equal two, that horses don't eat meat,
00:18:36that nothing is certain, then you approach everything as if it's brand new.
00:18:40So for the person who's just starting to have their mind open up, wait a minute, all these absolutes, I believe, don't necessarily, I could think something different.
00:18:53Could you give a couple examples of what this might look like day to day in someone's life?
00:19:00You've already said, well, who said that?
00:19:02Who says, as an example, to challenge kind of your own thinking?
00:19:06Well, when you're about to do anything new, somebody says, this is how you do it.
00:19:13You have to recognize, well, that may be how you do it, but not necessarily the best way for me to do it.
00:19:19When people say, virtually everything, you know, lots of people buy into the notion that as you get older, it all falls apart.
00:19:29To me, it just gets better and better.
00:19:31You know, that when you think about it, Mel, so you're two years old, you scrape your knee and you're crying bloody murder.
00:19:37You're five or six, Johnny or Jane doesn't send you a Valentine's, you're going to be rejected for life.
00:19:43You're 13, you have a pimple.
00:19:45Life is over.
00:19:46The belief, as you get older, it falls apart, on believing that mindlessly often leads to it falling apart.
00:19:54You know, I'm at the age, I'm 78, and lots of my friends, and I talk about senior moments, which is cute that we have a name for it.
00:20:01You can't remember something.
00:20:03Part of the reason you can't remember is because you know so much.
00:20:06You know, if you only know one thing, it's probably easy to remember it.
00:20:10But at any rate, they see themselves forget, and then they worry, are they going to get dementia?
00:20:16And so that worrying helps facilitate more forgetting, because now you're not taking in the information, you're worried about whether you're going to be able to retain it and so on.
00:20:27And then you withdraw a little from other people, because you don't want to be seen this way, and it just snowballs, rather than recognize that when you were young, you probably weren't infrequently forgetful either.
00:20:41So I teach a health course at Harvard, and big lecture class, and I teach it on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings.
00:20:48And on Thursday, before I'm going to do the health lecture, I ask the students, what was the last thing I said on Tuesday?
00:20:56Nobody knows.
00:20:57You know, the thing is, the difference is when you're 20, you don't care that you don't remember.
00:21:03When you're 70, you know, oh my goodness, is this the beginning of the end?
00:21:09Could you offer some examples that you've seen in your research?
00:21:12So, let's take the word try.
00:21:16Okay.
00:21:17Well, try sounds good, right?
00:21:19It's certainly better than giving up.
00:21:22I'm going to try.
00:21:23But you wouldn't try to eat an ice cream cone.
00:21:26You just eat it, right?
00:21:28So, trying has built into it an expectation for failure.
00:21:32So, we did a study where we have one group tried whatever it is, many different tasks.
00:21:38Another group, they're told to just do it.
00:21:39The doing group always outperforms it.
00:21:41And then somebody told me, that's the Yoda study.
00:21:44I said, oh, yes, okay, great.
00:21:45I don't have to be the first, you know, for any of these things.
00:21:49It's always nice when other people have the same ideas.
00:21:51But the point of it is to recognize how often we underestimate ourselves.
00:21:58You know, that when you're trying, you know, how often we think we can't do it.
00:22:03And people have it all wrong.
00:22:05People think they want to be expert.
00:22:08Now, if being expert means you're 100% successful, consider this.
00:22:12You're a little kid.
00:22:13You're in the elevator.
00:22:15You're trying to press the button.
00:22:16You can't reach it.
00:22:17So, the adult with you picks you up.
00:22:18You press the button.
00:22:19And this keeps going.
00:22:20And you get told I'm eating closer and closer to it.
00:22:22Great fun.
00:22:24Now, when was the last time, Mel, you walked in an elevator and were excited about pressing the button?
00:22:30Never.
00:22:31Unless I'm going to bed after a long day of work, right?
00:22:34The point is, we can either do things imperfectly mindfully or perfectly mindlessly.
00:22:42We don't want to be able to do, we think we want to, you know, you're playing golf.
00:22:47You think you want to be able to get a hole in one every time you swing the club.
00:22:51And the first two games might be fun.
00:22:53But after that, there's no there there.
00:22:57You know, if you want to win at, I don't know, tic-tac-toe, play it against a four-year-old.
00:23:02You know, that we gravitate towards things that are going to be challenging.
00:23:07And the problem is that I think we've confused what we call work and play.
00:23:14And, you know, and I hear people, so it's the same thing.
00:23:17There's a bad, better, but there's a better than better way in my view.
00:23:21So we have work and we have life, whatever that means to people.
00:23:27And then somebody comes along and says, we should have work-life balance.
00:23:31You know, you shouldn't be, you know, all work and no play.
00:23:34I said, no.
00:23:35What you want is to have work-life integration.
00:23:38You want it to be one thing.
00:23:40You want to be the same person you are at work and at play.
00:23:44Sometimes play, you got to take it seriously.
00:23:46And when you work, you have to learn not to take yourselves so seriously.
00:23:50But we've been taught there are things that are hard, that are unpleasant, and that we just have to get through it.
00:23:57And I disagree.
00:23:59I make everything a game.
00:24:01Let me give you an example of this.
00:24:03It's going to be so silly.
00:24:04I know my colleagues will appreciate it.
00:24:06But a few of us, a couple of years ago, at graduation, we found ourselves on the stage.
00:24:10I don't remember why.
00:24:11And then didn't realize we had to sit there through the whole graduation.
00:24:15So that means, you know, Harvard is a big place.
00:24:18And every area was giving their awards.
00:24:21And they thought, oh, my God, how are we going to endure this?
00:24:24So the next award was, PhDs were given in, East Asian Studies.
00:24:29I said, there'll be four PhDs.
00:24:32A friend says, there'll be six.
00:24:33There'll be two.
00:24:34And then there were, you know, and we just kept, and it became fun.
00:24:38And it became easy to sit there.
00:24:40But why is it important?
00:24:41Well, it's important because, well, for many reasons, you know, once you think you know, you don't pay any attention.
00:24:52And things are constantly changing.
00:24:54And when you're mindless, you can't take advantage of all of the wonderful things around you.
00:25:00And you can't avoid the pitfalls because you're essentially not there.
00:25:03And to me, you know, if you're going to be there for something, to do it, you should show up for it.
00:25:11And that only then can you reap the rewards of being part of the activity.
00:25:16But, you know, and making it sound too confusing.
00:25:18You want to be a machine or do you want to be a person?
00:25:21And when you're happy, you're a person.
00:25:22When you're playing games, you know, when you're enjoying yourself, if you're listening to me and there's something I've said that's interesting to you,
00:25:29Well, at these times, you're being mindful.
00:25:31When you're being mindful, the neurons are firing.
00:25:34You're engaged.
00:25:35Go walk outside.
00:25:36You've walked outside of your place every day for however long.
00:25:40Notice three new things.
00:25:41Three isn't magic.
00:25:43Six new things.
00:25:44Two new things.
00:25:45And all of a sudden, how come I pass this every day?
00:25:47Why didn't I see that?
00:25:48Next time you're with your best friend, your spouse, notice three new things about them.
00:25:54And you just keep noticing new things about the things you thought you knew.
00:25:58And at some point, you come to see, hey, you know, I didn't know it as well as I thought I did.
00:26:03And then your attention naturally goes to it.
00:26:06You've done just remarkable landmark research on this.
00:26:10You mentioned 50 years of research.
00:26:11One of the most fascinating studies, at least for me, was involving elderly men.
