Dr. Ellen Langer was a colleague of mine when I worked at Harvard in the early 90s, and so it's a particular pleasure for me to be talking to her today. We discuss her latest book, The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, which explores how intentional awareness paired with humility allows for a healthier mindset and body. We explore how the perception of time impacts the effects of disease and age, and the way to view tragedy and suffering so that we might conquer them through faith and hope. And the immense benefits to be found in carefully considering to what, where, and who you direct your attention to. Dr. Langer and I discuss how to be mindful in the real world, and how to adopt a mindset that allows for uncertainty in order to be more open to new ideas and new perspectives. Let s take this first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, with decades of experience helping patients, offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way. In his new series, Dr. Peterson provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn t easy, it s absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better. Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. B.P. Peterson's new series on Depression and Anxiousness: A Path to Feeling Better. on Dailywire Plus. Now and start reaching out to those listening who may be struggling with Depression and Anxiety. Let s make the brighter tomorrow you deserve to feel better. -Let s make it so you can live a brighter, happier, brighter, more fulfilled, more peaceful, more beautiful, more purposeful, more of a life you deserve it. -Dr. Jordan Peterson . . . and let s talk about it on DailyWire Plus - . , and in this episode of Dailywire + is a new series that could be a lifeline for those struggling with depression and anxiety. , and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to people listening who are struggling with these conditions, and offer a moment of encouragement and support them a chance to help them find their way towards a brighter future they deserve it on the brighter, brighter future that you deserve so that they can feel better, not less of a better day.
00:00:00.960Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.780Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:57.420Hello everyone watching and listening.
00:01:10.900Today I'm speaking with the mother of mindfulness, Dr. Ellen Langer.
00:01:15.920Dr. Langer was a colleague of mine when I worked at Harvard in the early 90s, and so it's a particular pleasure for me to be talking to her today.
00:01:22.520We discuss her latest book, The Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.
00:01:28.960We explore how intentional awareness paired with humility allows for a healthier mindset and body.
00:01:35.220How the perception of time impacts the effects of disease and age.
00:01:39.720The way to view tragedy and suffering so that we might conquer them through faith and hope.
00:01:44.680And the immense benefits to be found in carefully considering to what, where, and who you direct your attention.
00:01:53.440So, I was reading your new book today, The Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.
00:02:01.880And, you know, we were colleagues back in the 1990s.
00:02:05.600I suppose we still are colleagues in some ways.
00:05:56.600I have written a little bit about the role of art in remediating that because one of the things that happens, as far as I can tell, you can see this, for example.
00:06:07.860I think it's exemplified well by Van Gogh's painting, Irises in particular, because it's easy in some ways to take what you've looked at many times for granted.
00:06:17.180But what an artist will do, and this is really their function, is to put a twist on the perception and then snap you out of that habitual frame of mind so that you see the object that you have taken for granted outside of the strictures of your preconceptions.
00:06:35.040And the object always transcends your preconceptions because there's much more to it than you think.
00:06:40.000Like, so what seems to happen neurologically is that we build up these little modules that specify our perceptions and then we default to them.
00:06:49.220But it's possible to stop those modules and to re-novelize the phenomena and then to see it again in its glory.
00:06:57.180And that is one of the things that, what would you say, keeps us falling in love with life.
00:07:04.120The only thing is that once somebody sees it anew, if they think now they know what it is, then they're going to be mindless again, you know, with just that brief interval of being mindful.
00:07:16.800And it's interesting, and I don't know if you know, I started to paint about, well, after I turned 50.
00:07:23.060And I'm, you know, not one of those kids when I was younger who knew how to draw.
00:07:27.060But nevertheless, I took to the whole thing.
00:07:32.160And prior to my painting, I had just assumed leaves, for example, on trees were green, you know, except in the fall when they turn brown.
00:07:43.760But, you know, then I started looking at the leaves, and there are hundreds of shades of green.
00:07:48.360And so, the taking to painting opened my eyes and made me see that, again, things I thought I knew, I didn't know at all.
00:07:59.660So, whether you're creating the art or observing the art, in both cases, it can have that effect, and it can be an important effect as long as people don't think, ah, now I know.
00:08:12.860So, on this theme of paying attention to what you pay attention to, I want to tell you a bit of a story and get your comments on it.
00:08:22.420So, for years, I was trying to sell tests that help people by aiding them in specifying better employees.
00:08:34.200And I talked to hundreds of middle managers about the tests.
00:08:37.540I developed them, actually, when I was working at Harvard in our department there.
00:08:41.080And what I found was that people didn't want those tests, but what they did want to know was how to deal with people, their employees, that they already hired who weren't doing well.
00:08:53.160And I thought, well, there isn't anything you can do with them because you're just a manager and you don't have the time or resources to deal with people's serious problems.
00:09:02.560So, I went into the literature and I tried to see if there were any interventions that were scalable and inexpensive and harmless that actually produced a remedial effect.
00:09:14.560And there was a couple of sources of literature that specified exactly that.
00:09:20.780One was derived, one stream was established by people studying goal setting in the industrial realm.
00:09:29.560And the other stream was established by James Pennebaker at the University of, at Austin, University of Texas at Austin.
00:09:38.140And what Pennebaker showed was that if you got people to write about their past traumas, that made them physically healthier.
00:09:47.260And people varied his research to show that if you got people to write about their future, that that also made them healthier.
00:09:55.880And the goal setting literature showed that if you got people to write about their future, that they became more productive.
00:10:01.480So, we developed this program that was a vision program, essentially, called Future Authoring.
00:10:09.120It asks people to develop a vision for their life.
00:10:13.040And so, that means to pay attention to what they're paying attention to, to decide what they want, if they were going to optimize their life, to do it consciously, to decide what they didn't want, and to aim away from that, and then to do that in seven different dimensions of their life.
00:10:30.180If you have students do that, if you have students do that, if you have students do that for 90 minutes, when they come into college for their orientation, they are 50% less likely to drop out, and their grade point averages go up 35%.
00:10:56.180I'm not surprised because everything that you just mentioned, you know, Penny Baker's work, for instance, is an instance of making people mindful.
00:11:04.700If you are writing about traumas that you've already discussed with people, it doesn't have the ameliorative effect.
00:11:12.380And the thing about coming up with a scale, it's very interesting because people don't realize that what we're always doing is trying to solve today's problems with yesterday's solutions.
00:11:26.480And so when you're taking a scale, you're assuming everything is staying still, and those people may have, if they did well on those scales, possibly do well at the job as it was defined in the past, but it's going to change.
00:11:44.980So I have a different approach to all of it, which is essentially the same thing that you're, you're suggesting with this 90-minute interaction for students, which I think is, you know, is wonderful.
