0:03

Kim: All it takes to become an artist is to start doing art mindfully.

0:10

That's just one of the things I learned when I spoke with Ellen

0:13

Langer, the mother of mindfulness, a recipient of multiple awards,

0:19

including a Guggenheim fellowship and the Liberty Science Genius Award.

0:24

Ellen Langer is also the first woman.

0:27

to be tenured in Harvard's psychology department.

0:30

Over nearly half a century, she's authored more than 200 research

0:35

papers and 13 books studying not only mindfulness theory, but the illusion

0:42

of control, decision making and aging.

0:45

I spoke with her about her most recent The Mindful Body.

0:51

And how mindfulness not only improves the way that women

0:55

live, but also the way we lead.

1:02

Ellen: I'm Ellen Langer, and this is a lesson on mindfulness.

1:07

First Kim: memory of being creative is

1:23

Ellen: This is actually interesting. I was working as an undergraduate as a research assistant for one of

1:28

my professors, and I came up with something that she didn't know.

1:33

And for her to explain that, she said, Ellen, you're so creative.

1:38

Now I had never considered myself creative because to me as a child,

1:43

that meant those people who could draw or who played a musical instrument.

1:47

Now, the same semester, I had another professor who gave us some

1:52

assignment for a paper, rather than writing a paper, I decided

1:57

to write a program textbook.

2:00

And so I got back the textbook says, you've got so much chutzpah.

2:05

And so, in the same basic period of time, to be told I had chutzpah and I

2:11

was creative, gave me permission to just do whatever I wanted to do, essentially.

2:16

Kim: I love that. Ellen: So I changed my view of myself, and then I, with that

2:21

change, I paid attention to how silly so many of the rules that

2:27

people were blindly following were. Kim: Yeah, so you started painting.

2:31

Paint. One summer, just randomly, what made you decide I'm going to paint?

2:36

Ellen: Okay, I was in Provincetown and it just rained and rained.

2:41

I had never had a summer like that. And I went to the hardware store and I ran into a friend who was an artist.

2:48

And I ran out of things to say to her.

2:50

So I said, I'm thinking of taking a painting.

2:53

I have no idea why I said that. She then dragged me to her studio, gave me two tiny canvases.

2:58

And she said, just do it. Okay. A day later, I had to deliver something to a very, very,

3:06

very, established artists. Kim: And

3:08

Ellen: again, I wasn't sure after a sentence or two what to say.

3:12

So I said, I was thinking of taking a painting.

3:15

She said, get yourself an enormous canvas and just

3:19

let yourself go and do it. And so there were no rules.

3:23

Then I went back, it was still raining.

3:25

So there was no tennis or long walks on the beach or whatever.

3:29

And I found a shingle and I just painted on this shingle.

3:34

Now, what was interesting to me as a psychologist was that I painted

3:38

a woman, girl who knows, on a horse riding through the woods.

3:42

And the fact that the content was about wood and I was painting on

3:47

wood seemed to be interesting to me.

3:49

Kim: But wait, a, a horse, a woman on a horse, you just know how to do that.

3:53

How do you know how to do that? Having paint?

3:55

Never been. Well, Ellen: you have a sense of No. You have a sense of what a woman looks like.

3:58

What a horse looks like. Wow. I'm not suggesting.

4:01

That anybody else who looked at it would have seen a woman on a horse.

4:05

That was my intention, but I loved it.

4:08

And then I went to the art supply store to see if it was any good.

4:12

And it was interesting to me because I knew just because of who I was, whatever

4:17

that means, there are some people who would say it was good no matter what.

4:21

There were just as many people who would say it's bad no matter what.

4:24

So I wanted an unbiased view and I asked this person who sells

4:28

canvases, should I paint over this?

4:31

And, um, actually that would make sense that he would want

4:34

me to buy a canvas instead of he expressed some liking for it.

4:38

And then I was off and running and it was very exciting

4:41

because I would paint something.

4:44

I would look at it, notice, and And then see if what I did was true

4:48

just for me or a general truth.

4:50

So I then do a study and I went back and forth between these two evolving lives.

4:55

Myself as a researcher and as a painter, and since I don't follow rules.

5:01

And partly because I don't, didn't know any of the rules,

5:04

so I couldn't follow them. It was a very expressive journey for me and also very different kind of artwork.