00:26:17So the idea was, if we can take the mind and put the mind in a younger place, you know, and take our measurements from our bodies, will we get any effect?
00:26:28So what we did was we retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier, and we had elderly men live there as if they were the younger souls.
00:26:38Now, it's interesting because they're around 80.
00:26:40But that was when, not when 80 is now the new 60.
00:26:44Yes.
00:26:44They were really old.
00:26:46In fact, you know, when they would show up to see if they could be in the study, and, you know, I'm here, and they're coming in, and they're walking, and I say, why am I doing this?
00:26:56Because I didn't know if they were going to be able to live through the day.
00:26:59No, and so I set them up at this retreat where I'm in charge of everything in their lives.
00:27:03I mean, if I realized then what I was taking on, but I'm glad that I did it because the results were very exciting.
00:27:10So basically, we have old men living in this place, not Hollywood because I couldn't afford it.
00:27:16Okay.
00:27:17But as well as we could make it seem as if it was 20 years earlier.
00:27:20Got it.
00:27:21So they're like living in a building where it looks like, oh, wow, I've gone back in time.
00:27:24Yeah, yeah.
00:27:25And so they would be speaking about the Cuban Missile Crisis and other events of the past as if it was just happening.
00:27:34All right.
00:27:35And so, and they'd be watching television shows and movies from the past as if, you know, they had just been produced.
00:27:43All right.
00:27:44So as well as we could, we took them back in time.
00:27:47In a period less than a week, what we found was their vision improved, their hearing improved, their memory, their strength, and they looked noticeably younger.
00:28:00What?
00:28:00All without any medical intervention.
00:28:03So it was very exciting.
00:28:04Now, but this was, this is a famous study, Mel, and as I'm fond of saying, isn't it obnoxious for me to call my own study famous?
00:28:11No, because if you turn on, no, if you turn on The Simpsons Go to Havana, they talk about the study.
00:28:18So that study has been out there for a while now.
00:28:21So what does that tell you?
00:28:22Like when you saw this and you're like, less than a week, I make somebody think and act and talk like they're younger.
00:28:30What it tells me is that our thoughts are preventing all sorts of very positive behaviors.
00:28:34You know, what happens is, so you go to the doctor and you take the Snelling eye chart.
00:28:39A who?
00:28:40The Snelling, it doesn't matter.
00:28:41You look at the eye chart.
00:28:42Oh, the E and the Fs and the Gs and the Hs?
00:28:44Yes, okay.
00:28:45Now, a normal person just answers what letter it is.
00:28:50For me, I say, wait a second.
00:28:52This thing is rigged.
00:28:53As you go down, they're creating the expectation from me that soon I'm not going to be able to see.
00:28:59I say, what would happen if we reverse the eye chart where now the letters get larger and larger, thereby changing my expectation to soon I'll be able to see?
00:29:10And when we do that, people can see what they couldn't see before.
00:29:13What?
00:29:13But just think about it.
00:29:15You go and you're reading letters that have no meaning.
00:29:18Well, I'm sitting there looking at shapes.
00:29:20I'm like, is that an I or an H or a flip or a what?
00:29:22Is that a J or a J?
00:29:23Yeah, and it's in black and white.
00:29:24What does that have to do with the real world?
00:29:26You know, I don't know about you, but if I'm hungry, I can see that restaurant sign very far in the distance.
00:29:32Colors are different from black and white.
00:29:35Things that are moving are different from things that are still.
00:29:37For me personally, I see best, I believe, probably around 10, 11 o'clock in the morning rather than 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
00:29:47But that's not what happens.
00:29:48You go to the doctor.
00:29:49You can't see for whatever reason.
00:29:50You're given a prescription.
00:29:52And then you put on glasses, which are now going to ensure that your eyes don't get better on their own.
00:29:58So we take the eye chart.
00:29:59Now, most people believe when you get about two-thirds of the way down, now you're not going to be able to see.
00:30:06So that's a mindset, right?
00:30:07So what we did, we started the eye chart a third of the way down.
00:30:12So now two-thirds of, holy constant, the two-thirds part, but they're much smaller letters.
00:30:17And again, people could see what they couldn't see.
00:30:19So you took away the big stuff.
00:30:21You started with the middle layer, and that tricked people into being like, oh, I can do the top layer.
00:30:26Exactly. So the whole point, as you're getting to it, is to recognize that who says you can't do it?
00:30:32And you don't want to be able to do everything perfectly because then it's like playing tic-tac-toe, you know, tic-tac-toe with a five-year-old.
00:30:41You're always going to win, but there's no there there.
00:30:44So based on, like, the years of work, because my mind is now, I feel like I have popcorn popping in my brain as I'm grabbing onto these ideas and entertaining the possibility that I know nothing.
00:31:00Nobody knows anything, right?
00:31:01Nobody knows what's going to happen.
00:31:02And how that's exciting, even though it used to be terrifying, right?
00:31:07But the reason we have to understand that it's exciting is because we don't have to be afraid of, quote, negative consequences.
00:31:15Because consequences in and of themselves are not good.
00:31:18They're not bad.
00:31:19They're just events.
00:31:21But when we frame them as awful, then we're going to experience them as awful.
00:31:26All you want is to constantly be inspired, excited, engaged in something.
00:31:32And when you're not sure, it's easy to become engaged.
00:31:36If you knew what I was going to say next, why listen to me?
00:31:39You have, reading from your book, page 53 of The Mindful Body.
00:31:44Oh, 53, yes.
00:31:44I remember it well.
00:31:45I know, you remember that, right?
00:31:46It's called Just Try Harder.
00:31:47Yeah.
00:31:48If we find that something is unpleasant to do, we may try to overcome the feeling and do it anyway.
00:31:52Given that the taste is in our head and not in the task, thinking differently about it is likely to be more successful.
00:32:01Right.
00:32:02So we have to get rid of the idea that there are good things and bad things, things I like, things I hate, people I like, people I hate, tastes that are good for us, bad for us.
00:32:13All of this is a function of our mindsets.
00:32:17So how do we, you did this incredible study that you ran at a hotel with housekeepers.
00:32:23Oh, yeah.
00:32:23So this is the second study in testing the mind-body unity idea.
00:32:28Okay.
00:32:29So here we take housekeepers who, first thing we did was ask them, how much exercise do you get?
00:32:34Now, these are women cleaning hotel and motel rooms all day long.
00:32:38Oddly, they say they're not getting any exercise, and that's because they think exercise is what you do after work, and after work, they're just too tired.
00:32:49Okay.
00:32:49So now we take these women, divide them into two groups.
00:32:52One group, we're going to teach them that they work as exercise.
00:32:56They're told, you know, working at the gym on this machine is like making a bed is like working on the machine.
00:33:03We teach them that everything they're doing is in fact exercise, so very simple studies.
00:33:08We have two groups, one group that now knows their work is exercise, the other group that doesn't realize their work is exercise.
00:33:16We take a host of measures before we start and at the end, the two groups are not eating any differently, one group isn't working any harder.
00:33:23They're basically the same, except one group believes their work is exercise.
00:33:28As a result of that change in mind, they lost weight, there was a change in waist-to-hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure came down from changing their minds.
00:33:40Why do you think that happens?
00:33:43Is there something about the lack of stress or judgment that shifts the chemical?
00:33:47There may be some explanation like that, but I believe that our minds and bodies are one, and if our mind is set to see what we're doing as something good for us, it'll generally be good for us.