00:12:01.260And, you know, when you're writing about the past where you have to write about something you never explored before, obviously you're being mindful because the idea of being mindful is noticing new things.
00:12:14.400When you're writing about the future because you haven't experienced a future, again, you're being mindful.
00:12:22.460And so, you know, they should be taught just to be mindful from the start, either in your way or added to it or in place of it.
00:12:33.020And just an understanding that is very unusual, especially in schools, for people to be taught to exploit the power in uncertainty.
00:12:42.020Again, all of the schools, schools, parents, the army, you know, industry in general, teaches people absolutes.
00:12:57.720One and one is two, you know, and so on.
00:13:00.200And by teaching people that everything looks different from different perspectives, everything is always changing, uncertainty is the rule, not the exception.
00:13:10.760And you don't have to feel bad about not knowing.
00:13:13.680You should make a universal rather than a personal attribution for not knowing because nobody knows.
00:13:19.140And not knowing is good because then it makes everything potentially new and exciting.
00:13:23.860I'm thrilled that you found this in 90 minutes.
00:13:30.160Well, it actually shocked me half to death because I started thinking about it.
00:13:35.600I had been using the same program in my classes because I had people outline a vision for their future.
00:13:41.900And then I started thinking about the fact that we don't do this in the education system.
00:13:47.660So I was teaching kids who had 15 years of education already and no one had ever sat them down once, once in their entire educational history and said,
00:14:00.000why don't you think about what you really want and who you could be and how you might lay that out?
00:14:06.400And so then I did some research into trying to figure out why in the world this was because it was as if we have a society that's predicated on literacy and forgot entirely to teach people to read.
00:14:19.500There's nothing more important than helping people establish vision.
00:14:23.120So I looked at the history of the development of the education system, and it turns out that it was developed as a consequence of bringing in Prussian militaristic models of blind obedience in the late 1800s, right?
00:14:38.800To produce mindless workers who would not be creative and who would not question authority.
00:14:45.060And so that's actually that rule following, that mindless rule following that you're describing is built right into the system.
00:14:53.060You know, that I've been studying mindful learning where essentially all you do when you're teaching is make it conditional.
00:15:01.740You know, rather than saying here are three reasons for the Civil War or whatever, it would be here are three reasons that could explain the Civil War from this perspective or that.
00:15:12.760So you change things, horses don't eat meat to it seems that most horses don't eat meat, possibly horses don't eat meat.
00:15:21.260It could be that horses don't eat meat.
00:15:23.480You know, all of the words that suggest it's not always so.
00:15:28.020And then you get an enormous difference because people don't learn the lesson and then think, now I've got it, and then close their mind to all the ways it's changing.
00:15:39.300It's interesting because somebody asked me the other day when I was doing the podcast, because I said we should be mindful all the time.
00:15:49.380And I'll explain what I mean by that to you in a moment.
00:15:51.960And they said, you know, isn't it exhausting?
00:16:06.340And my answer to that, and I'm curious about your reaction to this, because I think you're better read in this regard than I, that I don't have any data.
00:16:15.620But my armchair reasoning leads me to believe that teaching everybody all this mindlessness instantiates the status quo.
00:16:25.440You know, there's no reason why you and I should have these lofty positions.
00:16:30.080And so many others, who would have something else to bring to the table that's no less valuable, don't get a chance to offer it.
00:16:40.080You know, so, and so we'll speak to that, and then I'll tell you what I mean by why we should be mindful all the time.
00:16:49.980Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight.
00:16:55.000Most of the time, you'll probably be fine, but what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do?
00:17:03.240In our hyper-connected world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury.
00:17:08.360Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.
00:17:17.660And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
00:17:20.560With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details.
00:17:28.320Now, you might think, what's the big deal? Who'd want my data anyway?
00:17:31.940Well, on the dark web, your personal information could fetch up to $1,000.
00:17:36.540That's right, there's a whole underground economy built on stolen identities.
00:18:25.180Well, I think that you can make a case that, and this is a common case made by, say, social critics, particularly on the left,
00:18:38.200is that anything that biases behavior in favor of maintenance of the status quo obviously benefits people who are highly positioned in that status quo.
00:18:49.380So, right, now, but there's another psychological reason for that, too, which is that if you introduce anomaly into a conceptual scheme,
00:18:59.800you increase entropy by increasing choice.
00:19:03.700And increased entropy, if you increase entropy and that happens involuntarily, you catalyze a stress response.
00:19:11.800Now, if you increase entropy voluntarily, you don't catalyze a stress response.
00:19:18.560You catalyze a challenge response, and the challenge response looks like it's associated with positive emotion, exploration, and play.
00:19:27.580And so, that's another issue where attitude makes all the difference.
00:19:31.120You see this in clinical work, too, because if people are exposed accidentally to a stressor and they're phobic,
00:22:03.800The first is that if you were mindful, the child wouldn't have ended up in the street in the first place.
00:22:09.360And secondly, that probably in grabbing the child, you want to notice the posture of the driver to figure out whether they're going to turn right or left to know if you should take the child out of harm's way going to the right or left and so on.
00:22:25.260And that the only time one should be mindless, I believe, is when you found the very best way of doing something and nothing changes.
00:22:35.900And so clearly, I don't think those conditions can be met.
00:22:49.460People see you as authentic, charismatic, and it even leaves its imprint on the things that we do.
00:22:55.960And given that it's so easy, I can find no reason why people wouldn't begin immediately after understanding us today to become more mindful.
00:23:48.400And it's associated, as you already pointed out, with exploration and play.
00:23:52.960And I would say that is, is it exhausting?
00:23:55.960I mean, it depends on the level of intensity, but it's definitely engaging.
00:23:59.800And it's also engaging in an interesting manner because what play does is engage you in a manner that expands your realm of adaptive competence, right?
00:24:10.840So you're doing the task, but you're simultaneously getting better at doing the task.
00:24:16.500And that's an optimized place to stand.
00:24:19.880And that's Vygotsky's zone of proximal development because you're continually expanding your domain of adaptive competence by playing.
00:24:27.880And the emotions that are associated with that are associated with engagement and meaning and depth.
00:24:37.880So in the Mindful Body, I have, I present some research on fatigue.
00:24:42.200Let me give you the simplest of these.
00:24:44.860Let's imagine, we have, what do I have to imagine and I'll report it.
00:24:49.060So we have a group of people, we have them do 100 jumping jacks, very simple, and tell us when you get tired.
00:24:55.660So they get tired around two-thirds of the way through the activity, around 67.
