0:00

People believe that we have a mind

0:02

and we have a body and that

0:04

they are, since Descartes, two distinct

0:06

things. We all know that there's

0:08

a relationship and people talk about

0:10

mind-body connection. I'm not talking about

0:13

connection. I'm talking about mind-body unity.

0:15

It's one thing, wherever we put

0:17

the mind, we're putting the body.

0:20

And if we put them back together,

0:22

the mind and the body, then wherever

0:24

you're putting the mind, you're necessarily

0:26

putting the body. And I've been

0:28

testing this for over 25 years

0:30

with very exciting results. But what

0:32

it tells us, the bigger picture

0:34

is our health and happiness is

0:36

just a thought away. So

0:38

for me, it's very important for people to

0:40

see the control they actually have

0:42

over their health and well-being. Okay,

0:47

so have you ever heard that

0:49

self-help gratitude? Your thoughts and beliefs

0:51

determine your reality and kind of

0:53

rolled your eyes at it. Yes,

0:55

me too. Except

0:57

it turns out science is making

1:00

a bit of a fool of my

1:02

skepticism in the best of ways. More

1:05

than four decades of research now prove

1:07

that how you think, how you feel,

1:09

how you believe and expect is

1:11

just as important, if not more

1:14

so, than what we do, especially

1:16

when it comes to things like our

1:18

body, our health, our pain, disease, well-being,

1:21

healing, immunity, even weight and strength

1:23

and so much more. It's

1:25

not even that your mind and

1:27

body are connected as today's guest reminded

1:29

me. It's that they are

1:31

literally one and the same, unified to

1:33

use her language. And once we understand

1:35

this, it gives us access to

1:38

stunning new insights and tools and

1:40

practices that can transform our bodies,

1:42

our relationships, well-being and lives simply

1:45

through the way we direct our minds.

1:49

My guest today is Ellen Langer,

1:51

a legendary psychologist, researcher and author

1:53

of the new book, The

1:55

Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health. Ellen

1:57

is actually known worldwide for her research and her

1:59

research. as the mother of mindfulness

2:02

for her groundbreaking research, showing

2:04

how our thoughts, perceptions, and

2:06

mindset directly impact our physical

2:08

and mental health. In our

2:10

conversation, she shares insights from

2:13

over 45 years studying the

2:15

powerful relationship between mind and

2:17

body, or what she would

2:19

consider them to be the

2:21

exact same unified thing. The

2:24

study she shares literally melted my mind

2:26

and truly opened me to a new

2:28

way of thinking about my attention and

2:30

thought process and how

2:33

powerfully they impact my physiology,

2:35

my well-being in both amazing

2:37

and potentially devastating ways

2:40

as well. And Ellen also shares

2:42

powerful and necessary reframes around the

2:44

notion of mindfulness that are critical

2:46

in understanding how to harness its

2:49

power to both cultivate health and

2:51

improve nearly every part of life

2:54

to live more fulfilling lives with

2:56

happiness and vitality. In

2:58

our conversation, she offers simple tips

3:01

that anyone can use to unlock

3:03

the potential of mind-body unity and

3:05

start reclaiming the richness life has

3:08

to offer. So excited to

3:10

share this conversation with you. I'm

3:12

Jonahun Veels, and this is Good

3:14

Life Project. Thank

3:58

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Exclusions apply. See site for details. What

4:52

is your personal experience? I've

4:54

been following your work for quite some time

4:56

in the early days of the counterclockwise study.

4:59

Good. And really traveling alongside you. You have

5:01

a number of friends who've sort of been

5:03

in and out of the world of positive

5:05

psych and early in the University

5:08

of Pennsylvania's MAP program. So

5:11

I'm fascinated by really the notion

5:13

of how present we are in

5:15

life and what does the

5:17

science say about it? And then even if

5:19

there isn't science, what does our personal experience

5:22

say about it? Curious about

5:24

your new book also, The Mindful Body. From

5:27

what I understand, this actually

5:29

began life as a memoir,

5:31

not what it is now. How did

5:33

that transition happen? Well, it

5:35

started as a memoir, which means

5:37

there are lots of personal stories.

5:39

And also by writing a memoir,

5:42

I draw my memory for

5:44

many things that ended up relevant to

5:46

the point I was trying

5:48

to make about risk taking or decision

5:50

making. And then actually it

5:52

was my agent, he'll not be happy with

5:55

me saying this. He said, Ellen,

5:57

it's very hard to write a memoir. And

5:59

I said, OK. So I'll learn then he

6:01

said well, you know, you could make it sort

6:04

of a research memoir and I said, okay

6:06

Maybe I'll do that. Yeah, you know, I'm

6:08

open to all sorts of suggestions I don't

6:10

mind being edited and if anybody can make

6:12

anything I'm doing better I'm

6:14

please but then I realized

6:16

that my research isn't linear

6:19

you know the ideas go round

6:21

and round and you and eventually

6:23

grow and Lead

6:25

me to the point where I have to put them on

6:28

paper So that wasn't going to work and

6:30

then I just wrote the way I've written

6:32

all my other books But this

6:34

one I think because of all

6:36

the personal stories and also because it's

6:38

a culmination of 45 years of research

6:42

I think that this one is my best. So

6:44

I'm happy it spans so

6:46

much I'm curious also just about the

6:48

impulse for you. You've been writing

6:51

for decades You have was it a dozen

6:53

books out at this point 13, but who's

6:55

counting? Where does the

6:57

impulse come from actually to say like, okay So at

6:59

this moment in time, I want to

7:01

step into the memoir side of this Was

7:04

it more of a creative challenge or

7:06

was it something that was bigger? Yeah

7:08

I don't think it was either bigger

7:10

or our creative challenge because I've written

7:13

many books before But if

7:15

you knew me as a kid, you'd know that

7:17

but in some ways I haven't changed at all And

7:20

I was very lucky to have parents

7:22

that were wonderfully supportive So

7:24

I've been a happy camper all my life

7:26

and since I'm a little kid and I

7:28

meet you Jonathan and you're unhappy So why

7:31

don't you look at it this way? So

7:33

I've been doing that forever with the goal

7:35

of sharing these

7:37

ideas, you know it seems to

7:39

me that the happiness and

7:41

success that people seek is really just

7:43

a small step from where they are

7:46

and So I've taken it as in

7:48

part like it's my life's work to

7:51

try to move people in that direction And

7:54

so that's what all of the research is and then the

7:56

books follow naturally from

7:58

that as you know Here's

8:00

the best way for me to make

8:02

people aware of all of the hard

8:04

science as it's called. Yeah, I

8:07

mean, which brings up another really interesting question.

8:09

This was sort of your wiring from the

8:11

earliest days. And you spent

8:13

pretty much your entire adult life, working life,

8:16

diving into the science of how do we reorient

8:19

people to these states. I never

8:21

left school. That's kind of sad, isn't

8:23

it? Do you visit the notion

8:25

of the, you know, it's the classic question,

8:27

nurture versus nature in terms of this disposition?

8:30

Oh, gosh, I mark the

8:32

edge of the nurture part

8:34

of the nature-nurture continuum. I

8:37

don't think we're destined

8:39

for anything, biologically nor

8:41

socially, culturally or any

8:43

other. In fact,

8:45

there's a slide I show when

8:47

I'm giving lectures where I claim

8:49

that if the root

8:52

cause of virtually

8:54

all of our problems,

8:57

whether they're personal,

8:59

interpersonal, professional, global

9:02

as our mindlessness. And

9:05

the, you know, to turn that around,

9:07

more positively, that means for me, everything

9:10

has a solution. And

9:12

I see that the world is in some sense, well,

9:14

things seem to be a mess now. There's

9:17

another way of looking at it as

9:19

an evolution in consciousness. But

9:21

when I say on that side, which

9:24

is kind of fun, I say virtually

9:26

all of our problems are a direct

9:28

or indirect result of mindfulness. And

9:30

that's because I'm writing it. And then I

9:33

tell the audience that I really mean all,

9:35

which is a very big

9:37

statement, but I deeply believe it.

9:40

Yeah. What's the resistance where people

9:42

think virtually, like, are they always thinking of edge cases

9:44

to offer up to you? Now,

9:46

I think that's just in my head, you

9:48

know, sort of, it's so it's a hot

9:50

this. Yeah, exactly. You know,

9:52

to sound so certain and it also

9:54

sounds a little mindless. So

9:56

I cover myself. It's a hedge.