00:34:05I think that makes sense, because if you see it as something bad for you, you're creating a stress response.
00:34:10Yeah, and nothing itself is good or bad, so you can take anything.
00:34:15This comes to mind, but it was just so ridiculous.
00:34:18But I remember doing something for somebody years ago, and I thought I was being so generous.
00:34:24And she was a very negative person, and she thought it was grandiose, which I imagine that I guess it was, because most people wouldn't go to that length.
00:34:36So you can take anything, even this gesture that was coming from kindness, and make it into something negative.
00:34:43And you can take negative.
00:34:44It doesn't reside in the thing.
00:34:47It resides in the way we appreciate or show a lack of appreciation for the thing.
00:34:53Well, there's really interesting research about optimism and pessimism.
00:34:56Yeah, because when you're optimistic, you're more mindful.
00:35:00You know, when you're optimistic, you interact with people.
00:35:02You're not afraid of people.
00:35:04You're expecting good things, so you're out there in the world being.
00:35:07When you're pessimistic, you cut yourself off, more or less.
00:35:10You see everything is negative.
00:35:12You're bracing for the worst to happen instead of saying.
00:35:14Exactly, and that's very important.
00:35:16You have these people who are called defensive pessimists.
00:35:19So they're always, you know, prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.
00:35:25But hope is interesting.
00:35:27Talk to me about hope.
00:35:28Okay.
00:35:29I love language.
00:35:30So hope sounds good, right?
00:35:32Hope is certainly better than being hopeless.
00:35:35Yes.
00:35:35But when I get up in the morning and I go into the kitchen, I don't hope there's going to be coffee.
00:35:40So, again, hope also has built into it a negative expectation, right?
00:35:47When you're, you know, I know that there's going to be, and if it turns out there isn't, all right, so what?
00:35:52I'll deal with it.
00:35:53But to believe in all these negative things is a burden.
00:35:57So the defensive pessimists, you see, when you recognize that things in and of themselves are neither positive or negative, when you're defensively pessimistic, you're seeing the negative, and that's going to have an effect on you.
00:36:12And those things could have just as easily even seen otherwise.
00:36:14Why is it important to believe that things turn out, even when you're in a moment in your life, you know what I mean, where things are really, because I'm sure that there are people that are not, that look at the surface takeaways of your work.
00:36:32You're like, ah, toxic positivity, think positive thing, positive thing, meh.
00:36:37But that's not what you're saying.
00:36:38No, not at all.
00:36:39Yeah, that follows, some of the positivity follows from what I'm saying, but it's certainly not the major message.
00:36:46And the thing that came to mind, and I don't, like, know if this is a good example, is the number, the trend in the number of people that are in their 20s and 30s that I hear saying, well, based on climate change and based on this and based on that, I don't know if I'm going to have kids because I don't know if I want to, like, there's.
00:37:06And so, I can hear the rigidity in that absolute statement.
00:37:14Yeah.
00:37:15You can't know.
00:37:17You think you can know.
00:37:19People don't realize that prediction is an illusion.
00:37:23We don't know.
00:37:24You know, so I, in an example, say Michael Jordan and I are going to have a foul shooting contest.
00:37:28All right.
00:37:28So you'd put your money on Michael Jordan.
00:37:30But, you know, if we're going to shoot 100 baskets, surely he'd win.
00:37:36We're going to shoot one basket.
00:37:37Is he going to win?
00:37:38He sometimes misses.
00:37:40I sometimes make it.
00:37:41Also, what if he said to himself, let the old woman win.
00:37:45What is it going to cost him?
00:37:46There are so many ways of understanding how I could make that basket.
00:37:51You can't predict what's going to happen.
00:37:53Remember, as I said before, science only gives us probabilities.
00:37:57So when I have this medicine that I've given to hundreds of people to test the efficacy of the medicine, it's not the case that it works for every single person there.
00:38:08You know, in the example of the basketball, what I find exciting about that example.
00:38:12Is that I won.
00:38:13Yes.
00:38:14Anything could happen.
00:38:15Right.
00:38:15Anything could happen.
00:38:16Right.
00:38:17Oftentimes it doesn't, but anything could happen.
00:38:19And what I'm starting to really take away.
00:38:21And it doesn't matter.
00:38:23You know, that's what people have to understand.
00:38:25You engage in it in order to hopefully bring about some event.
00:38:29But if you're doing it mindfully, you're enjoying the journey anyway.
00:38:34Mm-hmm.
00:38:34Mm-hmm.
00:38:35You know, based on your many years of work, are there other studies that you love that are less talked about, that you think are important for us to know about, that the results were exciting to you in the mind-body unity?
00:38:50Well, in mind-body unity, the most recent that my graduate student Peter and Uncle and I recently did.
00:38:57So we inflict a wound, not a big wound, because we're not sadists and the higher-ups wouldn't let us do it anyway.
00:39:03We were.
00:39:04Okay.
00:39:05But we inflict a minor wound.
00:39:06And individually, the person, the wounded person, is in front of a clock.
00:39:11And unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged.
00:39:13And it's going twice as fast as real time.
00:39:16Okay.
00:39:16Half as fast as real time or real time.
00:39:19And the question we're asking is, does that wound heal based on clock time, perceived time, or real time?
00:39:27And the answer is perceived time.
00:39:30You know, you just think about it.
00:39:31Hold on.
00:39:32Let me just ask.
00:39:32So that means that the person who's watching the clock that is sped up, meaning their perception of time, is that time is passing quickly.
00:39:40Oh, two hours just went by.
00:39:42Yeah.
00:39:42That they'll heal more quickly.
00:39:44And you're measuring the body response physically?
00:39:48Yeah.
00:39:48That physically, your healing mechanism speeds up?
00:39:52Yeah.
00:39:52Well, just think about it, that when, you know, you ask a doctor, say you break your arm, and you ask the doctor, how long is it going to take to heal?
00:40:00I don't know how long it takes, but let's make it up.
00:40:02Four weeks.
00:40:03Five weeks.
00:40:04Six weeks.
00:40:04I don't know.
00:40:04Which one do you want?
00:40:05Let's take the average.
00:40:06Six.
00:40:06Sounds horrible.
00:40:07You want six?
00:40:08Okay.
00:40:08Well, take five because I'm in charge now.
00:40:10Okay.
00:40:11No.
00:40:11So it's going to, the doctor tells you it's going to take five weeks to heal.
00:40:14You can't possibly believe that everybody who's broken their arm is going to take five weeks to heal.
00:40:21You know, if somebody is an Olympic athlete and somebody else is a couch potato, it doesn't feel like they're both going to, you know.
00:40:28So what is determining who heals more quickly?
00:40:33There's always some give.
00:40:35And what we do is we align ourselves with this absolute, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:40:41We did, you know, we did so many of these mind-body studies, a study on diabetes.
00:40:52We take people who have type 2 diabetes.
00:40:54We give them a host of tests.
00:40:57We're now going to have them sit in front of a computer, and we're asking them to play computer games.
00:41:02This will all be clear in a moment.
00:41:04And there's a clock next to the, I'm big on clocks, a clock next to the computer.
00:41:08And we tell them, we want you to change the game you're playing every 15 minutes or so.
00:41:14So they have to look at that clock.
00:41:16The clock is rigged.
00:41:18So for a third of them, the clock is going twice as fast as real time.
00:41:22For a third, they're going half as fast.
00:41:24And for a third, it's real time.
00:41:26Then we assess their blood sugar level.