00:25:00.820Then we have another group of people, they're going to do 200 jumping jacks.
00:25:05.540And we ask them, tell us when you're tired.
00:25:07.840And they also are tired two-thirds of the way through, which is twice as many jumping jacks as the former group.
00:25:15.700And we do this across all, you know, ballerinas in all different spheres.
00:25:21.080So there's a degree to which fatigue itself is a mindset and limits us.
00:25:27.520But I think that, you know, if you go back to, you made me think about something, if somebody you get into bed and you want to go to sleep and you were suggesting that maybe at that point they should be mindless.
00:25:41.600I think that what happens too often is that the stress of the day keeps people awake, you know, and that if they weren't stressed, and stress is mindless.
00:25:54.440You know, when you're stressed, two things are happening.
00:25:57.060First, you believe something awful is going to happen.
00:26:01.240And second, that when it happens, it's going to be awful.
00:26:22.560Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't, rather than it's definitely going to happen.
00:26:26.440And then turn it around, let's assume it does happen.
00:26:30.200What are three or five reasons, ways that that's actually a good thing?
00:26:35.700And if people don't realize that events themselves don't come prepackaged, there aren't good things, bad things, that whatever happens needs to be interpreted by us.
00:26:46.440And the more mindful you are, the more available are multiple interpretations, good, bad, and whatever.
00:26:53.400And I don't know why I keep using this as an example.
00:26:55.920Maybe help me come up with a better one.
00:26:57.740But if you and I went out to lunch and the food was delicious, wonderful, the food's delicious.
00:27:03.220If you and I go out for lunch and the food is awful, wonderful, the food is awful, presumably I'll eat less.
00:27:09.480And that'll be better for my waistline.
00:27:11.820You know, that when, you know, and with this attitude, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to make this clear, but I hope people will think about it.
00:27:19.700But there's a way, I live my life and I fall up.
00:27:57.960I tell you, Jordan, that there are things, you know, I'm 76 years old, so certainly in my life there are things that have happened that have been big.
00:28:07.580But in the normal course of a day, a week, a month, a year, I don't experience stress.
00:28:14.020And I have this one-liner that I think people will find useful.
00:28:20.100You know, ask yourself when something happens, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience?
00:28:50.540The reframing that you talked about with regards to people's worry at night, that's something that's very much part and parcel of cognitive behavioral therapy.
00:29:00.280Is that one of the things that you do with people?
00:29:02.200Yes, which I was involved in the beginning.
00:29:04.640Well, you take people who are locked into, say, a depressive or an anxiety-inducing pattern of repetitive thought,
00:29:12.260and you have them open up a wider realm of possibility.
00:29:16.200And then you have them practice instantiating that, so that becomes more part of their, well, part of their nature, let's say.
00:29:22.700You also mentioned the jumping jack study, and it reminded me of studies done by Peter Herman showing that if you,
00:29:30.960imagine you bring people into the lab and you have them watch a movie and you give them a bag of popcorn.
00:29:35.940If you give them a small bag of popcorn and you ask, they'll eat the whole bag of popcorn, and then if you ask them if they want another, they'll say no.
00:29:44.940But if you give them a bag of popcorn that's five times that big, they will also eat that.
00:29:52.440It's like, and what seems to happen is that we set up a target, and the target is somewhat arbitrary, right?
00:30:00.420So it could be portion size, and then the goal is to hit the target, and the emotions that are experienced in relationship to that target are target-dependent.
00:30:14.300And so, and this is also, it's also part of the trick of setting optimal goals, right, is that you want to set a goal that challenges you and that pushes you beyond your limits,
00:30:24.460but you don't want to set a goal that's absolutely impossible to attain.
00:30:28.120If you set a high goal, the amount of positive emotion that you experience as you move towards the goal increases.
00:30:36.140But if the goal is too high and it's impossible, well, then it's, you know, then that can be frustrating and disappointing.
00:30:42.100But it's very interesting to see how malleable that is.
00:30:46.080Well, it's interesting because one of the ways I define mindlessness is to be goal-driven, rule and routine-driven.
00:30:54.580You know, that it's fine to have a goal, but you have to realize we're setting that goal at time one, and oftentimes moving towards something several years in the future.
00:31:06.940Lots change, and there's no reason for us not to take advantage of the changes and perhaps change the goal.
00:31:15.540You know, when we form these goals, where do they come from?
00:31:18.200You know, somebody said it's important to be a doctor, for example, and so you're on your way to be a doctor, but you really don't want to be a doctor.
00:31:29.060Essentially, at the end of the game, you want to feel good about yourself.
00:31:35.540You want to feel good about your relationships and feel perhaps that you've made some contribution in some way to somebody or to the world at large.
00:31:45.640And you can do that almost in any occupation.
00:31:51.260And I think that, you know, there are people who are given goals.
00:32:02.440But I think that if we surveyed most of the billionaires and they were honest, you'd see most of them are not very happy.
00:32:09.360So if you sit back at square one, do you want to be an unhappy billionaire or a happy bike store owner?
00:32:18.040I think people might choose differently.
00:32:20.980So as you're gaining information, pursuing the goal, you want to, in fact, be open to possibility.
00:32:28.600I mean, so I say to my class that, you know, let's say that on your way to school today, you run into, I don't know, who's famous these days that they might like.
00:33:13.420You know, you should be in the state of mind so that whatever you're doing is, in a sense, what you would choose to do now, not doing it because what you decided to do for you a prior life, you know, years ago.
00:33:29.860It goes against lots of what people think.
00:33:32.440I mean, I'm sure you're going to say to me after this, well, what about delayed gratification?
00:33:36.700And here I have a lot to say that is probably going to be met with, I don't know, disagreement, rage, outrage, who knows.
00:33:47.760I don't think we should delay gratification.
00:33:51.120I think that, first of all, since everything is changing, you know, if I decide I'm not going to do this now, I'll do it next week.
00:33:58.080This is a good thing because next week will be better for me.
00:34:02.220The world may change and often changes in such a way, two ways.
00:34:06.780One, that I may not have the opportunity to do it in the future, as in the going for the coffee with Taylor Swift.
00:34:14.920Or second, that my desires very well may change.
00:34:18.980Now, so you say, well, what about studying and, you know, things of this sort where we have to do the work so tomorrow we prosper?
00:34:29.160And it's very simple, Jordan, you know, that no matter what you're doing, there's a way of doing so that it's fun and enjoyable.
00:34:39.620If you put away the stress of failure, of not being able to complete it successfully and so on, then all the little challenges that present themselves motivate us and feel good.
00:34:52.900And, you know, so there's, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but you should.
00:39:52.300And Horus is the open eye and the falcon.