10:00

I haven't found a problem that I

10:02

think wouldn't be solved if

10:04

we approached it more mindfully, which doesn't mean I

10:06

have the solution at hand for any

10:09

problem that one can throw it. I

10:11

mean, the world right now has many

10:13

of these problems and I'm

10:16

not prepared to fix them all. But

10:18

I still believe that if

10:20

the cultures involved taught

10:23

their children to be more

10:25

mindful, if everything we

10:27

did was to promote this alternative

10:29

way of being, alternative way most

10:31

people live their lives, most

10:33

of the problems wouldn't occur and

10:36

would certainly diminish if not go away.

10:38

Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. You know, you

10:41

when you use the word culture, are you

10:43

talking mostly about Western culture? Because I feel

10:45

like the notion of mindfulness just more broadly

10:47

then. Yeah, you know, for everybody.

10:50

The world is very small these

10:52

days. So we used to say,

10:54

are you talking about the East or the West?

10:57

It doesn't really make sense anymore. Because

10:59

there's so many things in the East

11:01

that are very Western. And we have

11:03

all these people here meditating

11:05

and trying to be bougie as people

11:07

in the East. Yeah,

11:09

that makes sense. Well, let's talk about

11:11

language a little bit. You've used the

11:14

phrase both mindfulness and mylessness. Deconstruct

11:16

those a little bit for me. That's

11:19

probably the most important thing is for

11:21

me to define what I know by

11:23

that because when people hear the word

11:25

mindfulness, they think of meditation, right? And

11:28

meditation is fine. But that's not what

11:30

I'm talking about. Meditation isn't mindfulness. Meditation

11:33

is a practice you undergo

11:35

in order to lead

11:37

to post meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness,

11:39

as we study it, isn't

11:42

a practice. It's just a

11:44

way of being that

11:46

results in you actively noticing. Now, when

11:48

I say a way of being once

11:50

you recognize that everything

11:52

is changing, everything looks different

11:54

from different perspectives. Nothing

11:56

is certain nothing. And when you know, you don't

11:59

know you too. in. If your listeners thought

12:01

they knew what I was going to say next,

12:03

that's when they'd get up and go get, you

12:05

know, popcorn or something, right? We

12:07

don't know. And the problem is too

12:09

many people think they should know, and

12:12

too many people pretend they do know.

12:14

But we can't know. So, if

12:17

you bought that lock stock in

12:19

Maryland, as they say, then everything

12:21

would be new, and you'd naturally

12:23

spend your time noticing. People have

12:26

been taught since their

12:28

children to be mindless our schools,

12:30

our parents, all of

12:33

our institutions encourage our mindlessness.

12:35

And they do this by teaching

12:37

absolutes. And again, when

12:40

you know something absolutely, then you're

12:42

going to be more robotic, actively

12:44

seek out alternatives. So my favorite

12:46

example of this is the

12:48

thing that people seem to be most certain of is

12:51

how much is one in one. So

12:53

everybody says two, but it's not.

12:56

It's often two, but it's not always two.

12:58

If you were to add one pile of laundry

13:00

plus one pile of laundry, one plus one is

13:03

one. You add one cloud plus one cloud,

13:05

one plus one is one. And one

13:07

lot of chewing gum plus one lot of chewing gum,

13:09

one plus one is one. So in

13:11

the real world, it probably doesn't equal

13:13

two as are more often than

13:15

it does. So now just

13:17

imagine Jonathan, this is not likely to

13:19

happen. But right after we spent finished

13:22

speaking, somebody asked you, hey, Jonathan, how

13:24

much is one plus one? You're not

13:26

going to mindlessly blurred out to anymore,

13:28

right? You're going to pay some attention

13:30

to the context. And then you'll answer

13:32

more mindfully saying, it could be and

13:34

then you could answer one, two or

13:36

whatever else you want to say. So

13:39

because we're taught all these absolutes,

13:42

and we think we know that

13:44

submits that that leads us to

13:47

use everything we've learned

13:49

yesterday to understand what's happening

13:51

today. And it's not a

13:53

good heuristic. That's

14:00

the last closest thing that we can see to what we're trying

14:02

to do now. And let's get

14:04

it as close to that and let's apply that

14:06

model to what's coming at us. It

14:08

sounds like what you're suggesting is, and

14:10

tell me if I have this right,

14:13

that a precondition for true mindfulness is

14:15

uncertainty. Exactly. And

14:17

so the way to become uncertain when you're

14:19

steeped in all of this false

14:22

knowing is so simple.

14:24

Just actively notice new things about the

14:26

things you think you know. So you

14:28

walk outside your door, you've done it

14:30

every day for however old you are,

14:32

however long you've lived there, and notice

14:34

five new things. And

14:37

you see, gee, I didn't know this street as well

14:39

as I thought I did. And notice

14:41

three new things, five new things

14:43

about your best friend, your spouse,

14:45

boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. And you

14:47

keep doing this and the things again

14:49

that you are sure of now change.

14:51

You know, when I was about 50,

14:53

I started painting. And prior to that,

14:55

if you had asked me what color

14:57

it leaves, and it would depend on when

14:59

you'd ask me, because if you asked me in the fall, you

15:01

know, I would be more aware

15:04

that they're changing color. But you asked me

15:06

in the summer or the spring, and I'm

15:08

going to say, and I'm sure I did

15:10

say, green. Then I start painting,

15:12

and so I start looking at things

15:14

differently. And I notice that green. I

15:17

mean, there are hundreds of different shades

15:19

of green. And wherever the sun is

15:21

in the sky, each of those shades

15:23

change. And so look at how rich

15:25

and exciting life becomes. And I went

15:27

from, metaphorically, this one thing green to,

15:29

you know, so many alternatives.

15:32

And I think that what people need

15:34

to understand is that coming

15:37

up with these answers to questions

15:39

is fun. When I say

15:42

to people, you should be mindful all

15:44

the time. Jonathan, some people shudder. It

15:46

sounds exhausting. Even thinking

15:49

has gotten a bad rap. People don't think

15:51

they can be thinking all the time. But

15:53

it's not the thinking that is problematic for

15:55

people. It's the worry that you won't get

15:57

the right answer. Now, there's more.

16:00

mindfulness, which is just noticing new

16:02

things, is what you do when you're having

16:04

fun. It doesn't require any practice.

16:06

If you were going to come visit me in

16:08

my home right now, you've never been here, you

16:11

wouldn't have to practice getting yourself ready

16:13

for anything. You'd walk in, you'd say,

16:15

oh, look at that. I wonder, did she do that

16:17

painting? Is this a book she's read? Oh,

16:20

I hated that book. You'd have the conversation

16:22

with yourself about everything that you saw, all

16:24

right? And you'd enjoy yourself. So, you

16:26

know, you say, should you be mindful all the time?

16:29

Could you be having fun all the time? And I'm

16:31

here to say yes, because that's the

16:33

life that, you know, I'm fortunate

16:35

enough to live, where virtually everything

16:37

is a game. It doesn't

16:39

mean there are unserious things,

16:41

but they don't become overwhelming.

16:43

They become interesting. So

16:46

yeah, when you know you don't know, everything

16:48

is new. It's the essence of engagement. It's the

16:50

way you feel when you just fall in love.

16:52

You have a bite of that food you never

16:55

had before that you think is delicious.

16:58

Surely, if you asked the question

17:00

that way, people would say, yeah, they

17:02

can do this thing all the time. Yeah, I

17:04

mean, what you're describing also sounds a lot like how

17:07

I've heard the state of wonder described to me. Yeah,

17:09

which I think a lot of us tend to lose

17:11

as we I think, you know, when we're kids, I

17:13

think wonder becomes a natural state. But as we grow

17:16

up, we're sort of like, let's lock everything down. And

17:18

let's assume that we know like this, that and the

17:20

other thing. And we don't have to revisit it. And

17:22

I also curious what your take is, I must feel

17:24

like we do that as adults because life gets so

17:27

busy, there's so much coming at us. So we feel

17:29

like we need to get so

17:31

much out of our sort of decision matrix

17:33

as we can, because it's just overwhelming. So

17:35

let's lock down as much as we

17:37

can so we can breathe more without

17:39

realizing that we're locking out so

17:41

much wonder and so much possibility at the same time. Does

17:44

that make sense? Oh, yeah,

17:46

no, completely. I mean, I think

17:48

that people think that there's so much

17:50

information out there. I can't tell you how many

17:52

journalists have asked me over the years. How

17:55

can they cope? There's just so much to

17:57

know. My answer is that there's no more to

17:59

know now than there ever was. You

18:01

know, you could spend a lifetime,

18:03

and some people do, looking at

18:05

a blade of grass, wheat, whatever.