00:41:29Blood sugar level follows perceived amount of time.
00:41:33Not real time, whatever that is.
00:41:36Because the mind and body are a single unit.
00:41:39Huh.
00:41:41That's amazing.
00:41:42Let me tell you a story about something that happened recently that people are going to get crazed with this.
00:41:49But that's part of the reason I'm telling it.
00:41:52Okay.
00:41:52So my partner and I are leaving Mexico.
00:41:55We have this giant armoire.
00:41:57She steps on the shelf of the giant armoire because she wants to see if there's anything that she put on top.
00:42:04Okay.
00:42:04To hide.
00:42:05The armoire now forces her to the floor.
00:42:08Knocks her head onto the concrete floor.
00:42:12Okay.
00:42:12She's trapped by this armoire that weighs twice what I weigh.
00:42:17Okay.
00:42:17If I hadn't been there, she would have bled to death.
00:42:21Okay.
00:42:21So it's imperative.
00:42:23I have to lift this thing that weighs twice what I weigh.
00:42:27And I'm able to lift it enough for her to get out from under.
00:42:32Now, when I tell this story that it's not yay me, that people say, oh, it's the adrenaline.
00:42:38It drives me crazy.
00:42:39As if adrenaline has a mind of it.
00:42:41It's, oh, adrenaline, please come.
00:42:43You know, I need you now.
00:42:45It's all one thing.
00:42:48My adrenaline, my biceps, my fingers, everything, it's all one thing working in a coordinated way to accomplish what needs to be accomplished.
00:42:57When we get fooled into, in my view, mind-body dualism, then somehow it's my mind and my body.
00:43:08They're separate and I have to figure out how to organize them.
00:43:12And we give up a lot of control.
00:43:14Another, a very important example that's out there, not our research, well, some of our research, but earlier, is on the placebo.
00:43:25Just everybody accepts that a placebo is effective.
00:43:29I think it's our most effective medicine.
00:43:31So, what's going on?
00:43:32You take this nothing, you think it's something, and then it acts like something.
00:43:37In fact, the chambermaid study that we talked about is a nocebo, which most people don't understand.
00:43:43Yeah, what is a nocebo?
00:43:44A nocebo is, you do something, but you think it's nothing, and it wipes out the effect.
00:43:50So, they're getting the exercise, but they don't realize that it's exercise, and so it doesn't have the effect.
00:43:56Okay, so we can bring it about.
00:43:58We can make it disappear.
00:43:59The control we have over our health and well-being is enormous.
00:44:03You add that to what I was saying before about everything that is was at one time a decision, which means it's mutable.
00:44:10Everything can be changed.
00:44:12If something doesn't work, change it.
00:44:14The super interesting thing that you said about the placebo is that that is a concrete example.
00:44:21Of mind-body unity.
00:44:22Of mind-body unity.
00:44:24Yes, exactly.
00:44:24And simply believing that it's working physically made it work in study after study after study.
00:44:30But you know what happened is that placebos get a bad rap, because if somebody gets better with a placebo, they say, no, no, the pain was real.
00:44:39As if we have a mind and a body, and that body was really experiencing pain, and now all you've done is screwed around with my mind.
00:44:46It's one thing.
00:44:47You also can't sell the drug.
00:44:48Well, that's what I would say.
00:44:50That's, in my view, the reason that placebos get a bad rap.
00:44:54Look, if you're part of a pharmaceutical company, you have to do a trial with real medication and a placebo.
00:45:01And in order to bring this drug to market to make billions of dollars, that drug has to outperform the sugar pill, the placebo.
00:45:09You're not rooting for the placebo.
00:45:12And nevertheless, even when it does outperform, the difference is often small.
00:45:18So many people getting help just by this sugar pill.
00:45:22And then when you say to people, look, if it's not the pill that's making you better, what's making you better?
00:45:29We're making ourselves better.
00:45:32Right.
00:45:32I mean, you can't give yourself a sugar pill because, you know, it's fake.
00:45:35But what you're saying, Dr. Langer, if you want to apply this research to your life,
00:45:40you're saying that if you have a daunting condition that makes you feel like you're at the effect of it,
00:45:46whether it's depression or MS, which you've mentioned, or some other condition,
00:45:51that you can use the mindfulness, self-awareness, and noticing that you're talking about,
00:45:57that it's been proven in studies.
00:45:59Simply notice your symptoms.
00:46:01Ask yourself why you may feel better or worse.
00:46:04Just doing that over the course of time, based on the studies, can decrease the symptoms that you feel
00:46:10and make you feel physically healthy.
00:46:13That's incredible.
00:46:15Do not discount the power of the mind-body unity and your own thoughts and beliefs.
00:46:20In fact, you have done remarkable work challenging the language that healthcare professionals use
00:46:27because it does matter based on the research.
00:46:30Yeah.
00:46:30So how should you talk differently about your health?
00:46:33Can you share about some of that?
00:46:35Yeah.
00:46:35Well, one of the things that bothered me is when people have cancer and then the cancer is gone
00:46:43and the medical world tells you it's in remission.
00:46:47Now, that was fine years ago, decades ago, before we knew that stress was crucial to one's physical health.
00:46:57All right.
00:46:57And the reason for that is that when you're told it's in remission, you're happier than it's active.
00:47:04It's true, but it sounds like it's going to come back.
00:47:06Exactly.
00:47:07And so what are you scared?
00:47:08And then they have this five-year rule that is based on nothing.
00:47:12So for five years, a woman with breast cancer is scared, stressed, wearing herself down, not living an optimum life.
00:47:20Which also compromises your immune system if you're stressed and bracing because you're only in remission.
00:47:26I think stress is, and we'll talk right after this about stress because I have, I think, some things people might find interesting.
00:47:33But in this case here, we have a person who doesn't have cancer.
00:47:38So it started for me as most of my things in real life.
00:47:42I go to visit my friend, my friend Eva.
00:47:44She has a terrible case of cancer.
00:47:46I go see her, and she had just come back from Mass General.
00:47:50I said, how are you?
00:47:51She said her cancer is in remission.
00:47:53And then a bell went off.
00:47:54Wait a second.
00:47:55If I took the exact same test, presumably they'd tell me I don't have cancer.
00:48:01Why is it you have it in remission?
00:48:03And so then I spent a lot of time thinking about, again, things go from bad to better, but there's a better than better way that we keep overlooking.
00:48:13And I likened it to a cold.
00:48:15So you get a cold, and then the cold is gone.
00:48:18You don't say the cold is in remission.
00:48:21And then when you get the next cold, it's seen as a brand new cold.
00:48:25It's less scary because you beat all those that came before it.
00:48:29So you're in remission.
00:48:31If cancer comes back, in some ways, just as a cold, it'll be the same kind of cancer.
00:48:38Cold is a cold.
00:48:39But just as certainly, if it comes back, it will be different.
00:48:43Everything is both same and different.
00:48:45I'll see you tomorrow.
00:48:46I'm the same person.
00:48:47I'm also a different person.
00:48:49And so reasonably, you can see the cancer as cured or in remission.
00:48:56When we see it as cured, we go about living our lives.
00:49:00We become more mindful, open, happy, successful, enjoying ourselves, probably even better than we did before we had cancer because all of a sudden we realize life doesn't go on endlessly.
00:49:13So let me make the moments matter.
00:49:14And the moments can't matter if you're mindless.
00:49:17Based on all this research on the mind-body unity, what would you recommend we say if you have been diagnosed with cancer and then you just cure it?