00:39:55.980And he's the falcon because falcons can see better than any other animals, including human beings.
00:40:00.320And so, the Egyptians determined that Horus, who was the god of attention, was the force that kept the evil king at bay, so destroyed the negative consequences of habit, and revitalized the social order.
00:40:14.900And they prioritized attention as the highest god.
00:40:30.640And the question is, why has it taken so long for cultures around the world to see the wisdom in all of this?
00:40:39.380Well, Alan, do you think it's partly because if you start to become mindful, there's also the possibility that you'll bring your shortcomings to mind.
00:40:52.020Like, imagine that you do start a practice of attending.
00:40:56.000As you attend, you're going to learn things about yourself that are interfering with your ability to openly attend, right?
00:41:03.660And that can be challenging and off-putting because you can see, because you're wondering, well, if this is so obvious, why don't people notice it?
00:41:13.060Why don't people just automatically do it?
00:41:14.800And I do think that part of it is that when you start to pay careful attention, you find things that need to be fixed.
00:41:24.320So, well, that's one possibility anyways.
00:41:27.720Well, so let me speak to that because something that's very important to me is the idea that behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective or else he or she wouldn't do it.
00:41:40.160And so if one were mindful, they'd be aware of why they're doing what they're doing.
00:41:45.980And it turns out that every description we have of people, ourselves or others, has an equally potent but oppositely valence alternative.
00:41:56.180So you want to diminish me because I'm so gullible, which I am.
00:44:06.360Everybody doesn't know something, but everyone knows something else.
00:44:11.540Everyone can't do something, but everyone can do something else.
00:44:16.120So my long-term goal is to take the horizontal where we comfortably sit on top, the vertical rather, and make it horizontal where everybody is valued.
00:44:28.120And so the person who seems not to be able to do whatever it is will be able to do it differently somehow else.
00:44:36.740You know, it goes back to you have your teaching and you ask your students how much is one-in-one, and one person in the class says one.
00:44:45.980And what we do now is we belittle that person, we teach the students around to have no respect for that person, where in my world what we do is say, Johnny, Susie, whatever, how did you come up with that?
00:45:00.160And then they tell us they added one cloud plus one cloud, or however they came up with it, and that we learn that much more.
00:45:08.160You know, I was lecturing in South Africa many years ago, and I was staying at this fancy hotel, and I note I was down at the pool resting one afternoon, and I noticed that there was this enormous amount of real estate in the hotel, you know, part of the hotel, that nobody was using.
00:45:26.560And the only person who knew that was the lowly cabana boy, you know, that, of course, if we assumed that he had something really to offer, we would think to get that information from him and then make more money, which seems to be the goal of most of these entrepreneurs or hotel owners or what have you.
00:45:48.520So, you know, so we're brought up thinking there's a single way of doing things, there's a single answer to questions, and all of that fosters our mindlessness.
00:45:59.160And, you know, sometimes when I'm lecturing, I'll look in the audience to see if there's some guy who seems really big, and I'll say, you know, ask him if he'll come to the stage.
00:46:09.080So, let's assume I'm lucky that day, and he's 6'5".
00:46:34.520And that the more similar you are to the person who wrote the rules, perhaps the better it is for you to follow.
00:46:42.340But the more important part of that is the more different you are, the more important it is for you to find your own way of doing it.
00:46:51.580And, you know, and that when people are taught conditionally, you know, you sort of hold the racket like this, or you could hold the racket like this.
00:47:01.060They're more likely to come up with their own way than somebody who's told, this is the way.
00:47:07.640Okay, so I want to sort what appear to be two competing claims out in my imagination.
00:47:14.160So, on the one hand, as far as I can tell, you're making the case that all things considered, an attitude towards the world that's more attentive and mindful is better.
00:47:28.480But you added to that a different conception, which was that every negative trait, let's say, has a positive element, which, by the way, is something that seems to me to be an appropriate statement.
00:47:42.020But there's somewhat of a contradiction there, as far as I can tell, because on the one hand, you're flattening out the moral hierarchy and saying, well, there's a multitude of ways of looking at things.
00:47:53.180And just because you think something is bad, and just because you think something is bad, it isn't necessarily bad.
00:48:07.480I think that, you know, that in today's world, we all aspire to certain things.
00:48:14.200And given the values that are currently operative, to meet those values, to live the kind of life that most people seem to want, which is not answering the question about whether they'd be better off living a very different kind of life, mindfulness sets the stage for it.
00:48:32.620And, you know, that if it's a contradiction, so be it, you know, that I think that we can live with contradictions until we accumulate enough wisdom to resolve them.
00:48:45.440But at this point, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
00:48:48.380Nothing is good or bad, except it's better to be mindful.
00:48:53.620Well, so, but, you know, I think one of the things that I'd like to talk about, if you're willing, is some of the health work in the mindful body.
00:49:04.520Because here, one of the values that we seem to have is to be healthy, to live a long, happy, healthy life.
00:49:14.320And one could argue that also, that if one is going to live multiple lives, which some people believe in a reincarnation and whatever, maybe that goal is misplaced.
00:49:24.660But if we take that goal as real, a great deal of the information we've been given is simply wrong.
00:49:31.660And I go back to the horse that ate the hot dog.
00:49:35.300And what people need to realize is that studies, research can only give us probabilities.
00:49:42.700You do a study, and the study shows you that if you were to do it again the exact same way, which we could never do, we're likely to get the same findings.
00:49:53.960These probabilities are then taught to us as absolutes.
00:49:58.320Horses don't eat meat, one and one is two, and so on.
00:50:01.680Now, when you're given a diagnosis and you're told, research shows that you have six months to live or whatever it is, I mean, that's insane.
00:50:15.340And when you realize that everything we're taught are maybes, it allows us to go forward and find new ways of doing things, new ways of meeting our needs, and so on.
00:50:28.040So I talk a lot in the mindful body about mind-body unity.
00:50:51.740That the problem is, for people who separate mind and body, is how do you get from this fuzzy thing called a thought to something material called the body?
00:51:04.400So I said, you know, I don't want to pay attention to any of that.
00:51:08.100It's all interesting philosophy, but it's not useful.
00:51:12.340Say, put the mind and body back together.
00:51:15.040Then wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting the body.
00:51:19.340And we've done so many studies on this.
00:51:22.300The first one you might know about, because I reported it earlier on in work, is the counterclockwise study.
00:51:29.740We retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier and had old men live there as if they were their younger selves.
00:51:36.940So they're speaking about the past in the present tense.
00:51:40.580Everything is designed to make them think that now was 20 years earlier.