18:08

The difference is that people think

18:10

that their performance will improve if

18:13

they take in more information. And there's

18:15

really no evidence for that. I

18:18

don't know where we got it all

18:20

wrong, but I certainly don't think that

18:22

kids are more mindless than

18:24

adults, which you sort of suggested.

18:26

In fact, I think the reverse. You take young

18:28

kids and you watch them, and they'll take a

18:31

paper bag or a cardboard box, and

18:34

they'll play with it all day, creating

18:36

different things. And they're very

18:38

happy until we start giving them expensive

18:40

toys, what have

18:42

you. Yeah, no, I was suggesting, actually, that they

18:45

were more mindful. I want to

18:47

get back to the uncertainty notion, though,

18:49

because I've read enough research on tolerance

18:51

for uncertainty and ambiguity. And

18:54

from my studies that show it's correlation

18:56

with activation of the amygdala, there

18:58

seems to be an almost like

19:00

brain-based neurological response to us having

19:02

to make decisions or take

19:05

action in the face of increasing

19:07

uncertainty, or uncertainty with increasing stakes.

19:09

I think those are all separate

19:11

issues. There are times you feel

19:14

you want to take action. Most

19:16

action is taken without a whole lot

19:18

of information, almost in

19:20

some ways as if we're all emergency doctors,

19:22

where there's no time to check and to

19:24

see what the books say I should be

19:27

doing right now. A person may die while

19:29

you're figuring this out. So

19:31

taking action doesn't rely on

19:33

information. I think we

19:36

talk ourselves into the necessity of

19:38

taking most actions. Certainly,

19:40

the ideas start from you're in

19:42

the jungle and there's a tiger.

19:46

You have to do something, right? Quickly,

19:48

you're either going to make friends with a tiger,

19:50

you're going to run. But in the life that

19:53

most of us are living, the

19:55

decisions we make, the stress we

19:57

impose on ourselves to make these

19:59

decisions. is all self-made.

20:02

I think that the best way of characterizing the

20:04

whole world, but certainly the United

20:07

States now, is people suffering from stress.

20:09

And I think that stress is meaningless.

20:11

And stress is the belief that something's

20:13

going to happen and when it happens

20:15

it's going to be awful. And we

20:18

can't predict, so we don't know that

20:20

it's going to happen. In fact, most

20:22

of the things people are stressed about

20:24

never happen, right? And then when

20:26

you say it's going to be awful, people

20:29

need to understand that events

20:31

are neither good nor bad. Events

20:33

don't cause stress. What causes stress are

20:35

the views we take of the event.

20:38

So you give yourself a scary

20:40

understanding of it, you're going to be

20:43

scared, but you needn't be. And the

20:45

thing is that when you're mindful, you

20:47

have many more options, many more understandings

20:50

of any event. You know, if

20:53

I just meet you and I think

20:55

you're a snob, my feelings can

20:57

be heard, I can take different

20:59

actions, whatever. If I'm mindful, maybe

21:01

you're a snob, maybe you're shy, maybe your

21:04

head hurts at the moment. You know, there

21:06

are so many possible explanations that

21:08

there's no need for me to make the

21:11

decision to protect myself. But

21:13

with stress, let me throw out something

21:15

that people seem to find useful. I

21:17

have a lot of one-liners that are

21:19

culled from a lot of research. So

21:21

this is one that friends I have

21:23

on their refrigerators, which is ask

21:25

yourself, is it a tragedy or an

21:27

inconvenience? Almost never are the

21:30

things we're worried about tragedies, not even

21:32

potential. I missed the bus, I banged

21:34

the car, I didn't get the project

21:36

done on time, I forgot to

21:38

call you back, whatever it

21:41

is. And if you ask yourself that question, then

21:43

you just sort of return to yourself, calm

21:46

down somewhat, because people know,

21:48

no, it's really not

21:50

such a big deal. But the

21:53

stress that people experience, I think,

21:55

is perhaps the major

21:57

problem with respect to illness.

22:00

which is a different thought. So for example,

22:02

I haven't done this study, but if we

22:04

took 100 people and

22:07

they were just diagnosed with cancer, any particular

22:09

kind of cancer, nobody's gonna be happy about

22:11

it. So we leave them alone for a

22:13

few weeks to figure out how to cope.

22:16

And then we check in and measure their

22:18

stress level, let's say, every three weeks or

22:21

so. I believe the

22:23

stress will predict the course of

22:25

the disease over and

22:27

above genetics, over

22:29

and above nutrition, over

22:32

and above the treatment. And

22:34

stress is something that we all

22:36

have, we can all cure,

22:38

and the stress is psychological. And so

22:41

if stress is what's pushing us over

22:43

the edge with so many diseases, and

22:45

we can control our stress, that

22:48

speaks volumes to how much control

22:50

we have over these diseases. Yeah,

22:52

so are you saying, so I

22:54

understand it correctly, that the association

22:57

between stress and mindfulness is

23:00

negative, right? But also that

23:02

stress is not about the event itself, it's about

23:04

our perception of the story we tell ourselves about

23:06

the event, and we can change that story by

23:09

our attentiveness to mindfulness. Exactly,

23:12

and so when you're mindful, it

23:15

just naturally, alternatives naturally occur

23:17

to you. And so if you

23:20

thought something was going to happen, and

23:22

you gave yourself five reasons why it

23:24

might not happen, you're immediately

23:26

gonna be less stressed, right? Because you

23:28

start off, terrible things are gonna

23:31

happen, maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't. And

23:33

so life just unfolds in a very different

23:35

way. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Good

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now wherever books are sold. One

28:31

of the overarching themes of the latest book,

28:33

The Mindful Body, and this is an overarching

28:35

theme of your entire body of work, which

28:37

is I think what you would

28:39

describe as mind-body unity, which really

28:42

dives into the relationship between the state of the mind

28:44

and the state of body, if you even consider them

28:46

two things that I don't think you really do. Take

28:49

me deeper into the concept and what does it

28:51

refute? Everything. Yes.

28:54

People believe that we have a mind and

28:56

we have a body and that they are,

28:58

since they are two distinct things. And

29:01

the problem is that in

29:03

studying the mind and the body

29:06

is you have to ask, how do I

29:08

get from this fuzzy thing called the thought

29:10

to something material called the body? And that's

29:12

the problem that people have been able to

29:15

solve. Although everybody, you know,

29:17

once you're, I don't know, maybe even

29:19

10 years old, have had experience. You

29:21

know, you're walking down the street and

29:23

the leaf blows and you get scared

29:25

until you realize it's just a leaf.

29:27

You know, your pulse increases and so

29:30

on. Or you see somebody regurgitate and

29:32

yourself starts feeling sick. We all know

29:34

that there's a relationship and so it

29:36

went from the medical world, not

29:38

that many decades ago, believing being

29:41

happy is nice, you know,

29:44

but psychology is irrelevant

29:46

essentially to disease. To get a

29:48

disease, you need the introduction of

29:50

an antigen. Now most

29:52

of the medical world has moved

29:55

over and people talk about mind-body

29:57

connection. I'm not talking about

29:59

connection. I'm talking about seeing

30:02

these are just words. And

30:04

if we put them back together, the mind

30:06

and the body, then wherever you're

30:08

putting the mind, you're necessarily putting

30:10

the body. And I've been testing

30:12

this for over 25 years

30:15

with very exciting results. But when it

30:17

tells us the bigger picture is, our

30:19

health and happiness is just a thought

30:21

away, which is very

30:24

different from the standard belief

30:26

that people have. The

30:28

assumption is, at a certain point

30:31

in life, you're going to start experiencing

30:33

all sorts of negative things. If

30:35

you have some chronic illness, you

30:38

know that there's nothing you can do about it, as

30:41

people understand chronic as uncontrollable.

30:43

And you know, just think about it that

30:46

first of all, we could never by any

30:48

science prove something is uncontrollable.