00:49:31Don't use the word remission.
00:49:32Well, I think that if the medical world tells you you're in remission, you should remember what I'm saying now.
00:49:41But what would you say instead?
00:49:42I would say you're cured.
00:49:43Great.
00:49:44If you're cured from a cold, doesn't mean you won't get another cold.
00:49:48Well, and I think it's important because the language matters.
00:49:51And you talked about stress.
00:49:53That if you are in, quote, remission, you are bracing for five years.
00:49:57It is in the back of your mind.
00:49:58Exactly.
00:49:58Which means you're activating the stress response, medically speaking.
00:50:02Now, Mel, I believe, so everything I've said so far is based on hard research.
00:50:08I don't have the research for this particular statement.
00:50:11Nevertheless, I believe it as fully as one can and still be mind-y.
00:50:15I agree with you.
00:50:15Which is stress is our major killer.
00:50:18I was going to do this study years before COVID with people in China and it just didn't happen.
00:50:24Well, we take people who are diagnosed with cancer, so hundreds of people, different kinds of cancer.
00:50:31And, you know, anybody who's just told they have cancer is not going to be a happy camper.
00:50:35Everybody is going to be stressed and unhappy.
00:50:37So, let's give them three weeks to adjust to it.
00:50:40And then after three weeks, we measure them once a month.
00:50:43How stressed are they?
00:50:45I believe that that degree of stress will predict the course of the disease over and above genetics, nutrition, and even treatment.
00:50:56Well, isn't that because stress impacts your immune system?
00:50:59Everything.
00:51:00And not just everything on any level is impacting everything simultaneously.
00:51:05Okay, so now add that to what I said before is that events don't cause stress.
00:51:12What causes stress are our views of events.
00:51:15So, we can control stress.
00:51:18If stress is a major killer, then clearly learning how.
00:51:23Now, so let me give you a couple of one-liners for people who haven't, you know, I don't know if what I've just said is clear or not.
00:51:29But next time you're stressed, ask yourself, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience?
00:51:37Because almost always, you know, I spoiled the meal, I missed the appointment, I banged the car, so what?
00:51:47And so that you immediately breathe a sigh of relief.
00:51:50Now, next time you're stressed, do this.
00:51:55Ask yourself, what are three, because stress requires two things.
00:52:00It requires a belief that something is going to happen, and when it happens, it's going to be awful.
00:52:07Okay, so you're stressed.
00:52:09Give yourself three, four reasons why it won't even happen.
00:52:13Now, you're immediately less stressed because it was definitely going to happen, and maybe it will, maybe it won't.
00:52:17Now, the harder part.
00:52:19Let's assume it does happen.
00:52:21How is that actually an advantage?
00:52:23And once you do that, okay, so we did an early, early study with people about to undergo major surgery.
00:52:31And so I taught them this procedure, essentially.
00:52:35And then I said to them to see if they understood it, okay, so let's say the doctor tells you the surgery
00:52:41has to be delayed, so you have to spend another few days in the hospital.
00:52:47The people who think they got it but didn't would say, it's all right, I'll tolerate it.
00:52:52No, it's a good thing.
00:52:54So if I'm, you know, what are the advantages to my being in the hospital?
00:52:58Somebody else is controlling all that I'm eating.
00:53:00I won't get a million phone calls in the middle of the night.
00:53:03I have more time to myself.
00:53:05I can read.
00:53:06I can watch whatever, you know, movies I want to watch.
00:53:10It's delightful.
00:53:12Okay, so now you tell me I have to spend three more days in the hospital.
00:53:15That's great.
00:53:16More reading, more relaxing, more dieting, self-imposed, you know, and so on.
00:53:21And so we would go through it again until they finally got it.
00:53:25And when they did, the surgeries went better.
00:53:28They needed fewer sedatives and pain relievers.
00:53:32Because they were relaxed and just in flow.
00:53:35Yeah, exactly, exactly.
00:53:36And, you know, even with respect to chronic illnesses, which I have a lot of information on in the book, as you recall,
00:53:43where you're given a diagnosis of a chronic illness.
00:53:46And what that means to people is nothing I can do about it.
00:53:50This is going to stay the same or get worse.
00:53:52And all it means, the word chronic means, is the medical world doesn't have a solution yet.
00:53:58It doesn't mean that there aren't solutions.
00:54:00So we did some research where I take people who have all sorts of chronic illnesses.
00:54:06And, you know, you recognize no symptom stays the same.
00:54:11And nothing always moves in one direction.
00:54:13It's not it gets bad and worse and worse.
00:54:15You know, with the stock market.
00:54:17If the stock market is going up, it doesn't go up in a straight line.
00:54:19It goes up, down a little, up, down.
00:54:21And, you know, we draw a line through all those curves.
00:54:24It's tending to go up.
00:54:26Same thing with any of our symptoms.
00:54:29Okay.
00:54:30But people hold it still and think it's just getting worse because you get whatever you're
00:54:35looking for.
00:54:36That's why I said before, don't be a pessimist because if you're looking for negative, you're
00:54:41going to find negative.
00:54:42If you're looking for positive, just look without the evaluation.
00:54:45At any rate.
00:54:46We did a lot of studies on what I call attention to symptom variability.
00:54:51It's a mouthful.
00:54:52It just means being mindful.
00:54:54Being mindful is noticing change.
00:54:56Attention to the changing of your symptoms.
00:54:59Okay.
00:55:00So we call people periodically throughout the day, throughout the week.
00:55:04Who have a chronic illness.
00:55:05Who have a chronic illness.
00:55:06Okay.
00:55:06And we simply ask them, how is the symptom now?
00:55:09And is it better or worse than the last time I called?
00:55:12And why?
00:55:13And that's the crucial question.
00:55:15Okay.
00:55:15So what happens now?
00:55:17First, most of us when we have chronic illnesses feel helpless and are waiting, especially for
00:55:24what's the next thing the medical world is going to give.
00:55:26So now all of a sudden we're doing something for ourselves.
00:55:28That feels good.
00:55:29Now when we're noticing the symptoms and we see it got a little better, that feels good
00:55:34because we thought it was only moving in one direction.
00:55:37Now when we ask the question, why?
00:55:39Why did it feel better or even worse from the moment before?
00:55:43That engages us in a mindful search.
00:55:46And that mindfulness is good for our health.
00:55:49The neurons are firing.
00:55:51It's good for us even if it doesn't tell us what the actual cause is of the symptom changing.
00:55:59All right.
00:56:00And I believe that you're going to be more likely to find a solution if you're actually
00:56:06looking for one.
00:56:07So we do all this.
00:56:08Even just the looking of like, it's not gotten better, but this is the reason why.
00:56:13It could be stress.
00:56:14People who are stressed think they're stressed all the time.
00:56:16Nobody is anything all the time.
00:56:18So I call you periodically.
00:56:20How stressed are you now?
00:56:21Give me a number.
00:56:22I call you later.
00:56:23How stressed are you now?
00:56:24You're less stressed.
00:56:26And why?
00:56:26You pay some attention.
00:56:27And then you find out, Mel, that you're maximally stressed when you're talking to Ellen Langer.
00:56:32The solution is simple.
00:56:34Don't talk to me.
00:56:35Don't talk to Ellen Langer.
00:56:35Or talk to me differently.
00:56:37But the point is, everything.
00:56:38I feel more in control if I see that.
00:56:40Everything varies.