5:12

So I called it intuitive art. Now I had a friend who's also an art collector who

5:18

saw one of these paintings. Ellen, there's something there.

5:22

Now don't go thinking you're Rembrandt.

5:25

But then I thought to myself, no, I'm not Rembrandt, but Rembrandt isn't me.

5:31

And I thought that if I'm true to myself, no one can do

5:35

a better Ellen Langer than I can, and it was just great fun.

5:39

Kim: So you painted horses for a long time and then you moved to people.

5:43

Ellen: Actually, I'm more dogs than horses, and always

5:46

people there somewhere. Kim: And always people.

5:48

Okay, so when you move to people, because I've been looking, I

5:50

looked at some of your work online, which is beautiful.

5:53

And again, this, I still, because I'm so caught in the talent I

5:59

don't have for painting, right? Or the definition of talent I don't have for painting.

6:02

Just Ellen: be the best Kim you can be.

6:06

You have a career, so you don't need to sell the paintings.

6:10

So just do it and have fun. And I found that the fun comes oddly, as soon as you make a mistake.

6:18

If you make a mistake and then go forward.

6:22

Rather than try to correct the mistake, you're necessarily going to be mindful

6:26

since you aren't planning on a mistake. And the research that we've done shows that anything we do mindfully

6:34

versus mindlessly, so our mindfulness leaves its imprint on these products.

6:39

Kim: So let's talk about your definition of mindfulness.

6:42

Yes. Ellen: Okay, so I've been studying mindfulness for 45 years,

6:47

Kim: and Ellen: people seem to think that mindfulness means meditation.

6:51

First of all, meditation is not mindful,

6:54

Kim: it's not mindfulness. Ellen: Meditation is a practice you undergo, presumably to lead

7:00

to post meditative mindfulness.

7:04

What I'm talking about is different, not better works.

7:07

It's just different. And it's immediate.

7:10

You don't, it's not a practice. It's just a way of being that comes about once you

7:15

recognize that you don't know. Now in schools, our parents and the work we do, we're often told this is

7:24

how and so on, as if those absolutes are real across all contexts.

7:30

Kim: You talk about the mind and body being one.

7:33

Ellen: Yeah, so in the new book, this is a large piece of it, but by no means the

7:37

only piece, the new book is the mindful body thinking our way to chronic health.

7:43

And essentially, there's been a problem of philosophers had

7:46

and psychologists forever. You have a mind and a body.

7:50

How do they speak to each other? How do you get from this fuzzy thing called a thought to

7:55

something material called the body?

7:58

And when I think about that, I say, wait a second, this is silly.

8:02

These are just words. So even if it's just for heuristic purposes to be helpful and not

8:08

literally true, although I think it's literally true, let's put

8:11

the mind and body back together. When we do that, wherever we're putting the mind, we're necessarily putting

8:19

the body and that gives a small idea to people of how much control we

8:26

have over our health and well being.

8:28

So the first study we did was many years ago.

8:32

We retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier and had elderly men live there

8:37

as if they were their younger selves. So they would be discussing past events as if they were just unfold.

8:43

for example. So in as many ways as we could think of, they were now who they were.

8:48

As a result, in a period of time as short as one week, their vision

8:53

improved, The hearing improved. Now, these are elderly men.

8:56

You tell me when you've ever heard of an elderly man's hearing improving

9:00

strength improve their memory and they look noticeably younger.

9:04

That was very exciting in the beginning of a host of studies I think if your

9:09

audience is largely women they'll love this next one that we did.

9:12

We did this with chambermaids. Now, interesting.

9:16

Chambermaids are exercising all day long.

9:19

That's what their work is. But they don't recognize that their work is exercise.

9:23

Because according to the Surgeon General, who sits at a desk all day,

9:28

exercise is what you do after work. And after work, they're too tired.

9:32

So we have all these chambermaids exercising all day long, but not

9:35

seeing themselves as exercising. If exercise itself is good for you, regardless of what they're

9:42

thinking, they should be healthier than similar others who aren't

9:46

exercising, but they're not. All right, now what we do is we randomly take half of them and we just teach

9:53

them that their work is exercise. Making a bed is like working at this machine at the gym and so on.