30:51

All you can prove is that what

30:53

you tried failed, which doesn't mean that

30:55

something else wouldn't succeed. If

30:57

you believe something is uncontrollable, you

30:59

don't do anything to try to

31:02

control it. You just mindlessly accept

31:04

that. If instead, and more precisely,

31:06

you realized it was indeterminate, we

31:08

just don't know, then

31:10

you might try things that other

31:13

people haven't thought about. And

31:15

that might work for you. You

31:17

know, we took this and I

31:19

have a whole treatment program for

31:22

chronic illness. And it's

31:24

very simple. I call it attention

31:26

to symptom variability, which is

31:28

a fancy word for mindfulness, is when you're

31:30

mindful, you notice when things change. Variable

31:33

means change. What we

31:35

do is we take people who have chronic illnesses and

31:38

we just call them periodically. How

31:41

is the symptom now? Is it

31:43

better or worse than before? Well,

31:45

that very simple thing sets in

31:47

motion many, many processes. The first

31:49

is, as soon as you

31:51

see it's change, you feel, well, maybe a

31:53

second, maybe I can move this around. The

31:56

second, by looking for why

31:58

it's better or worse, you feel. feel in control

32:00

again. It's the hardest part, or one

32:03

of the hardest parts of having some

32:05

chronic illnesses. You can't do anything for

32:07

yourself, so you feel helpless. The third

32:10

and probably most important is

32:12

that by asking yourself why, why

32:14

does it hurt more or less, whatever

32:16

doesn't have to be hurt, it can

32:18

be any symptom, than before you start

32:21

on the mindful search for the

32:23

answer. And I have decades of

32:25

research showing that mindfulness is good

32:28

for your health, independent of whether

32:30

you find the solution you're looking

32:32

for. We have several

32:34

studies where we give elderly people

32:37

opportunities to be mindful and they

32:39

live longer. So just looking

32:41

for the solution will be good for you.

32:43

And then last, I believe if you look

32:45

for a solution, you're more likely to find

32:48

one, than if you don't. And

32:50

so this was my attempt to

32:52

replace the placebo. Now think

32:54

about the placebo, Jonathan. You

32:57

take this pill that is inert

32:59

to sugar pill. It's a nothing pill.

33:01

You take a nothing pill and you

33:03

get better. So who's making

33:05

you better? You're making yourself

33:08

better. And so part of

33:10

my life's work has been to try

33:12

to make that more direct, get rid

33:14

of the middleman. You don't need the

33:16

stupid pill. There's no there, there anyway.

33:19

And this was an attempt to do that.

33:21

But you can't give yourself a placebo.

33:24

But you still can do this

33:26

attention to variability yourself, where

33:28

most people have a smartphone.

33:31

So set the smartphone to ring in an

33:33

hour and then ask yourself, how is it

33:35

now? And is it better or

33:37

worse than before? Then set it to, you

33:39

know, to ring in two and a half

33:42

hours in various times across the day, across

33:44

the week. And we've

33:46

had success with very

33:48

big problems with multiple

33:51

sclerosis, Parkinson's, stroke, chronic

33:53

pain, arthritis, and

33:55

so on. To make it maybe clearer

33:58

to people. Let's say Jonathan And

34:00

you suffer because you're stressed all the

34:02

time. No one is anything all

34:04

the time. The point is, when

34:07

you're not stressed, you're not thinking about

34:09

the whole thing. So you go from

34:11

thinking about being stressed, your mind is

34:13

elsewhere, and then you're stressed again, it

34:16

seems as if you've always been stressed.

34:18

So now you do this attention to

34:21

variability. Am I more or less stressed

34:23

now than I was before and why?

34:25

You keep doing this and you discover

34:28

that you're maximally stressed when you're talking

34:30

to Ellen Langer. Okay, well the

34:32

cure is easy, right? Stop talking

34:34

to me or change the way

34:36

we speak to each other. So

34:38

it's anything that's held still since

34:40

everything is changing, it is artificial.

34:43

And if we do this, you

34:45

know, you think somebody is a

34:47

nasty whatever. Well, nobody is

34:49

a nasty whatever all the time. And

34:52

so you notice when they are, when they aren't.

34:54

And then your relationship is even going to improve

34:57

your expectations about what they're going to do

34:59

next and so on. So

35:01

in code, it's being mindful

35:03

to get us to recognize

35:06

change. In that last example,

35:08

also, I mean, wouldn't a third option also be

35:10

to change the story I'm telling myself about what

35:12

happens when I have a conversation with Ellen? Exactly.

35:15

So for me, it's very important for

35:17

people to see the control they actually

35:20

have over their health and well-being. The

35:22

very first test of this mind-body

35:24

unit, remember, we take mind-body, it's

35:27

one thing, wherever we put the

35:29

mind, we're putting the body. So this

35:31

was a counterclockwise study. Right. John, I

35:33

can say this is a famous study.

35:35

One shouldn't talk about their own work

35:37

that way. But that's because if you

35:39

tune into the Simpsons Go to Havana,

35:42

they actually discuss it. I think that qualifies for

35:44

fame right there. At

35:46

any rate, so what we did was retrofit

35:48

a retreat to 20 years earlier. And

35:51

we had elderly men live there as

35:53

if they were their younger selves. So

35:55

they spoke about past events, for instance, as

35:57

if they were just unfold in a period.

36:00

of less than a week.

36:02

These are old men. Their vision

36:04

improved, their hearing improved, their memory,

36:07

their strength, and they looked noticeably

36:09

younger without any medical intervention. Now,

36:12

when was the last time you

36:14

heard an 80-year-old's hearing improve? It

36:17

might have been said to you, but you

36:19

didn't hear it. Okay. And so that was

36:21

the first of many studies that I won't

36:23

go through all of them now, but just

36:25

to give people an example of a few

36:27

that are mentioned in the book, the mindful

36:29

body. So what's the hypothesis there in terms

36:31

of like what's the mechanism? Or maybe it

36:33

is the wrong question actually. No, no,

36:36

everybody asks that. Even after I

36:38

explain it, they still ask it

36:40

because we're so, you know, wedded

36:42

to mind and body. So

36:44

what's going on? But it's one thing.

36:47

Right. The underlying assumption. Now, I'm not

36:49

saying, and it was good that you asked

36:51

me this. I'm not saying

36:53

there's nothing going on physiologically. What

36:56

I'm saying is what's going on

36:58

physiologically is happening more

37:00

or less simultaneously. Right. So

37:02

if I go like this, every part

37:04

of my body is different. You know, it's

37:07

funny. I think I mentioned this in the

37:09

book. There was a time I was in

37:11

Columbia, Missouri, or someplace in Missouri, St. Louis,

37:13

and a friend of mine dragged me to

37:16

an iridologist. So I'm game for anything. It

37:18

was kind of fun. And I sit in

37:20

the office and she looks at me and

37:23

she looks at my eyes. That's

37:25

what she does. And then she told me

37:27

I have a problem with my gallbladder. Magic.

37:30

Okay. Well, it turned out I

37:32

did. Things like that. Evidence

37:34

of everything is represented everywhere.

37:37

Sometimes we don't have the technology

37:40

and the machinery, whatever, to notice

37:42

the difference. But it's

37:44

fair. So the next study in

37:46

the series was with chambermaids.

37:48

Oddly, chambermaids don't see themselves as

37:51

exercising. They think according to

37:53

the surgeon general, exercise is what you do

37:55

after work. And after work, they're just too

37:57

tired. Okay, so the first thing that

38:00

One might ask, given that these women

38:02

are exercising all day long and people

38:04

say exercise is good for you, they

38:07

should be healthy. Healthier

38:09

than socioeconomic equivalent others, right?

38:11

But they're not. That's

38:13

interesting. So now we take these women,

38:16

divide them into two groups. Ever

38:18

so simple and we shake lots

38:20

of measures. And we're going to teach

38:23

one of these groups of women that

38:25

they work as exercise. So

38:27

they're told, making it bad is like working

38:29

at this machine at the gym, sweeping is

38:31

like working. So at the end

38:33

we have two groups. One that doesn't realize they

38:36

work as exercise, one that does. At

38:38

the end of the study, the group

38:40

that changed their mind, they weren't

38:42

working any harder, they weren't eating

38:44

any differently. There were

38:47

no differences on any of those

38:49

measures. However, they lost weight,

38:51

there was a change in waist to

38:53

hip ratio, body mass index, and their

38:56

blood pressure came down just

38:58

from their change of mind. I won't

39:00

go through all the studies, let me just tell

39:02

you one of the most recent. So we inflict

39:04

a wound, minor,

39:07

for sweetheart people, but it's still a wound.

39:10

People are in front of a clock. Unbeknownst

39:12

to them, the clock is rigged.