00:56:41So now, we did this with people who have multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, arthritis, Parkinson's, stroke.
00:56:51I mean, biggies.
00:56:52Yeah.
00:56:52And across the board, people are helped by it.
00:56:57That's so fascinating.
00:56:58You know, earlier you mentioned the word, fight cancer.
00:57:02I'm going to fight cancer.
00:57:03Yeah.
00:57:03What would you recommend we say instead in order to use the mind-body bent like unity to our advantage?
00:57:12I think that, I don't know, the medical world would like this, but to even call it cancer is a best guess.
00:57:20And to understand that, when we're given prognoses, again, those are probabilities, best guesses.
00:57:28And what I would do is think of all the ways I'm different from other people.
00:57:32And so, those numbers may not rely on me.
00:57:35You know, may not speak to me.
00:57:37I mean, I myself live a basically stress-free life.
00:57:41And so, if you tell me that if I do X, Y, and Z, I'm going to get sick, I would say, well, you know, who are the people in those studies?
00:57:51How similar am I to them?
00:57:53And even if I were completely similar, only a certain proportion of them follow this way.
00:57:59We just don't know.
00:58:00But the most important thing is that, you know, people, as I do a lot of research, as you know, with older adults, and people are now crazed, I mean, my friends, you know, with everything, to live longer.
00:58:14And I think it's a mistake.
00:58:16I think rather than add more years to your life, what you want to do is add more life to your years.
00:58:24And that will probably extend your life.
00:58:26And that's what you want to do in each of these, you know, if, let's, I get people calling me, and they say, they told me I had six months to live.
00:58:34I said, I can't tell you what to do.
00:58:36All I can tell you is if I thought I only had six months to do, first thing I'd have is a hot fudge sundae.
00:58:41And then I do, you know, you want to not waste any of the moments.
00:58:47And the good thing is that all of those mindful activities are the neurons are firing, and it turns out that itself is good for your health.
00:58:58So when you're having fun, it's good for your health.
00:59:00And it feels good, obviously.
00:59:02I love that because you just reversed the prescription that most people are saying, that if you put more life into your years now by applying the mindfulness strategies that you're talking about of not knowing.
00:59:14You'll probably live longer.
00:59:14Yeah, you'll probably live longer because you're infusing positive thoughts.
00:59:19Well, it's not just positive.
00:59:21But it's like optimism.
00:59:22No, it's not even optimism.
00:59:23No stress.
00:59:24What is it?
00:59:24No, it's because you're not overwhelmed with these negative things.
00:59:28You're open to possibilities.
00:59:29It's neither – it's not necessarily positive.
00:59:33It's just not chronically negative.
00:59:35It's allowing yourself to be.
00:59:38And all the negativity keeps us closed in.
00:59:42You know, if you're in a relationship that is toxic, you're afraid to interact with the person because you feel they're going to belittle you and so on.
00:59:51And, you know, you know you're being suffocated.
00:59:54Well, life is doing that for us because most of us are not led to believe that we're extraordinary.
01:00:02We're, you know, graded when you're a little kid and you go through school.
01:00:06But you get B's and C's where you're average.
01:00:08Who wants to be average?
01:00:10But I'll tell you something.
01:00:11As a straight-A student, it's no better for us because we don't know how we got the A's.
01:00:15We know everybody expects it and will we be able to continue – the whole thing is ridiculous.
01:00:20Not realizing that somebody has decided the criteria.
01:00:24You know, I can give you a test where – on any topic – where you can do miserably.
01:00:30I can also give you a test on that same topic where you'll do well.
01:00:34It's all – who knows, right?
01:00:36The whole thing's rigged.
01:00:37Well, yeah, you know, and it's rigged against many people who just accept it.
01:00:43Thank you for saying that.
01:00:44I'm so happy you're here.
01:00:46Really.
01:00:47And I just got this very big insight because I do think that we often try to combat the negative with the positive.
01:00:57And what you're here to say is, no, no, no, no.
01:00:59It's not negative.
01:01:00It's not positive.
01:01:01It's nothing.
01:01:02It's just an event.
01:01:04And being more open to the possibility and also being more accepting of your ability to ride the wave that comes instead of bracing and –
01:01:14Well, to ride it, you want – you know, again, you don't want to be living in a world of pressing the elevator button.
01:01:21Yes.
01:01:21Or, you know, getting a hole in one every time you swing the golf club.
01:01:25There's no there there.
01:01:26So it's the difficulty that makes the adventure.
01:01:29So, Dr. Langer, in your book, The Mindful Body, Chapter 4, Why Decide?
01:01:35You write, there are probably few things as stressful as having to make a difficult decision.
01:01:41And every time we're faced with these decisions, our bodies suffer.
01:01:45Yeah.
01:01:46And this is one where I think all the experts, virtually all the experts, have it wrong.
01:01:53The thing to remember about a decision is that you can never test the different alternatives.
01:02:00And, you know, and if you can't test the different alternatives, you can't know what the other alternatives might have been like.
01:02:06So randomly, flip a coin, have a rule that the first thing that comes to mind is the choice you're going to make.
01:02:13Just make the decision, any decision, and then make it work for you.
01:02:17Look and see how it's to your advantage, how you can grow with it, enjoy it, and essentially make it work.
01:02:26Because outcomes, again, are not independent of the way we see them.
01:02:31So making it work means appreciating what it is rather than looking over your shoulder at some outcome that you didn't experience.
01:02:39You know, what people don't realize is regret is mindless.
01:02:43Regret suggests that if you only did this other thing, life would have been fine.
01:02:49And that other thing, even if you were mindless, could have been worse.
01:02:53We don't know.
01:02:53But the important thing is that it is neither good, bad, or indifferent.
01:03:00It's nothing until we act on it.
01:03:03And so if we know why we did what we did, appreciate the good things that followed from what we did, there's no reason for regret.
01:03:11Essentially, Mel, what I'm telling you is that rather than waste your time being stressed over making the right decision, what we should be doing is simply make the decision right.
01:03:23Well, what I love about this, like, because people agonize over making the right decision.
01:03:28Should I have the surgery or not have the surgery?
01:03:30Should I break up?
01:03:31Should I not?
01:03:32Yeah.
01:03:32That we drive ourselves crazy with.
01:03:33Should I go back to school?
01:03:34Should I not go back to school?
01:03:35And the important thing, Mel, is that all of that stress is eating at us, is destroying us slowly but surely, and making us ill.
01:03:44And what you're basically saying is stop agonizing.
01:03:47It doesn't matter.
01:03:48We can make whatever it is work.
01:03:51And this is an interesting thing.
01:03:52People actually know when you're there.
01:03:56And that's some way in which our mindfulness is contagious.
01:04:01And when you're approaching somebody who's mindful, implicitly you know you're going to be, if not understood, at least appreciated, not disparaged.
01:04:13So you open up more.
01:04:14Your relationships are better.
01:04:16Everything just gets better.
01:04:17And it's so easy.
01:04:19So a big source of stress that I've noticed for people in my life seems to be about the past and just agonizing over past decisions, not being able to let things go.
01:04:30How do you use some of the mind-body unity research?
01:04:33Well, if you just think, okay, so stress about past decisions.
01:04:37So the first thing is to understand everything you do makes sense or else you wouldn't do it.
01:04:45So why you chose the thing that you chose that now you're saying, oh, I shouldn't have chosen was a good thing at the time.
01:04:52There was no way to know all of the things that subsequently were going to happen.
01:04:57It made sense or else you wouldn't have done it.