9:58

We take many measures. At the end of this, we find the two groups, the one that sees their

10:03

work as exercise, and the work group that doesn't realize this.

10:07

They're not eating any differently, they're not working any harder

10:10

or less hard, what have you. Nevertheless, once they change their mindset, they're and recognize

10:17

that their work is exercise. They lost weight.

10:20

There was a change in waist to hip ratio, body mass index, and

10:24

their blood pressure came down simply from the change of mind.

10:28

Kim: With the mind body, because we often put spirit attached to it too.

10:32

So I'm wondering, is there any contact Text for spirit in the research at

10:36

all, or does it contribute to mind? No.

10:39

Okay, Ellen: you know, it's not again, they're all just words, right?

10:43

And when one is mindful, right?

10:47

One can describe you as spiritual.

10:50

You're just going to be your best self. Kim: So is that the same with intuition then?

10:54

Because intuition for me is also looking at is what is different or

10:58

dissimilar from a series of situations.

11:00

So how does intuition play into mindfulness?

11:03

At all. If at all for Ellen: you. Yeah. Well, it's, it's interesting.

11:07

We don't really know very much about intuition,

11:10

Kim: but Ellen: when you're mindful, you're picking up cues to

11:13

which you're otherwise blind. If you don't have a name for those cues, you don't know where you're

11:18

getting, you know, I don't like you. I don't know why I don't like you, but I don't like you.

11:22

That's the deal. It's not because nothing is happening.

11:25

It's because I don't know how to. Kim: Articulate it.

11:28

Yeah, Ellen: but we shouldn't think that if you feel something is intuitively

11:34

correct that it's necessarily correct because consider this example, you

11:39

hear a song played, and then you hear it again and again and again.

11:43

Now, imagine somebody else sings it, and it's a different

11:48

rendition of the same song. It will feel wrong.

11:53

Right. So, our mindlessness can lead to a feeling of intuition.

11:58

I don't Kim: think, Ellen: I think we need to trust ourselves, you know, not to the

12:03

point where we ignore other ways these feelings could come about.

12:08

Rather than waste your time. trying to make the right decision.

12:12

You can randomly decide and make the decision right.

12:17

You make a decision to take an action.

12:20

Once you take the action, It's time to change, you know, so I can't say, should

12:26

I go to Harvard or should I go to Yale.

12:28

So if I randomly go let's say to Harvard, and let's

12:32

say I'm not happy there. That doesn't mean I made the wrong decision because I could have been

12:37

more unhappy, had I gone to Yale.

12:40

But I can't now go to Yale because I'm no longer a first year student,

12:45

Kim: right? Ellen: So you can never find out.

12:48

Now what's most important for all of this is for people to recognize

12:54

that outcomes are in our heads.

12:57

They're just things that happen. They're not good or bad.

13:01

So stress is not a function of what happens.

13:04

Stress is a function of the view you take of what happens.

13:08

If you see it as, Oh my God, Yeah, you're going to

13:11

experience it negatively. But there's always a way that that, oh my God, might be the

13:16

best thing in the world for you. Kim: So what's the impact of mindfulness in the context of leadership?

13:28

Ellen: What's interesting is that women, I believe, tend to be more

13:33

mindful because women have been taken to task for using conditional language.

13:39

Take a position rather than seem on the fence with it could be possibly maybe

13:44

often, but those words all indicate that you're mindful that you know

13:49

that there are circumstances where what you're saying may be true other

13:53

circumstances where it may not be true.

13:55

And, and this is very important because when you're mindful,

14:00

so you're actively noticing new things, rather than thinking,

14:03

right, that puts you in the present.

14:06

makes you sensitive to context and perspective, and while you're actively

14:11

noticing the neurons are firing and 45 years of our research shows that it's

14:16

literally and figuratively enlightened.

14:19

It feels good. It's good for you.

14:22

Not only that, but when you're being mindful, people find you more authentic.

14:26

attractive, trustworthy. Not only that, so it's good for your health, people like you more, as I

14:34

said a moment before, it also leaves its imprint on what you're doing.

14:38

So we have orchestras, for example, performing mindlessly or mindfully, We

14:43

have audiences oblivious to the fact that it's a study evaluating the music

14:49

and more often than not people find the mindfully played piece better.