39:15

So for a third of the people, the

39:17

clock is going twice as fast as real

39:19

time. For a third of the people,

39:22

the clock is going half as fast as real

39:24

time. For a third of the people, it's real

39:26

time. Now most people would

39:28

assume that wound is going to heal when

39:31

this wound heals, right? Based on

39:33

real time. And no, the wound

39:35

healed based on clock time, based

39:38

on perceived time. We

39:40

have studies with fatigue, as

39:43

it turns out to be mostly

39:45

a psychological construct. With

39:47

diabetes, we use the same

39:49

clock idea with diabetes

39:51

study. People with type 2

39:53

diabetes come in for the study. We take

39:55

all sorts of measures. Then we're

39:58

going to have them play computer games. The

40:00

reason for that is so that they can look

40:02

at this rigged clock. And we tell

40:04

them, change the game you're playing every 15

40:06

minutes. We look at the

40:08

clock. For a third of them, the clock is going

40:11

twice as fast as real time. For a

40:13

third half as fast, for a third it's real

40:15

time. And blood sugar

40:17

level follows perceived, not

40:20

real time. That's wild. So if you

40:22

can think it, you can bring most

40:24

things about. What

40:26

people don't realize is that almost all

40:28

of the things they think they can't

40:31

do, just came

40:33

from somebody telling them, trying

40:35

once and giving up. An example,

40:38

I asked them my health class. I

40:40

said, how far is it humanly possible

40:43

to run? Now it becomes like

40:45

an auction. One person said, no, it's not 26

40:48

miles because that's America. So

40:50

it usually starts at 30, 35

40:53

and then somebody says 50 and everybody is

40:55

silent. Nobody believes 50 miles.

40:59

Then I turn on a video, you

41:01

should watch this if you've never seen

41:03

this before, of the Tarimora,

41:06

which is a tribe in a

41:08

copper canyon in Mexico. These

41:10

people can go over 200 miles

41:13

without stopping. Now

41:16

imagine if you saw

41:18

this as a kid, you

41:20

wouldn't get as tired at 26 miles. The

41:24

idea of how much

41:26

you could do would just instantly be

41:28

expanded. And what we do

41:30

and what the medical world does all too often

41:33

is they give the average

41:35

performance or the

41:37

longest healing time. We're doing

41:39

a study now where we take the

41:41

fastest healing time. And I think that

41:43

will affect how long it takes for

41:45

everybody to heal. I mean

41:47

it's so powerful also, right? Because you figure,

41:50

well maybe they give the longest healing time

41:52

so that they're trying to set expectations so

41:54

people aren't disappointed. Oh, there's always a good

41:56

reason. But they can do that. in

42:00

a different way that doesn't set

42:03

up the negative expectation. You say,

42:05

many people do it in three

42:07

months, whatever we're talking about. There's

42:10

some people who've done

42:12

it in three weeks. I don't know, maybe you

42:14

could do it faster or maybe it'll take long.

42:17

Just don't give them the prophecy that

42:19

will be self-fulfilled. Yeah, it's like you

42:21

give them the possibility of them having

42:23

some like, it could be the fastest

42:26

version. So, it's fascinating. I

42:28

mean, and then when you broaden this out

42:30

to the conversation around public health and the

42:32

way that hospitals are built, the way that

42:34

medicine happens and the relationship between caregivers

42:37

and patients, the implications

42:39

are astounding. They're enormous.

42:42

I think so. I'm so glad that you

42:44

mentioned that. And I have a chapter in

42:46

the book on the mindful hospital, hopefully a

42:48

hospital of the future. You know,

42:50

burnout is very, very

42:53

common in the medical world. And

42:55

burnout is a function of mindlessness. So,

42:58

if they saw their patients and noticed

43:00

new things about them, the

43:02

patient would feel cared for and end

43:05

up more mindful, which would be good

43:07

for them and probably help their, whatever

43:10

the disease process is. And

43:12

the staff, the medical staff would

43:15

also become healthier. It's

43:17

kind of funny that when

43:19

I started to think about hospitals, here's

43:21

a place that people go to get

43:23

better. Virtually everybody, when

43:26

you first walk into a hospital,

43:28

is so stressed, you know, it's

43:30

measurable, right? But hospitals don't have

43:32

to be stressful. You

43:34

know, doctors don't have to be wearing white

43:36

anymore. I mean, that was

43:38

a way to show dirt now with

43:40

washing machines, you know, people aren't looking

43:43

to see if their uniforms are

43:45

clean or not. An

43:47

understanding of mindlessness is

43:49

that something starts and it

43:51

makes sense. And then you

43:53

keep doing it, you keep doing it,

43:55

things change, but you're still doing

43:58

this thing that used to make sense. example,

44:01

if you're driving and you're driving

44:03

on ice, what do you do? Slow

44:05

down. But one thing I don't do is

44:07

hit the brakes. Okay, so that's

44:09

interesting. You say that's what we were all

44:12

taught. So time one, when we

44:14

all learned how to drive and I'm much older than

44:16

you are, that we

44:18

were taught when the car starts to

44:20

skid, you gently pump the brakes to

44:22

get control over it. That made sense

44:24

in the past. Now there

44:27

are anti lock brakes. And it turns

44:29

out, Jonathan, for safety's sake, now what

44:31

you need to do is step hard

44:33

on that brake. The very thing you

44:35

said you wouldn't do. You

44:38

say, so what happens when you're we're

44:40

taught initially how to do something, it

44:42

all makes sense. And then we do

44:45

it forever, even though

44:47

things change. So in the braking

44:49

example, now people, because they learned

44:51

how to do it, are doing

44:53

exactly the wrong thing, and

44:56

actually setting themselves up for more danger. And I'm

44:58

raising my hand right there. Because I learned to

45:00

drive when the anti lock brakes didn't exist. And

45:02

there was no pulsing mechanism. And even though I

45:05

know they exist now, and even though I know

45:07

they're in my car, my default

45:09

mode is don't hit the brakes. Right.

45:12

If we learn it mindfully in

45:15

the first place, then it becomes

45:17

it stays the choices stay lively

45:19

throughout, you know, and the way

45:21

to learn it mindfully is to know that

45:23

it's not absolute. Things are

45:26

going to depend on context. Everything

45:28

is sort of could be possibly

45:30

rather than is. And

45:33

this came home to me so many years ago

45:35

and changed my life this event at

45:38

a horse event. Remember, I'm a straight A

45:40

student, I'm the one everybody hates. Right. Okay.

45:42

So I know. So I'm

45:45

at this horse event and this man asked me if

45:47

I'll watch his horse for him because he's going to

45:49

get his horse off. I know. Nobody

45:51

knows better. Horses don't eat

45:54

me. They're a bit rough. So

45:56

it's all I could do but laugh, right? But

45:58

I want to be nicer. Of course. horse.

46:00

Go get that dog. He

46:02

goes, he comes back with the hot dog,

46:04

Jonathan the horse ate it. And

46:07

it was at that moment that I realized

46:09

everything I thought I knew could be wrong.

46:12

For me, some people would be bothered by

46:14

that, but for me, it was

46:16

very exciting because it meant all those things that

46:19

are not supposed to happen, that you're not supposed

46:21

to be able to do, all

46:23

of those possibilities became lively again.

46:25

And that's the sort of thing

46:27

that I've been researching for decades

46:30

now. Yeah, I love that.

46:32

I mean, it's like the, I've always believed

46:34

that uncertainty is one side of a two-sided

46:37

coin, the other side of which is possibility.

46:39

And we can't have the possibility side without

46:41

the uncertainty. And also the uncertainty exists only

46:43

in the context of possibility. But

46:46

when you're locked into certainty, when you

46:48

think you know, you're not there anymore,

46:50

right? You've become mindless and you've also

46:52

foreclosed possibility in a way

46:55

that we don't realize it's just so

46:57

life-looning in so many ways. Another way

46:59

of putting that is that people run

47:01

from doubt. That is

47:03

bad, but people love choice, but

47:05

you can't have choice unless there's doubt because

47:08

as soon as you know, you want a

47:10

thousand dollars as opposed to the hundred dollars.

47:12

Right. The choice is over. Support

47:18

for this podcast and the following message is

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to go.acast.com to get started. I

48:42

mean, it's fascinating because what you're describing, it's

48:44

landing an interesting way with me. I

48:46

recently just actually recorded an episode of my

48:48

journey with tinnitus or tinnitus, this sound in

48:50

my head, which touched down in 2010 and

48:54

for the first year or so, it was really brutal.