00:51:46.200As a result of this, without medical intervention, in a period of time as short as a week, I think it was only five days, actually, their vision improved, their hearing improved, their memory improved, their strength improved, and they look significantly younger.
00:52:04.260Just by putting the mind in a different place.
00:52:07.880So you want me to tell you about a couple of the newer ones?
00:52:15.080So I'll go in some chronological order.
00:52:17.600The next one we did was a study with chambermaids.
00:52:21.360And we asked the chambermaids, how much exercise do you get?
00:52:24.780They thought exercise is what you do after work, because that's what the surgeon general leads people to believe, and they're just too tired.
00:52:31.440So they don't think they get any exercise.
00:52:33.560So all we did was take half of them and teach them that their work was exercise.
00:52:38.240Making a bed is like working on this machine at the gym and so on.
00:57:28.360And then she was diagnosed with a cancer that only 200 people in the world have been reported to have that killed every single one of them in 10 months.
00:57:36.800And she told me about six months into the treatment that she would be better on our wedding anniversary, which was August 19th.
00:58:11.840Well, they have a, they have a very narrowed image of what retirement means.
00:58:16.240So they imagine themselves, you know, sirping, slip, sipping margaritas on a beach in the Caribbean, which is a real good plan for the first night.
00:58:26.640You just turn into like a fat, sunburned alcoholic in no time flat.
00:58:30.960And like, I've seen people around 55 start to decide that they're old.
00:58:37.620You know, they've sort of decided that they've had the adventure of their life and that they're done.
00:58:41.660And that makes, that does facilitate their aging very rapidly.
00:58:46.720Now, but, by the same token, this is, and this is where all this is going, you know, I understand that the structure of reality is malleable in relationship to interpretation and to a degree that is unspecifiable, right?
00:59:04.060However, I'm curious about your notion of where the limits to that are.
00:59:08.520I mean, you took these elderly people and you put them in a situation where they were acting out the proposition they were 20 years younger and they were getting all sorts of feedback from their environment that that was valid.
00:59:19.380But the painful truth of the matter does seem to be that we all age and that we all die.
00:59:26.360And so, you know, there are, there are intrinsic limits to, so, so tell me how you, what you make of that.
00:59:35.040I think that it's to our, um, uh, advantage as individuals and as a culture, uh, to assume that we can exceed wherever we are.
00:59:46.760You know, I think that, um, people, what people used to die, you probably know just when, when they were 20 years old and then people were dying mostly at 40 years old.
00:59:56.980And, uh, this, you'll find this funny.
01:00:02.740Anyway, Willard Scott was the, um, a weatherman for, um, a news program.
01:00:09.800And what Willard Scott would do is every day, every morning, he'd say, and happy birthday, Rosie from Michigan, who just turned a hundred.
01:00:19.200And happy birthday, Peter, who, uh, just turned a hundred.
01:00:23.120And so the idea of turning a hundred became, to my mind, for many people, much more likely.
01:00:31.880And I think that oddly, you know, despite all the work I've done in the, uh, aging area, all the medical work, I think he had a very significant role in extending our lifespan.
01:00:43.840You know, again, if you think you're going to live, um, a long life, you organize yourself differently.
01:00:50.580Um, and it's that organization, those thoughts of how to continue growing, uh, no, it's very funny.
01:00:59.100The other day I was, uh, helping this person, um, this old woman with something.
01:01:05.560And my spouse said to me, you know, she's probably a lot younger than you are, which I didn't even realize.
01:01:11.720So, um, I just don't have a sense of, I don't use age as a measure of do it, don't do it.
01:01:18.480Um, and I think that that's, that's healthy.
01:01:21.640I think that you, you asked about limits.
01:01:24.960Um, interestingly, years ago, I think it might've even been when you were at Harvard.
01:01:29.860Um, I was on the division of aging at, uh, the medical school and Jack Rowe was, uh, the chair of the committee.
01:01:38.460And I called Jack one day, he was my doctor of choice at the moment.
01:01:42.660And I said, Jack, how long does it take for a broken finger to heal?
01:01:47.100And he says, I don't know, let's say a week.
01:01:49.420I said, what would you say if I said I could heal it psychologically in five days?
01:02:06.560You know, where is, where is the breaking point?
01:02:09.440And so that's the way things progress is in these small steps.
01:02:14.640Um, um, but if you follow that logic, you know, if you know that if you can do it in three days and 23 hours, so why not three days and 22 hours?
01:02:25.140And why not, you know, and then you slowly get yourself to the point where you can do it in three days.
01:02:30.520And if you can do it in three days, why not two days and 23 and a half hours and so on.
01:02:38.640I just think we're so far from what these limits to what we can do in, in any parts of our lives, not just our health.
01:02:47.300Um, that we, we can far exceed whatever goals we set for ourselves.
01:02:53.380I've been writing about, there's, there's a notion that's deeply embedded in, in the Genesis text that human suffering is a consequence of sin and not built into the structure of the universe, right?
01:03:06.300And it's, um, it's a strange doctrine in many ways, because as I pointed out earlier, the normal course of human events is that everybody ages and dies.
01:03:16.560And so the notion that suffering and limitation is built in seems self-evident.
01:03:21.300But then there's another part of me that thinks, you know, we all waste an awful lot of our own time, um, in futile pursuits and self-defeating pursuits.
01:03:31.000And we impose limitations on ourself that are arbitrary and often lazy.
01:03:37.580And then collectively we deceive each other and we lie and we don't cooperate well together and we manipulate.
01:03:44.460And that interferes with our ability to apprehend things properly and to structure our existence properly.
01:03:50.900And, you know, the wildly optimistic side of me thinks, and I do think there's reason for believing this, that if we got our act together completely, insofar as that's possible, and that might partly be by paying more attention, that there aren't any intrinsic limits that would necessarily stop us.
01:04:09.100We'd still have to figure out, for example, like, it's an open question to me, and I'm kind of curious about your attitude towards this.
01:04:16.400You know, if you, if you could choose how long you would live, do you have any idea how long you would choose?
01:04:25.680I mean, an indefinite existence, you know, of hundreds of thousands of years, that seems, it seems to me to be, like, incomprehensibly dramatic and awesome.
01:04:51.400What people should strive for, rather than adding more years to their life, they should be adding more life to their years.
01:04:58.820And by doing that, then you'll want to extend.
01:05:03.700You know, if today is really exciting, you look forward to tomorrow.
01:05:07.300If you're miserably depressed today, you're scared about tomorrow.
01:05:11.860And so that if we were able to create a world where people were more mindful, where people had more respect for each other by noticing people's behavior make sense or else they wouldn't do it, that I think that there'd be no reason to fear.