01:04:59That's number one.
01:05:00Number two is to look at the advantages of that particular choice.
01:05:06You know, everything has advantages.
01:05:08And people think they know this.
01:05:09I had submitted a proposal years ago to my publishers and essentially was saying that everything that's good is bad or whatever.
01:05:18And they thought they understood it.
01:05:19And I said, no, because I hadn't written the book yet.
01:05:22Do you ever experience regret?
01:05:25Do you ever experience disappointment?
01:05:29Do you ever procrastinate?
01:05:31All of these things rely on not understanding what I'm actually saying.
01:05:36Okay, that if you say everything is good and bad, what they mean is this thing maybe has six good things and four bad things, which means net, net, it's more good than bad.
01:05:50I'm saying each of those things is not good or bad, can be understood as good or bad.
01:05:57And so life becomes what we make it.
01:05:59Shakespeare said this.
01:06:01Others have said it.
01:06:02There are songs and movies about it.
01:06:03People just need to embrace it.
01:06:07You know, it's raining.
01:06:09It's a sing in the rain.
01:06:11You know, who decided rain?
01:06:13You know, so, oh, my God, when I was a kid, I didn't want to go to school because my hair would curl.
01:06:17Now curls are in.
01:06:17Who knew?
01:06:18But why did I have to accept?
01:06:21You know, so what people don't understand, this is going to, people don't understand that things either happen once in a while.
01:06:28So who cares?
01:06:29Or they happen all the time where you can adjust to it.
01:06:33So if my hair curled, all I had to realize was the people who see me every day know typically my hair isn't that curly.
01:06:41You know, and if you see somebody just once, who cares?
01:06:45Well, you know, one of the things that's interesting, because you basically said there's two things you can do if you keep looking at the past and torturing yourself over it.
01:06:51One is to actually give yourself some grace and say, look, it made sense at the time to me.
01:06:55Exactly.
01:06:56That's why I did it.
01:06:56Exactly.
01:06:57And then, again, is to say, okay, this thing isn't all bad.
01:07:01How might it be good?
01:07:02Where if even this major fire turned out to be an advantage, people, this data, these data don't come from my lab, but it's reliable, that people who just have, let's say, a heart attack and live through it.
01:07:15Or when you're given a diagnosis for one of these dread diseases, I said to you before that people are sealed in unlived lives, sometimes that diagnosis breaks the seal.
01:07:26And all of a sudden, oh, my God, I'm not going to live forever.
01:07:29I'm not going to be bothered by the trivia that has typically consumed me.
01:07:33Well, I can think about even, like, I have friends that were able to stay home with their kids, and now that the kids are gone, now they're torturing themselves for not going back to work while the kids got older.
01:07:47And yet, if you look at the advantage, which is you got that time.
01:07:52Right, and now you have a chance to be who you want to be now, not to be who you thought you should be 20 years ago.
01:08:01Yes, and at the time, it was the right decision.
01:08:03But an empty nest is the same experience, postpartum blues, empty nest.
01:08:07It's all the same, which is you become totally engaged in something, and then it's finished, and now, oh, my God, you feel lost.
01:08:14And people don't realize transitions by their very nature are difficult.
01:08:19Transitions mean you're not where you were, you're not where you're going to be.
01:08:24And so you allow yourself, you know, when you're with the kids, you're not with all your friends.
01:08:29And so all of a sudden, there are all these things happening that you're not part of.
01:08:33Okay, so the kids aren't there, so now you have to make some effort, invite some people over.
01:08:39But I guess the bottom most line of all of it is that everything can be changed.
01:08:45Dr. Langer, this framing, that whatever it is that someone else is doing, they're doing it because it makes sense to them.
01:08:53And if it didn't make sense to them, they wouldn't be doing it.
01:08:57What I like about that framing is that it comes from a place of compassion.
01:09:01You're kind of assuming good intent, like that's why somebody's doing something that I think is idiotic.
01:09:06It makes sense to them.
01:09:08I love that you're using that to help us just be more compassionate.
01:09:13And if you can extend that to other people, you can also extend that to yourself.
01:09:17Like instead of constantly obsessing over the things that you think were mistakes or the things that you wish you would have done differently in the past, if you extend that same frame to yourself, well, whatever I was doing in the past that I would change now, I did it back then because it made sense to me then.
01:09:34That's why I did it.
01:09:35I mean, I love that.
01:09:37I can see why that would actually alleviate stress.
01:09:39It would help you to stop beating yourself up.
01:09:42I mean, that's super powerful.
01:09:43So what I'd say to somebody, you tell me you're stressed up the wazoo, I'd say, okay, what I want you to do, we'll talk about your stress in a minute, because I know you're overwhelmed, you're always stressed, is to just thread a needle.
01:09:56I just want you to thread a needle.
01:09:58And so what happens is you'll thread that and I'll ask you, were you stressed?
01:10:02And of course not, because you were threading the needle.
01:10:05And so if we're not thinking about the stressor, it's not going to have the same effect.
01:10:11I just want to unpack this because I think this is actually really important and it's a visual example that'll help.
01:10:19It helps me, so I'm assuming it's going to help you as you're listening or watching really grasp this.
01:10:23But in this example, when you're stressed out, like you're stressed about what's going on with your kids at school, you're stressed about AI taking over your job, you're stressed about the headlines that you've read, your mind and the premise of your work, mind, body, unity, it is proven.
01:10:38They are, whether it's top down, bottom up, mind, body, unity, they are one and the same.
01:10:42You are focusing your mind's activity on this thing outside of you, whether it's the worry about the kids or the headlines or AI or your bank account or whatever else.
01:10:53When you ask somebody to then thread a needle, you are now focusing your mind singularly on trying to get that little thread through that thing, which means you're not focused on the other thing.
01:11:07You have this very provocative idea that I would love to have you explain to us.
01:11:13It's on page 171.
01:11:15Yes, I remember it.
01:11:16You're amazing.
01:11:18The mindful body.
01:11:20You write, what does it mean to be confident but uncertain?
01:11:23Yes.
01:11:23Okay, so this is one of these things that I think is really important because people conflate, put together, confidence and certainty.
01:11:34Okay.
01:11:34And you have all of these people who act like they know and are very confident and are very certain, but certainty is mindless.
01:11:42If everything is changing, everything looks different from different perspectives, you can't know.
01:11:48And so what you want to do, once you make this universal attribution for nobody knows, then I'm comfortable in my own skin with not knowing.
01:11:58And so, you know, I live my life this way.
01:12:00I'm very confident.
01:12:02Not because I know, because I know nobody knows.
01:12:05Now, when you know you can't know, then be confident in your not knowingness, so to speak, allows everything to be new, everything to be exciting, everything to be experienced as if it's the first time.
01:12:19Well, I think there's a deeper layer underneath that that allows you to do it, which is you also trust in your ability to navigate what comes.
01:12:28Well, you, yes, okay.
01:12:31Once you realize that outcomes, good or bad, are in your head, not in events, you don't have to worry.
01:12:38Right now, when people thinking there are good things and bad, you have to kill people to get to the good things, run as fast as you can from the bad things.
01:12:45But once you recognize that your well-being, your sanity, your happiness, your peace of mind don't depend on anything but your eagerness to create the world you want, life becomes easy.
01:12:59I'm virtually never stressed.
01:13:01Whatever happens, it's fine.
01:13:03I'll find a way for that to be actually an advantage.
01:13:06How does the person who's watching or listening this start applying this?