48:56

It was taking me to an

48:58

extraordinarily dark place. I ended up actually finding

49:00

a mindfulness-based cognitive therapist who was a former

49:02

rock drummer who also had it and asked

49:05

him, could this help? And

49:07

I started that practice. His instructions to

49:09

me were yes and maybe. But

49:12

the part of the instruction that you're not

49:14

going to like is that the classic mindfulness

49:16

meditation instruction is find an anchor,

49:19

often it's your breath. But if there's something

49:21

that keeps coming back into your mind, make

49:23

that your anchor for your attention, that

49:26

particular session, which for me was always going to

49:29

be the sound in my head. And

49:31

when I started doing that, it

49:33

made me so anxious that I literally started to shake and

49:35

I had to back away. But I kept

49:37

at it and over a period of months, I

49:39

started to notice that the sound of my head actually

49:41

was much more complex and nuanced and it changed over

49:44

time. What you're describing here, I'm like, oh, this is

49:46

interesting. And then I started to

49:48

notice, well, it seems to cause a lot

49:50

more pain for me at night than during

49:52

the daytime when the din of the city

49:54

drops away. There's nothing to

49:56

distract me from it. And I had all the tests, so

49:58

I knew this was not like. a big scary thing

50:01

that was causing it. So that was ruled

50:03

out. And then what started to happen is

50:05

I started to tell a different story to

50:07

myself about it. That this was

50:09

no different than any of the other sounds that

50:11

were like, I'm in Boulder, Colorado now, but I

50:13

spent 30 years in New York City. So

50:16

why was it causing me so much distress?

50:19

And when I realized that it was just the story

50:21

I was telling about it, then I

50:23

started to practice letting go of that story and

50:25

also being attentive to it and realizing that it

50:28

actually wasn't so bad exploring the sound. I

50:31

was able to let it go and let my mind drift

50:33

back to other things. And what I

50:35

now notice is that for all

50:37

intents and purposes, when

50:39

I'm not actively seeking out

50:41

the sound, it doesn't exist.

50:44

When I'm seeking it out, the minute I look for it,

50:46

it's there. But when I'm not looking for

50:48

it, it's not like I don't hear it anymore. In

50:51

my experience, it literally doesn't exist anymore. Yeah,

50:54

you know, but the question is, how

50:56

do you get to the point of

50:58

telling yourself a different story? And

51:00

so because being mindless, we

51:03

don't assume that there are alternatives

51:05

to any of our thoughts, you know,

51:07

and then when you tell yourself a different

51:09

story, I'm glad it worked for you. But

51:12

you shouldn't stop at one story, in a

51:14

sense falling into the same trap, you don't

51:16

know what it is. Yeah. But there are

51:18

ways that it's also helping you. And

51:21

that would be a fun thing to think about all

51:23

the ways it's helping. It is.

51:25

I mean, the I don't know what the sound

51:27

itself has helped me, but I know is that

51:29

to this day, I continue with the same practice.

51:31

And that practice has allowed me

51:34

to, you know, like in the rest of my

51:36

life, which is not the 25 minutes I spend

51:38

in the practice every morning, I'm

51:40

so much more present, I'm so much more mindful,

51:42

I'm so much more attentive and attuned to everything

51:44

that goes on around me and able

51:47

to ask myself, is this the

51:49

fact or is it just the story I'm telling about?

51:51

And can I tell a different story? So it's rippled

51:53

out into so many different ways. And people should

51:55

understand that mindfulness as we've

51:57

been talking about it any

52:00

form of meditation and not mutually

52:02

exclusive, one could and probably would

52:04

prosper from doing both. But you

52:06

know, there are some people for

52:08

whom any form of

52:11

meditation sounds too woo-woo,

52:14

too out there and I look at the people who are

52:16

doing it and they're just different from me and

52:18

for them, they can just jump right in

52:20

to what I'm doing. On the other hand,

52:22

I've had people come to me who I

52:25

think I could help but my

52:27

solution is too simple and

52:30

so then they want to find some

52:32

practice that's going to take them forever

52:34

or at least in several

52:36

months. The bigger the problem,

52:38

people often think the bigger the solution has

52:40

to be and you know,

52:42

you have a problem, your shoe is really

52:44

hurting your foot, possibly just need to

52:47

get it stressed tiny bit. You don't

52:49

need to throw the shoes away or

52:51

do anything dramatic. It's

52:53

nice that there are options for a

52:55

variety of people. Indeed. And

52:57

when you say my solution, is it essentially the

52:59

steps that you just offered a few minutes before?

53:02

Yeah, that's part of it. The main

53:04

thing is just to recognize that you

53:06

don't know and part of that, you

53:09

know, it's interesting that people, I always

53:11

hesitate on these podcasts to go into

53:13

this because everybody's going to disagree and

53:15

I don't know that I'll be able to

53:18

in this short time persuade them but we

53:20

cannot predict. Solution is

53:22

an illusion and our stress and

53:25

our worries are all based on predict,

53:27

right? You're predicting that something's going to happen and

53:29

you're predicting that when it happens it's going to

53:31

be awful. If I said to you, let's go

53:34

to a Mercedes car dealership, lots

53:36

of fancy cars, right? And

53:38

we'll randomly choose one car and

53:40

we'll make a wager. If that

53:42

car starts, as soon as you

53:44

turn the key, I'll give you

53:46

a million pounds. I could find

53:48

it. If it doesn't start, you

53:50

give me a million dollars. Nobody's

53:54

going to take the bet because everybody

53:56

knows, you don't know, right? But

53:58

if you started all the car, you're going to be a wager. cars

54:01

in the lot, parking lot, almost all

54:03

of them would start. You just don't

54:05

know which ones want, all right? So

54:07

we can predict to the group, but

54:09

we can't predict to the individual,

54:12

the individual instance. And all we

54:14

as individuals care about is

54:17

about the individual case. I mean, if I

54:19

were in the hospital and you're telling me

54:21

about a procedure that kills 90% of

54:23

the people who have it, am I a part of the

54:26

10% or am I part of the 90? Anyway,

54:29

so I had my students from a

54:31

health seminar I teach. And I said to them, okay,

54:33

I want you to spend the week not

54:36

making any decision. I want you to use

54:38

some rule of thumb that can be the

54:40

first option that occurs to you and you

54:42

can flip a coin, roll dice, whatever it

54:44

is for the whole week. And they

54:46

did so and they came back and

54:49

they had a glorious week that

54:51

was stress free. And so the

54:53

one liner that I have about

54:56

decision making is rather

54:58

than get stress trying to make

55:00

the right decision, we should make

55:02

the decision right. Now

55:04

I have a complicated, I don't

55:06

think it's complicated, but an involved

55:09

mindful theory of decision making that

55:11

says that most, first of all,

55:13

most people don't do cost benefit

55:15

analysis. They think they should, but

55:17

they shouldn't. And the reason

55:19

they shouldn't is because once you

55:21

recognize every cost is potentially a

55:24

benefit, every benefit of cost,

55:26

when you add them up, you have

55:28

plus one minus one, it's not going

55:30

to tell you what to do. And

55:32

when you're gathering information, everybody thinks you

55:34

should gather information, but there's no endpoint

55:36

to the information you can gather. And

55:39

that one piece that you didn't think to

55:41

ask to change the meaning of the decision,

55:44

all right, you know, the choice that you're

55:46

going to make. And we

55:48

don't need to spend our time that way. And

55:51

also, as I've dissuaded

55:53

you, that prediction is an

55:55

illusion. And all of

55:57

decision making rests on prediction, right?

56:00

You have your alternatives and you have to

56:02

predict which of these is

56:04

going to be better in some

56:06

futures case that hasn't revealed

56:09

itself. It's more or less a

56:11

waste of time except gathering information

56:14

to have the information is fine.

56:16

What's bad is the stress that

56:18

usually goes along with the whole

56:20

process. As I say, so

56:23

much what ails us, as I'm trying

56:25

to illustrate, is just a function

56:27

of the mindless teaching

56:30

that we've experienced. The beliefs that this

56:32

is the way you're supposed to make

56:34

a decision, you could bring kids up

56:36

and you say, close your eyes and

56:38

which hand is it in basically and

56:41

do that for every decision you're going to make.

56:43

Now, it's very bizarre when you think

56:45

about a job and because I'm saying

56:47

and I don't know why I should

56:49

tell everybody this, this will make people

56:52

crazy, but deciding between

56:54

two candy bars is

56:56

the same process as deciding

56:58

should I get an abortion or not,

57:00

should I take this job or not,

57:03

should I get married or not, should

57:05

I have a child, the big things,

57:07

but in some sense all decisions are

57:09

really guesses and if you

57:11

see them that way, but you can't know what

57:14

this other life is going to be, you

57:16

make a decision to take some action. Once

57:19

you take the action, you're different, everything is

57:21

different. Should I go to

57:23

Harvard or Yale? How could you

57:25

possibly decide this? But people go through

57:27

some academic procedure, right? I'm saying they should

57:29

just flip a coin if they really

57:31

don't know. Now, let's say you go

57:33

to Harvard first semester and you hate it.