14:54

Kim: I think it's interesting though what you just said about women being

14:58

taken to task for not being specific enough in their language and that once

15:03

Once you've named something, it is named, the allowance for the possibility

15:09

that not all things are as we see them.

15:12

I think we're living right now in a moment when some

15:15

people are seeing things very different than what is normal.

15:20

perceived. Yeah. Our perceptions are at odds with each other and we're living two

15:25

different kinds of realities.

15:27

And Ellen: the problem is that both sides think what they're saying is real.

15:31

Right. And the more mindful you are, you're the more aware you are of

15:36

In some sense, multiple realities.

15:38

Right. Let me just go back for a moment.

15:40

So the way to be mindful is this active noticing.

15:43

Kim: Right. But Ellen: you don't actively notice when you think you know.

15:47

Kim: So there Ellen: are two ways to become more mindful generally.

15:51

One is you notice new things about the things you thought you knew.

15:55

So when I started painting, to go back to that, if you had asked me

15:59

what color are leaves, not in the fall, I would have said green.

16:02

Then I start painting, and I go, my god, there are hundreds of different shades

16:06

of green, and it changes depending on where the sun is, and so on.

16:10

So, this one thing became Anything.

16:14

Which gave me many more choices. Now, the other way to be mindful, and this is better but harder,

16:22

is to just accept you don't know.

16:25

So I know I don't know. I'm not afraid of not knowing.

16:29

Everybody knows they don't know, but they think they should know.

16:32

So they pretend, or they stand back.

16:35

But I know I don't know, you don't know.

16:37

You know that, and I know that this guy who's trying to make me uncomfortable

16:42

with his knowing that I can, you don't want to do this, but I could emasculate

16:48

him in seconds through a series of questions to make clear he doesn't know.

16:53

Kim: Right. Ellen: So the best way to be, I believe, is to be uncertain and

17:00

confident because it's okay not to know.

17:05

And when you don't know that everything is new and exciting.

17:09

Now the interesting thing is that this active noticing is energy beginning.

17:14

So it feels good and you become energized rather than depleted.

17:20

Kim: But in a leadership context, being uncertain.

17:23

Can be perceived as being weak, knowledgeable.

17:25

So no, Ellen: because right now when people are uncertainly they look, they look

17:31

Kim: uncertain Ellen: when you're standing tall.

17:36

I don't know if I say it like that, believe me, you're not

17:39

going to think I'm uncertain. In fact, you're going to take a step back and be scared of me.

17:44

If you're strong and you're a woman and you're seen as.

17:48

Can I say a bitch? Yes, please. Go

17:50

Kim: ahead. We know it. We all know Ellen: it.

17:53

And if you're weak, then you're not a good leader.

17:56

So what's a woman to do? Let me tell you first a little study we did.

17:59

So we took women and we were going to have them being male, like

18:03

forceful female, like sweet and loving and mindful or mindless.

18:10

And it turned out. that when she was mindful, it didn't matter whether

18:16

she was male like or female.

18:19

And so another, several things about leadership is that the smart

18:23

leader knows she doesn't know.

18:27

And so she's open. To getting information from other people, but if that creates in

18:33

your mind, the image of, Oh, I don't know, can you help me?

18:36

Of course, you're not going to seem strong, but if you're standing

18:39

tall and this can be many different things, Kim, what do you think?

18:45

The whole game changes. In this study that I did with symphony orchestras, as I said, we

18:50

gave, this is about leadership, but it'll take a moment to get there.

18:54

So one group is told, make it new in very subtle ways

18:58

that only you would know. That's the mindful group.

19:01

The mindless group is told, remember a time you played this

19:04

well and just try to replicate it. So, mindful is always something new, mindless, same old.

19:10

We record it, and people prefer the mindfully played piece.

19:14

Now, when I was writing this up, all of a sudden I realized,

19:18

this is interesting, when we had people where everybody was

19:23

essentially doing their own thing.

19:26

You had superior coordinated experience.

19:29

All right. And so it led me to think that the major role of the leader is to provoke

19:36

the mindfulness in those being led.

19:39

And you want to do that because geez, sometimes this thing

19:43

isn't what I think it is. And people bring with them all sorts of information

19:48

that we ourselves don't have. So you want to be open to it.

19:52

Women actually should be the best leaders because they're most likely

19:57

to encourage other people's successes.