01:13:13You know what I mean?
01:13:14Because I think when you hear the word mindful and we talk about things related to thoughts or it can feel like, okay, well, how do I start doing today?
01:13:23Okay, so it's unlikely that most people will fully accept that they don't know because we've been taught, you know, I mean, it's very hard.
01:13:33I'm periodically mindless.
01:13:35My response to it is different from most people.
01:13:37I go, yes, I'm right.
01:13:38But, you know, you can't help it.
01:13:41The culture has taught us not to be there.
01:13:44And so we do to flee or not there.
01:13:47What we want to do then is two things.
01:13:50One is just the active noticing of new things.
01:13:54Increase your novel experiences.
01:13:57You know, it's fun.
01:13:58Summer is approaching or here right now.
01:14:01People go away and they look at all sorts of sites.
01:14:04I know in Europe, you look at the churches.
01:14:05We have churches here.
01:14:06No one ever looks at the architecture.
01:14:09You know that.
01:14:09You don't really need to go away because everything here is already brand new.
01:14:14That's actually a great suggestion because when you go away, you are in an entirely new place.
01:14:20You're mindful and you're looking for novelty.
01:14:22But everything at home is already novel.
01:14:24So you could start this right now by simply whatever you're doing, just notice and try to see something that you haven't seen before on this walk or in your kitchen or the spot on the dog.
01:14:38Exactly, exactly.
01:14:39And then the other thing that I think that we should do is that the next time you're stressed, remember some of the things we've talked about.
01:14:47So if somebody feels...
01:14:50Okay, so how to become mindful immediately.
01:14:54Yeah, especially because especially if somebody is like completely overwhelmed in their life and it's easy to be right now.
01:15:00Well, no, if you're overwhelmed, first of all, just choose one of the things and ask yourself how you might do it differently.
01:15:08And does it really matter if you don't do it?
01:15:10Because most of us, you know, a friend of mine overwhelmed with things and she says, Ellen, help me.
01:15:17I just can't get through my list.
01:15:19And I said, all you need to do, make a shorter list.
01:15:22Anybody could generate a list that you can't get through of things to do.
01:15:27You know, it's interesting.
01:15:28I had mentioned procrastination before and a student made me aware of this, that, you know, I've never procrastinated.
01:15:35Now, am I bragging again?
01:15:37And know that anybody at any time can generate all the other things they could be doing.
01:15:44So right now, I'm not procrastinating writing my next book.
01:15:47I'm not procrastinating taking my dog for a walk, returning the phone calls.
01:15:53I'm mindfully doing this.
01:15:55When you're fully engaged in doing what you're doing, you don't resent not doing the other things.
01:16:01If you respect yourself and you know you're doing what you're doing for some good reason or else you wouldn't do it, you don't cast aspersions at yourself.
01:16:10You don't suffer regrets.
01:16:11When you know why you're doing what you're doing, there's no reason to regret not doing something else.
01:16:17So procrastination is a form of mindlessness.
01:16:20Yes.
01:16:21Yes.
01:16:21It's not the not doing that activity.
01:16:24It's the believing there's no good reason that you're not doing that activity.
01:16:28All the shoulds we put on ourselves.
01:16:31I should be writing this homework assignment.
01:16:33I should be making the phone calls to put this project together.
01:16:38I should be preparing the next podcast.
01:16:41Who decided that you should be?
01:16:43So what are a couple specific ways somebody could start to take this research apply?
01:16:48Sure.
01:16:49We can take virtually everything I said and boil it down to, one, know you don't know.
01:16:54And as soon as you know you don't know, then you sit up and pay attention.
01:16:57Two, every time we're judgmental, judging somebody else or ourselves, recognize we're being mindless and there's another way that that behavior can be viewed.
01:17:07Their behavior that we're putting them down for actually makes sense from their perspective or else they wouldn't do it.
01:17:13Number three, next time we're stressed, recognize that events don't cause the stress.
01:17:18Ask yourself, how is this actually a good thing?
01:17:21Stress requires a prediction.
01:17:24Predicting something's awful going to happen.
01:17:25And how do you know it's going to happen?
01:17:27How might it actually turn out into a good thing?
01:17:29Most important is that when we know we don't know, we sit up and we notice.
01:17:35All we have to do to teach ourselves that we don't know is take another look at the things we think we do know and ask how it could be otherwise.
01:17:44How is this thing that seems awful, how might it actually be something good?
01:17:48How is this job that I hate might actually be one that is nurturing me in some ways, providing some nourishment?
01:17:58How might I do it differently?
01:18:00No matter what you're doing, just ask yourself how you might do it differently.
01:18:04And that if we remember that what is done by people is not handed down from the heavens as to how to do it.
01:18:11And so you don't need to do it the same.
01:18:14If you're cooking, you know, it's guesswork.
01:18:17Somebody decided for most things, not everything if you're making a souffle, but for most things, and, you know, you need a cup of sugar and you don't have a cup of sugar.
01:18:27Add some honey, molasses, make it savory rather than sweet.
01:18:31Recognize that the recipe is just somebody's idea of how to make this thing.
01:18:37Make it your own, and then you'll enjoy it more.
01:18:41And it doesn't always work out, and that's good, because if it always worked out exactly the way you anticipated, it'd be like a hole-in-one in every shot.
01:18:50There'd be no there there.
01:18:52Wow.
01:18:52So, Dr. Langer, you've taught us so much today.
01:18:57If there was one thing you wanted the person to do that was the most important thing to take away, what would that be?
01:19:05Well, if they followed all of this, which is, it's hard to, you know, this has been 50 years of my thinking, 50 years of studying and research.
01:19:14I can't imagine that anybody who's listening to two hours of it, read the book three times, would get the full sense of it.
01:19:23But if that were possible, I'd say it's time to start to exploit the power of uncertainty.
01:19:30Hmm.
01:19:31What are your parting words?
01:19:32My parting words are the same as my early words, which is, when we live a life that's mindful, we can't help but experience a personal renaissance, and health and well-being will follow.
01:19:50Hmm.
01:19:51Beautiful.
01:19:52I agree.
01:19:55My pleasure.
01:19:56Thank you for being here.
01:19:58This was fun.
01:19:59And I also want to thank you.
01:20:00Thank you for watching and listening all the way to the end and for being interested in learning how to leverage the power of your mind to be happier and healthier.
01:20:11I'm so excited to see what happens in your life when you take everything that Dr. Langer taught us today and you start applying it.
01:20:20And I also can't wait to see what happens in the people that you care about when you share this episode with them.
01:20:23And one more thing, as your friend, I wanted to be sure to tell you in case nobody else does, because as we learned, the words you use matter.
01:20:32I love you.
01:20:33And I believe in you.
01:20:34And I believe in your ability to create a better life.
01:20:37And based on everything that you learned about how to be more mindful and how to live a more mindful life, there is no doubt in my mind, you're not only going to create a better life, you're going to live one.
01:20:49Alrighty.
01:20:49I'll see you in the very next episode.
01:20:51I'll be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play.
01:20:53And thank you, thank you, thank you for watching all the way to the end.
01:20:58Make sure you hit subscribe because it's a way that you can support me and the team here in bringing you world-renowned experts for free, like Dr. Langer here on our YouTube channel.
01:21:08And I know you're thinking, Mel, okay, I've subscribed.
01:21:11Tell me what to watch next.
01:21:12This right here is the video you are going to love next, and I'll be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play.
01:21:18I'll see you there.
Be the first to comment