57:36

People think, oh I should have gone

57:38

to Yale, but you could have hated

57:40

Yale also or even more. You

57:42

see, all regret is based on mylessness.

57:44

Every negative thing you experience is a

57:46

function of our mylessness. You know, that

57:48

once you've gone to Harvard, you're now

57:51

a different person. You have no idea

57:53

what have been life to

57:55

be in some other place. Same

57:58

thing with having kids or not having kids and

58:00

so on. But the good

58:02

thing is the second part of that

58:04

whole thing, which is rather than spend

58:07

your time trying to make the right

58:09

decision, make it right. And

58:11

you can make the wrong seemingly

58:13

the wrong candy bar, the right

58:15

candy bar, the wrong mates, the

58:17

wrong job, there's nothing about it that

58:19

makes it right or wrong. We

58:21

create the world we want to live. Yeah,

58:24

I mean, it's really interesting because I think so many

58:27

of us have probably had the experience of being

58:29

on the quote horns of a dilemma. And

58:31

we end up looking at a set of facts

58:33

or options like you said, let's like do the

58:35

yeses and the nos, you know, like the pros

58:37

and the cons. But as you're

58:39

describing, one person can look at

58:42

that exact same set of circumstances and

58:44

put one set of things on the other

58:46

side and another person is going to flip

58:48

that entirely. So it's really it's so much

58:50

more subjective when we think we think we're

58:52

trying to get objective here and make a

58:55

rational decision. Right, exactly. And there's

58:57

no process, you know, this adding

58:59

these costs and benefits, what you

59:01

do you start out when you're

59:03

going to make a decision. The

59:05

decision means there's uncertainty, uncertainty means

59:07

the alternatives look the same. So

59:09

if they look the same, treat

59:12

them the same and arbitrarily choose

59:14

one or the other. Now

59:16

you gather information. And

59:18

if let's say we start out you want A

59:20

or B, what's the difference?

59:23

So you gather information and you find out, let's

59:25

say that A is $100 and

59:28

B is $1000. There's

59:31

nothing to calculate, right? The

59:33

choice follows mechanically. If you want more money,

59:35

you're going to take B. If you think

59:38

money is a root of all evil, you'll

59:40

take A. People will

59:42

take B. But you know,

59:44

so there's nothing to add subtract in the

59:46

whole process. Yeah, I mean,

59:48

when I hear this also, my mind often

59:50

goes to the edge cases. Let's

59:52

say somebody says they're considering a job, and

59:55

they try to make the choice, they end up in the job, and

59:57

they find out, you know, it seems like on paper, it was a

59:59

dream to But they then realized three months

1:00:01

in that the team leader is

1:00:03

just profoundly abusive and toxic. Yeah, exactly But what

1:00:06

you're not saying and tell me if I had

1:00:08

this right or not What I don't think I

1:00:10

hear you saying is suck it up and stay

1:00:12

there and deal with the abuse When

1:00:15

you're saying make it right that is not

1:00:17

what you're saying. No, no, no, no. Okay

1:00:19

So what do we do to fix this

1:00:21

now basically or leave right? I mean I

1:00:23

used to argue when people before people had

1:00:25

large televisions and people went to the movies

1:00:27

that That you don't sit there

1:00:29

for two hours being miserable You

1:00:31

either find a way to get into it Even

1:00:34

if it's just a demeanor, you know later when

1:00:36

you're at a cocktail party or leaves

1:00:39

And I think that's what we should be

1:00:41

doing with virtually, you know every activity we're

1:00:43

about to engage and now people are going

1:00:46

to hear that and say well not everybody

1:00:48

can just leave their jobs and Probably

1:00:51

probably not but I would say

1:00:53

a subset of those people don't

1:00:55

even consider Whether

1:00:58

or not they can leave their jobs and

1:01:00

if you're miserable at work, it

1:01:02

seems to me Nobody should spend

1:01:04

40 hours a week being

1:01:07

stressed and unhappy So

1:01:09

you either again find a way to make it work

1:01:11

or I think you would be better off sleep Yeah,

1:01:14

and it sounds like what you're describing also is

1:01:16

if you take on the stance

1:01:18

of mindfulness What you're basically doing is you're

1:01:20

putting yourself back into a place of uncertainty which

1:01:23

says I'm asking myself Is there a

1:01:25

different story or their different set of options to

1:01:27

consider? Let me actually really pay attention to this

1:01:29

because maybe if I just assume this is my

1:01:31

lot I'm stuck I have to deal with it.

1:01:33

That's when we become mindlessness and where the

1:01:36

suffering really ratchets up Exactly.

1:01:38

Exactly. We should also realize

1:01:40

as we're talking about decision-making

1:01:42

that Everything that is was

1:01:44

at one time a decision How

1:01:47

high should the chairs be with courses

1:01:49

should be taught? Who's best

1:01:51

to perform this or that business? job

1:01:54

what have you and when you recognize

1:01:56

that everything was at one time a

1:01:58

decision and for something to be a

1:02:00

decision, it means there has to be uncertainty.

1:02:03

Without uncertainty, there's no decision, you're

1:02:05

just moving through. Right. It means

1:02:07

that everything is mutable. And

1:02:10

that's a very important part of

1:02:12

all of my research over all these

1:02:14

many years, that if

1:02:17

something doesn't work, change it. So, when

1:02:20

I give these lectures, there are times,

1:02:23

look in the audience, I just said this the other

1:02:25

day as well, for somebody very

1:02:27

tall. I don't know why there's always

1:02:29

a very tall man. So, he comes

1:02:31

up on stage. He's six five, I'm

1:02:33

five three. We look silly. Right. And

1:02:35

then I asked him to put his

1:02:37

hand up, and I put my hand

1:02:39

next to it, and his hand is

1:02:41

three inches larger than mine. And

1:02:44

then I just raised the question, should we

1:02:46

do anything physical the same way? And

1:02:48

it doesn't just have to be with physical differences.

1:02:50

In some sense, the more

1:02:52

different you are from whoever created

1:02:55

whatever, the activity, the job, the

1:02:57

piece of furniture, whatever it is,

1:03:00

the more different you are from that person, the

1:03:02

more important it is for you to figure out

1:03:04

how to do it your own way. I

1:03:07

should not be holding the tennis racket

1:03:09

the same way he holds a tennis

1:03:11

racket. Right. And

1:03:13

the world treats us as if

1:03:15

we're the same. So, this may

1:03:17

be off color, but if he's

1:03:20

going to go to the bathroom

1:03:22

at six five, and let's say he's

1:03:24

living with somebody who's five feet tall,

1:03:27

biologically, one of their needs are not

1:03:29

going to be met. You

1:03:31

know, so rather than assume that anything you think

1:03:33

you can't do is because you can't do it,

1:03:35

it may just be

1:03:37

that you're different from the person

1:03:39

who came up with the rules telling

1:03:42

you how to do it. Yeah, that makes

1:03:44

so much sense. I'm a tennis player. So,

1:03:46

I throw the ball up, I kill it

1:03:49

playing doubles, and it goes there. Then

1:03:51

I throw it up and I have a wuss,

1:03:53

very soft second serve, so I don't double four.

1:03:56

If I ruled the world, I

1:03:58

would have given people three serfs. Why

1:04:01

two? There's nothing logical about

1:04:03

it. Three. I kill it.

1:04:05

It goes out. Now, I kill it again

1:04:07

and I'm getting closer. I'm learning

1:04:09

from it. And I still have my backup third

1:04:11

serf. I'm not suggesting

1:04:13

that we change the rules to

1:04:16

all of the informal sports games

1:04:18

we're going to, whatever. But

1:04:21

I am suggesting that when you don't

1:04:23

do well at whatever it

1:04:25

is, rather than make

1:04:27

a personal attribution to yourself, recognize

1:04:30

that the game wasn't designed

1:04:32

for you. I mean, I think that

1:04:34

also speaks to and this is something

1:04:36

that you write about in the new

1:04:39

book and been part of your work

1:04:41

like the how we as social creatures

1:04:43

are also like comparison machines basically. And

1:04:46

oftentimes much to our detriment because we're comparing ourselves

1:04:48

as you're describing to a standard which was never

1:04:50

made for us or to an operating

1:04:52

system or an opportunity that's like it's not

1:04:54

for us. And yet we feel

1:04:56

like if we don't meet that standard, it's

1:04:59

not that the standard is bad. We really

1:05:01

questioned the standard. It's a personal failure

1:05:03

of ours in some way. Exactly.