20:01

They're most likely to carry themselves to the top.

20:05

Confidently, but with that degree of uncertainty, if I'm uncertain

20:09

and you know that you will share information with me, it's all

20:14

in the way we carry ourselves.

20:16

And so it's wonderful not to know, again, everything becomes new.

20:21

Kim: And that this mindfulness for all women.

20:25

I think as women become more mindful, we tip the equilibrium.

20:28

What is the rule? Who made the rule? Who gets to make the rules and why?

20:32

Ellen: Yeah. And then you change it. So some things you can change, but in the not changing, knowing how it came

20:40

about in the first place is useful. So we take what is, we find good reason to make us think it had to be that way.

20:47

It has to be that way. It's always been that way.

20:50

Another example that I use, you know, you have insurance.

20:53

Yeah. Is the insurance company going to pay for the drug?

20:57

Now, what rules are they using?

21:00

So I use Viagra as an example.

21:03

Kim: Now Ellen: imagine the people on the committee in the insurance making

21:08

this decision are a group of lusty 50 year old men versus the committee

21:15

consists of a group of nuns. The first group is this.

21:20

Yes, we should pay for it. The second group. No. So what does that mean?

21:24

That means when something that is doesn't meet our needs,

21:29

don't back off when you push it.

21:33

And then it's clear that it's not sitting based on irrefutable data.

21:38

Because all the data again, when we ever talk data or probability,

21:42

if you follow what, what I write about fully, you come to see that

21:48

everything is mutable, everything.

21:51

And that's not the way we're brought up. When I was a kid, the first time I gave a lecture, I walk into

21:56

this room and the stages here and the chairs start back here.

22:02

Too far away and I'm nervous. What did I do?

22:04

I moved the chairs. But most people wouldn't, wouldn't think to do that, you know,

22:10

that everything can be changed. Now for women, this is even more important than for men.

22:15

When I'm giving some lectures, I'll see somebody very tall in the audience.

22:20

Oh, he's a six foot five guy. I don't know why.

22:24

I'll ask him to come to the stage. So there he is at six, five, and here I am at five, three.

22:30

We look funny. I'll ask him to put his hand up and put his hand up.

22:34

His hand is three inches larger than mine. And then I just raised the question, should we do anything the same way?

22:40

Anything. No. Now, if he created the how to do, it's not going to serve me well

22:49

to mindlessly do it the way he said, because we're two different.

22:54

All right. And so Kim: the culture we live

22:57

Ellen: in though, right? Yeah, yeah, no, and always have.

23:00

And I think that part of the reason is that it sustains the status quo.

23:05

It's as if He, or whoever on top, deserves to be there, as if they know

23:10

things now we, we know they don't know.

23:12

So as a rule, I think the more different you are from the person who wrote the

23:18

rule, the more important it is for you to change how you're doing it.

23:25

We walk into a room and virtually everything that is there seems to

23:29

be there for some stable reason.

23:32

And it's, everything is.

23:34

Was once a decision and means there was uncertainty and means

23:40

there were people who made this decision that met their needs that

23:44

may not meet the needs anymore. I have a mindfulness scale.

23:48

How moronic would it be for me to do poorly on this scale?

23:52

So the more similar you're going to be to me, the better you're going to do.

23:56

And that's the case with everything, everything.

24:00

People don't understand everything is mutable.

24:03

Sometimes you're going to win and sometimes not, but the game is fun.

24:08

Recognizing that everything that's put in front of you

24:12

was to please some people.

24:15

And if it doesn't please you, change it.

24:25

Kim: So we asked this question, what is your wish for every other woman?

24:29

Ellen: When you're mindful, you get to see advantages to

24:33

which other people are blind. You avoid the pit holes, again, that other people are oblivious to.

24:39

You have all sorts of choices and you don't need to make those choices

24:45

because whatever you're experiencing, you recognize will feel good.

24:51

You can fight the fight and still enjoy the day.

24:55

Kim: Be visible. Voice

25:16

Lessons is co produced, written, and spoken by me, Kim Cutable.

25:21

It's also co produced and edited by Sergio Miranda.

25:25

You can find past episodes, show notes, and the cool stuff our guests

25:30

recommend at VoiceLessonsPodcast. com.