01:05:30.260You know, you can't imagine what life is going, I can't even imagine what life is going to be like in 50 years.
01:05:38.560And I'm assuming, which is separate from whether I'm going to be alive or not, most people would say no.
01:06:27.020You think that if you concentrated on maximizing the quality of your life, the issue of how long that should extend would more or less solve itself as a consequence of that proper orientation.
01:06:42.240Alan, can I change the topic a little bit?
01:06:46.720When we were discussing the possibility of this podcast, one of the things we had talked about a little bit is the state of the university.
01:06:58.680And I do want to approach that with you, too.
01:07:01.540When I worked with you, if you don't mind, when I worked with you in the 1990s, I was at Harvard between 92 and 98.
01:07:10.240And I really thought it was a great privilege to be there.
01:07:15.920In terms of attitude, there was something interesting that happened then, too, that you might find worthy of contemplation, given your attitude towards attitude.
01:07:26.840You know that the junior professors at Harvard were always destined to leave in 99.9% of the cases.
01:07:34.880And when I first came there, I observed that some of the junior faculty who were at the outer limits of their brief tenure there were unhappy that they weren't likely to be considered for permanent status and that they'd have to move on.
01:07:52.860And I thought, well, I don't want to be in that position in six years.
01:07:57.820I think I'll go there and think, if the turnover of junior staff wasn't high, I wouldn't have got this job to begin with.
01:08:06.480And that I'm pretty damn lucky to go to Harvard and meet all these people and be paid for it, because most people who go to Harvard have to pay to go.
01:08:14.960And I got paid for going, so that was a good deal.
01:08:17.300And that I should be happy with the outcome, regardless of what it was, and then move on to wherever I was going.
01:08:24.400And that was an attitudinal shift that was very helpful to me and made the transition out of there much smoother than it might have been, even though it was accompanied by a certain amount of grief.
01:08:35.680Anyways, when I was there, I also felt that it was a very admirable institution and that I was there in a kind of golden age.
01:08:43.340I thought the university had prioritized the research requirements of the senior faculty as their number one goal.
01:08:51.460And then they treated undergraduates exceptionally well.
01:08:55.240And then they were pretty good to junior faculty and graduate students, kind of in that order.
01:08:59.640And the administrative apparatus was essentially there to facilitate all of that.
01:09:07.580And I also found that my colleagues, junior and senior alike, were fundamentally focused on their intellectual interests and their research.
01:09:15.980And they did what was necessary to keep things moving forward on the administrative front effectively.
01:09:23.020But that was not anyone's primary concern.
01:09:58.400Well, the first thing is that we have to be aware that anything I say may just be the difference of being, you know, 30 years old versus as old as I am, you know, rather than a change in the university itself.
01:10:13.900My change rather than the university's change.
01:10:16.280The idea that most people are not going to get tenure was the rule.
01:10:23.800I was actually, was I tenured when you were there?
01:11:36.320My feeling is that there are more rules and regulations than there were in the past, which interferes at time with certain intellectual activities.
01:11:50.220You know, if I wanted to, and this has happened over and over again, I want to do research.
01:11:56.160The research I'm doing is not like in the medical school where you can take one person's head and put it on another person and then see if it works.
01:12:04.120You know, most of the things we're asking people to do are innocuous.
01:12:24.520And so I find, for whatever reason, I don't know what the reason is, actually, but that when I was younger, it was easier to get these things done.
01:12:33.480And not because I'm an older person now.
01:12:36.600I mean, I think in this way I'm wiser.
01:12:39.360You know, but things have just become more complicated.
01:12:42.440You know, I used to have somebody from Europe or in the States or even somebody in Boston right next door want to volunteer to be in my lab.
01:12:55.720Well, it turns out, and that was great because, you know, I have so many ideas and so many things I want to do.
01:13:01.760I need an army of people to help me do it.
01:13:05.240It turns out you can't take volunteers unless they're Harvard students.
01:13:43.800But it's still a wonderful place to be.
01:13:47.300You've seen somewhat of a proliferation of bureaucratic impediments.
01:13:51.160Well, it's hard on the research side because if you're an entrepreneurial and creative person, which is what you need to be if you're going to generate a lot of research ideas, there's a certain quickness of mind and approach and striking while the iron is hot that goes along with that, right?
01:14:08.240Because you have to follow that thread of interest.
01:14:10.100And for me, for me to have to delay a study for a year means that by the time the study is possible, I don't want to do it.
01:15:56.620And what people need to understand is that if you're in remission, and I'll tell you about the study in a moment, but if you're in remission, you're worried about the cancer.
01:16:51.740I've beaten it many times in the past, which is not the case oftentimes with cancer.
01:16:57.580So what we did, and here's where the review board comes into play.
01:17:01.000The first attempt at this was to ask people, women, on a cancer awareness walk about whether they see their cancer as in remission or cured.
01:17:14.280And then we'd check back a while later, six months later, to see how their health has progressed.
01:17:20.920The review board wouldn't let us do this because asking somebody about their cancer they thought was stressful.
01:17:28.940These are women on a breast cancer awareness walk.
01:17:33.380I mean, you know, and so it required lots of fighting with them.
01:17:37.820The best one, years and years ago, this student comes in, she's gay, and she believes, and I think it's a very reasonable assumption,
01:17:49.220that if a child is brought up by two women, since mothers are so important to the upbringing of kids,
01:20:42.960Yeah, well, you know, it's really what scientists should be looking for, I would say, instead of government funding.
01:20:48.920Because along with that government funding comes exactly the sort of problems that we're discussing right now, which is, well, you know, is this going to be of broad public benefit?
01:20:59.440And the answer is, well, if I knew that, I would turn it into a company in a second, right?
01:21:06.080If you knew for certain that your new discovery was going to be of broad, significant economic benefit, you'd raise money and you'd have entrepreneurs on board in two seconds.
01:21:16.620And so that problem would take care of itself.
01:21:19.100And as you pointed out, too, is that the probability that a given study will work is inversely proportionate to its daringness and its creative nature.
01:21:31.280And so those are exactly the studies that are going to be scuttled by anything, even approximating a cost-benefit analysis, which no one on an ethics committee ever does anyways, because they don't have the technological qualifications for doing so.
01:21:43.800No, I think they do far more harm than good.
01:21:48.880Well, look, the overall evidence for malfeasance on the scientific side of things in relationship to the treatment of research participants is very, very sparse.
01:22:01.240There are some egregious counter-examples, right?
01:22:05.100Experimentations in the concentration camps in Germany, experimentations by the Chinese, the Tuskegee experiment.