1:05:05

Exactly. And you know, so fasting

1:05:07

or an important social psychologist in

1:05:09

the past said that there's

1:05:12

a drive to compare yourself with other

1:05:14

people. And so then people just

1:05:16

sort of let it happen. Well, it

1:05:18

isn't a drive. I mean, when I'm

1:05:20

brushing my teeth, I don't say to

1:05:22

myself, I wonder how Jonathan is doing

1:05:24

this, you know, so there were always

1:05:26

activities where people just allowed themselves to

1:05:28

do it their own way. And it

1:05:31

should be across all activities. People need

1:05:33

to understand that there are

1:05:35

many ways of doing everything that

1:05:38

the world teaches us a single

1:05:40

way. And that's going to

1:05:42

create a system of winners and losers. And

1:05:46

sadly, more than half of

1:05:48

the population, much more, almost

1:05:50

everybody actually suffers from

1:05:52

this way of viewing things. In fact, the

1:05:54

other day I was thinking, I describe in

1:05:57

the book the normal distribution. Right.

1:06:00

It's a bell curve. It means you

1:06:02

have two people, oh, they're terrible, whatever we're

1:06:04

looking at. Most people are

1:06:06

in the middle. And then you have

1:06:08

some people who excel. It doesn't matter

1:06:10

what they're talking about, athletic ability, beauty,

1:06:13

health, whatever it is. And

1:06:16

people, when they are put

1:06:18

on some place on this

1:06:21

curve, just accept it.

1:06:23

And I'm just not very good at without

1:06:26

realizing that, well, if they did it

1:06:28

differently and we changed the criteria, maybe

1:06:31

in fact, they would be very good at

1:06:33

it. So we accept things that

1:06:36

we shouldn't accept. You

1:06:38

kind of wrap up the conversation in the book with

1:06:40

the notion of a mindful utopia. Yeah. And

1:06:43

I feel like that's kind of what we've been talking about in these last

1:06:45

few minutes as well. Is there a different context or

1:06:47

something you would add to that? No, I think

1:06:49

that all of

1:06:51

our institutions are keeping

1:06:54

us in place, possibly

1:06:56

to instantiate the differences

1:06:59

among us to keep the powers that

1:07:01

be in power. But for whatever reason,

1:07:04

that by making the changes that I

1:07:06

suggest in each of these books and

1:07:08

the biggest and the mindful body, they

1:07:11

start creating a different

1:07:13

world. What would a mindful

1:07:15

utopia look like? But you can only

1:07:17

guess, we'll know anything in the future.

1:07:19

But part of it, I think, would

1:07:21

be, and this is what I've been

1:07:23

fighting and I've actually now made a

1:07:25

commitment to shift focus,

1:07:28

small shift, to taking the

1:07:30

vertical. You're terrible. You're not so

1:07:33

bad. You're a little better. Ah, up to

1:07:35

the top, it was great. And

1:07:37

making this horizontal. So

1:07:39

I wrote this little song from my grandkids and

1:07:41

I end the book with this actually. I would

1:07:43

sing it for you, but anyway. And the point

1:07:45

is, and the reason after the song is that

1:07:47

I can sing. But why shouldn't I

1:07:50

sing? Singing is fun. And there

1:07:52

are other things that I can do.

1:07:54

So it was based on the old

1:07:56

Sarah Leakemarsh. And so the song is,

1:07:58

Everybody Doesn't Know Something. Everybody

1:08:00

knows something else. Everybody

1:08:02

can do something. Everyone can do

1:08:04

something else, which is very different,

1:08:06

you see, from the normal distribution

1:08:08

that permeates our society, where we

1:08:10

think they really got it. They

1:08:13

can do almost everything. You're the

1:08:15

loser. You can't do anything. And

1:08:17

the things that we all seek

1:08:19

are not zero sum. There's

1:08:21

a way for all of us to

1:08:23

live full, happy lives. So

1:08:25

I'm in my car with my

1:08:27

grandkids, and one of them starts

1:08:29

to whistle. Oh, Theo, you're such

1:08:31

a good whistler. His brother then

1:08:33

says, grandma, when Theo was learning

1:08:35

to whistle, I was learning something

1:08:37

else. And that's terrific, right? Rather

1:08:40

than feel inferior, rather than

1:08:43

be jealous and

1:08:45

have some negative feelings towards his brother, and

1:08:47

so on. So I think that

1:08:50

there's so much that I have in the book

1:08:52

that's important to me about

1:08:55

a way of understanding

1:08:57

people that leads also

1:08:59

to successful relationships, to

1:09:02

an absence of

1:09:05

being judgmental. The simplest thing, let me

1:09:07

just throw it out there, is if

1:09:10

you accept nothing else but that behavior

1:09:12

makes sense for the person who's doing

1:09:14

it, or else they wouldn't do it.

1:09:17

So that every time you're going to

1:09:19

call somebody by some negative name, you're

1:09:22

being mindless because it made some sense.

1:09:24

And if you ask yourself, what sense

1:09:26

did it make, you're going to

1:09:28

come up with alternatives, or at least you're

1:09:30

not going to be judgment. So let's say,

1:09:32

for example, John, I think you can't stand

1:09:34

me because I'm so gullible, which I am.

1:09:37

Now, I can try to not be gullible,

1:09:39

but I'm going to keep failing. And the

1:09:41

reason I'm going to fail is going forward.

1:09:43

I'm not intending to be gullible. Going forward,

1:09:45

I'm being trusted. You, on

1:09:48

the other hand, are so inconsistent.

1:09:50

This is going to be our

1:09:52

last conversation. Well, I want

1:09:54

you to stop being inconsistent. We can both

1:09:56

look at your behavior and see you were

1:09:58

inconsistent. Oh, I want to change. but

1:10:00

you won't be able to change

1:10:02

because the reason you're inconsistent is

1:10:04

you value being flexible. All

1:10:07

right, so the point is every single

1:10:09

negative way of describing what

1:10:11

somebody is doing has an

1:10:14

equally strong but positive alternative.

1:10:17

And you could imagine how relationships

1:10:19

will change, right?

1:10:22

My being gullible won't get on your

1:10:24

nerves anymore. But if you want me to

1:10:26

stop being gullible, we both have to talk

1:10:28

about why I should want to be

1:10:30

less trusted and so on. And

1:10:33

again, all of this

1:10:35

falls out nicely from just

1:10:37

being more mindful because you

1:10:39

naturally see that anything can

1:10:41

be explained in multiple ways.

1:10:44

Right, you open yourself to the fact that

1:10:46

there could be different stories here, different interpretations,

1:10:48

and you start to inquire into it rather

1:10:51

than just assuming and given the

1:10:53

state of polarization in the world these days,

1:10:55

it certainly seems like the more

1:10:58

the more we inquire into and not just

1:11:00

assume we know what somebody's motives are, what's

1:11:02

in their head, I think the better

1:11:04

off humanity is as a culture. So it feels

1:11:06

like a good place for us to come full circle as

1:11:08

well. So in this container of good life project, if I

1:11:11

offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes

1:11:13

up? Be mindful. Thank

1:11:16

you. Hey,

1:11:18

before we leave, if you love this episode safe,

1:11:20

you'll also love the conversation that we had with

1:11:23

Bob Thurman about the power of mindfulness meditation and

1:11:25

presence. You'll find a link to his episode in

1:11:27

the show notes. This

1:11:29

episode of good life project was produced

1:11:31

by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me,

1:11:34

Jonathan Fields, editing help by Alejandro Ramirez,

1:11:36

Christopher Carter crafted our theme music and

1:11:38

special thanks to Shelley Dell for her

1:11:41

research on this episode. And of course,

1:11:43

if you haven't already done so, please

1:11:45

go ahead and follow good life

1:11:48

project in your favorite listening app. And

1:11:50

if you found this conversation interesting or

1:11:52

inspiring or valuable, and chances are you

1:11:55

did since you're still listening here, would

1:11:57

you do me a personal favor? and

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second favorite and share it. Maybe on

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social or by text or by email,

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even just with one person. Just copy

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1:12:08

and tell those you know, those you

1:12:10

love, those you want to help navigate

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1:12:15

so we can all do it better

1:12:17

together with more ease and more joy.

1:12:19

Tell them to listen. Then even invite

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them to talk about what you've both

1:12:23

discovered because when podcasts become conversations and

1:12:25

conversations become action, that's how we all

1:12:27

come alive together. Until next time,

1:12:30

I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off

1:12:32

for Good luck. Good

1:12:59

luck.