01:22:14.040Like, you can point to exceptions, but all things considered, well, most scientists who run a research lab would just assume, for example, that their participants might come back again, or that, you know, bad word doesn't get out about exactly what's going on in the lab.
01:22:28.520And so, and most scientists who are genuine scientists also have a very high regard for ethical conduct and the truth, because if you don't, you never discover anything, right?
01:22:38.200I mean, you cannot be a crooked scientist and discover something.
01:22:43.840So, I also wanted to point out, you may know this already, but you know that involuntary exposure to stress directly compromises immune function, right?
01:22:55.320Because what happens is you produce cortisol, and that heightens immediate responsivity, but it compromises any long-term adaptation.
01:23:03.720And so, the idea basically is, is if a tiger is chasing you around a tree, you can afford to suppress your immune system temporarily, because you want to devote all the resources to getting the hell away from the tiger.
01:23:15.940But if you are stressed, and so it does beg the question that you were pointing out with regards, say, to the attitude of remission versus cure.
01:23:23.040However, if you are stressed, even at a low level, but that's chronic, like it might be, by noting that you're now at heightened risk and you're only in remission, that stress might compromise your immune system enough so that the probability of cancer recurrence is, you know, is higher.
01:24:06.100She was completely white, ghostly looking, like sweating, unbelievably stressed.
01:24:11.080And she let the people in the elevator know that she was suffering from cancer and that she was extremely guilty.
01:24:17.960Because she believed that it was an inadequacy in her attitude that had led her to contract this disease and to be unable to deal with it.
01:24:26.720And so, one of the things that I have wrestled with, because I do understand the utility of maintaining, let's say, a positive attitude in relationship to illness and a can-do attitude, let's say.
01:24:37.920But by the same token, you know, it's very hard on ill people when they have to cope with the fact that they're ill and suffering.
01:25:11.760And I said to him, no, I'm not blaming the victim.
01:25:16.040The culture teaches us, you know, that we don't have any control over these chronic illnesses.
01:25:21.540And remind me, I want to talk to you about the attention to variability, where we've looked, we have a psychological treatment for big illnesses.
01:25:29.640And as long as the culture teaches us that we have no control, how can you blame anybody for presuming they have no control?
01:25:37.080And then he said, and besides that, you're wrong, because my wife fought the cancer at every turn, and she still died.
01:25:44.780And then I said to him, well, let me ask you something.
01:25:48.220If a little kid, let's say a two-year-old, is tugging on your pants, do you see yourself as fighting that little kid?
01:25:56.560So the language of fighting the cancer already says it's this gigantic beast, very strong, which says also that in your own mind, you're not very likely to win, to beat it.
01:26:09.260And so I think that as long as the culture teaches us, and it's done so less so now over time, because there are so many people who managed to beat cancer.
01:26:22.460But when I was young, all you knew, cancer was a killer.
01:26:26.460And as long as you believe cancer was a killer, it was going to be very hard not to succumb to it.
01:26:32.660And I think that we need to celebrate, you know, the people who beat it.
01:26:37.340And as with that living to 100 example, you know, these small numbers, but they can loom large if we have them vivid and come to people's minds.
01:26:48.060When my mother was in the hospital, this woman, a very nice woman who she didn't know, walked in because she knew my mother had pancreatic cancer.
01:26:58.040And, you know, obviously was told she didn't have very long to live.
01:27:01.540And she said, Sylvia, my mother's name.
01:27:03.460And they told me, 20 years ago, I only have six months to live.
01:27:12.020I'm still alive, but now I'm poor, you know.
01:27:15.320And everybody knows of examples like this.
01:27:18.820They don't, they should never say anything like that because they can't know.
01:27:22.320And so as long as you can't know, then for as long as you're alive, you should be living.
01:27:28.920You know, I was going to write a book many years ago entitled Life Before Death because sadly for all too many people, their lives, they're sealed in unlived lives.
01:27:40.360And that's what all my work is designed to do is to help, you know, break that seal.
01:27:45.380Well, it's a, when you're suffering, I've also been looking at the book of Job, you know, and Job is a book that exemplifies human suffering.
01:28:01.260No, it's the older Job from, you know, from way back when.
01:28:04.260Yeah, and so everything possibly bad that could happen to someone virtually happens to him.
01:28:09.180And one of the morals that's embedded in the story is that regardless of that, and also regardless of the relative unfairness or perceived unfairness of the fate,
01:28:21.660your best and most appropriate attitude psychologically is to keep faith and hope alive.
01:28:29.140And that story in particular is very dramatic in that regard because the reason that Job suffers is because God himself has a bet with Satan that Satan can torture Job enough to make him lose faith.
01:28:42.540You know, and that's pretty rough, right?
01:28:43.860If you're going to have forces arrayed against you, God and Satan is a pretty rough battle.
01:28:49.880And what happens in the story of Job is that he determines to abide by his faith and hope regardless of circumstances.
01:28:58.520And so maybe you can say to people who are suffering, say, from terminal cancer diagnosis, that obviously a large degree of compassion on the part of themselves and observers is in order,
01:29:12.000but that they will make the best of a terrible situation by reorganizing their attentional structures so that the maximum amount of faith and hope can be present at every moment.
01:29:24.000And that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll win, so to speak, in the final analysis, but it might mean that the course of the cancer is going to be less like hell than it could have been.
01:30:14.980But the interesting part of that, I think, is that when you then make the decision to make the moment matter, and that's all we have.
01:30:24.040You know, when you're talking about people who are depressed, one of the best things, I think, as far as therapy goes, is just deal with the moment.
01:30:33.020And then the next moment, and a moment is easy to deal with.
01:30:36.020And if they are mindful in the moment, they will probably end up beating the cancer.
01:30:44.040They stand a good chance of beating the cancer.
01:30:46.960Let me give you an example of something, Jordan.
01:30:49.320I don't need to remember in the book, I talk about what we call the borderline effect.
01:31:45.380That's the same thing for all different diseases.
01:31:48.920So we did some work with diabetes and cancer.
01:31:51.200There is some point on some test where one of us falls right above that borderline, and so we're told we have it, whatever the it is, one of us right below it.
01:32:04.660And so we find that those who are given that diagnosis fare terribly.
01:32:09.780The people who are just like them, right before they're given the diagnosis, do fine, which suggests, again, the control we have over our health.
01:32:22.020In this case, you know, not using that control.
01:32:26.520Yeah, well, that issue of the edge case is very interesting.
01:32:30.680I mean, it's, so you can tie a bunch of things that you just discussed together.
01:32:35.620So the first is, you said, you know, you should pay attention to the moment, and there's a gospel injunction in the Sermon on the Mount to do exactly that, right?
01:32:43.180Is to focus, to make the concerns of the day sufficient thereof, essentially.
01:32:49.100And what that means is that you want to occupy a time frame that optimizes the challenge within that time frame without it being too stressful.
01:33:03.020So one of the things you do, for example, with people who are depressed or anxious is you narrow the time frame over which they're apprehending their behavior.
01:33:12.180And if you're, like, if you're really suffering, if you're really in pain, you might narrow your time frame to the next minute.
01:33:20.520Like, you might not be able to handle the next day, right?
01:33:22.940And so you want to never bite off more than you can chew.
01:33:25.980And you can do that partly by minimizing the time frame you're computing over and attending more particularly to that narrow time frame.
01:33:33.500And also by narrowing the scope of your activity, which we discussed a little earlier, too.
01:33:38.540If you can't take on a major task, you can't put your family in order, you might be able to say something kind to the sister you haven't seen for five years, right?
01:33:50.820You can take that incremental tiny step forward.
01:33:54.120And there's real power in that minimal transformation.
01:33:59.740Now, you also talked about attention to variability in the edge cases.
01:34:03.440I mean, how do you reconcile that with the apparent necessity for categorization?
01:34:09.060You know, at the edge of every category is an indeterminate margin, right?
01:34:12.540And you said, well, if you're in category A versus B, that can have a massive effect, even though there's no real distinction at that border.
01:34:19.900Now, that's a very important question, you know, that am I saying people should never be given diagnoses?
01:34:28.360Because there has to be, you know, these have it and these people don't have it.
01:34:32.960But I'm not saying that what first I use the borderline studies as a way of showing if there's no meaningful difference between two people when they start and they're given the diagnosis and then the two groups come apart.
01:34:47.000That means that this group that's given that diagnosis could do whatever they were doing that was similar to the other group and diminish the negative consequences.
01:34:58.900So it was a way, again, of showing the mind-body unity and we have control over our health.
01:35:05.200Whether we should or shouldn't be given diagnoses, I don't know.
01:35:09.560But I do know that if you or anyone you love is given a diagnosis, you make them aware that it's a best guess.
01:35:18.940That these diagnoses are based on research, they're based on probabilities, not absolute facts.
01:35:27.040And when you are told that you may have it, you know, that is very different from you do have it.
01:35:34.640When you're told it may run its course in the following way, it's very different from being told it will unfold in this way.
01:35:43.260You know, and I think that's crucial for us.
01:35:46.180Behavioural psychologists aren't very positively inclined to psychiatric diagnosis.
01:35:53.560And the reason for that is that they're very pragmatic.
01:35:56.360And so the orientation of a behavioural psychologist is, well, let's differentiate your problems to the point we can envision potential solutions to them.
01:36:05.180And the meta-construct isn't all that valid.
01:36:08.340I think there's an exception, possibly, and you tell me what you think about this.
01:36:11.860Because I found diagnosis useful and salutary in my clinical practice when it helped people bind their otherwise catastrophic anxiety and when it pointed to a direction forward.
01:36:24.360So someone might come in and say, look, man, I haven't been able to get out of my house for the last five years.
01:37:06.820But I want to ask you something before I forget about depression.
01:37:10.520So I've often thought that if we were able to give people a placebo or convince them in whatever way that their depression will only last another three weeks, that they would instantly become better.
01:37:29.960That the most depressing thing about depression is that you assume that's all you're going to see going forward.
01:37:37.840Yeah. Well, I think there is evidence for that on the treatment front, because one of the things you do in cognitive therapy with depression is challenge the assumption of eternal permanence.
01:37:51.200So depressed people tend to think, okay, I feel awful right now.
01:37:58.720Every single day is unending awfulness, and that will extend indefinitely into the future.
01:38:03.440And so what you do, one of the things you do, is you have people track their moods over a week, hourly.
01:38:08.960And you show them that there's substantive variability in their mood, even though they were blind to that.
01:38:13.860And then you also often have them, so first of all, that shows that it's not permanent and unchanging.
01:38:19.700And then you often do a very detailed history that helps them understand that they have experienced this before, and almost invariably it has receded.
01:38:29.840Like, it's almost invariably cyclical.
01:38:32.200It doesn't feel like that when you're depressed.
01:38:34.680Jordan, that's perfect, because that's what we were doing with major diseases, teaching people attention to symptom variability.
01:38:46.640So when you have a major disease, you assume your symptoms are going to stay the same or get worse.
01:38:55.360All right, so what we did was we would call people, and we'd ask them, how do you feel now, and is it better or worse than before, and why?
01:39:07.160The first is, wow, I thought I felt this, you know, whatever the pain is all the time.
01:39:14.200Now we see, there are moments I don't feel it, so you feel a little better.
01:39:17.740Second, by asking why the search is mindful, and as we've said now enough times, that that mindfulness feels good and is good for your health.
01:39:29.900The neurons are firing, and it's good for you.
01:39:35.020And third, I think that you're more likely to find a solution if you're looking for it.
01:39:39.580So we've done this with biggies, with stroke, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, even depression.
01:39:51.140And in each case, we have very, very positive results.
01:39:55.560And so, you know, when I first proposed this, I was seeing it as an antidote.
01:40:02.460Well, you know, you can't give yourself a placebo.
01:40:06.660You have to, when you're given a placebo, somebody is fooling you into thinking that it's real medication, and then you take it, and it's not the medication, clearly.
01:40:16.340It's a sugar pill, so you are helping yourself.
01:40:18.980So I was trying to think, well, how can we have people give themselves placebos?
01:40:23.840So imagine that you have chronic pain, and you set your smartphone to ring in an hour, and then you ask yourself, is it better or worse than before, and why?
01:40:35.700And then at that moment, set it to ring in two hours and ten minutes.
01:40:39.660You keep doing this over the day, over the week, if you need more time.
01:40:48.500And I think all of this work, again, supports the idea that I keep coming back to, that virtually everything in the world is mutable.
01:41:00.400We can make it fit for us better than it does at the moment, and that our own health is largely under our own control.
01:41:11.380So, Ellen, with depressed people, one of the things you do, and this is true for psychological misery in general, is you ask them to adopt an attitude of open-eyed ignorance about their own nature.
01:41:25.780So you think you know who you are, but it's possible that you don't really know more about yourself than you know about anybody else.
01:41:32.500Like, you think you have privileged access, but you're pretty damn complicated, and you're not an open book.
01:41:36.760And so, one of the things we could do is, let's say, track the variation in your well-being across time.
01:41:43.080And then what we're going to do is we're going to focus on those times when you feel better.
01:41:47.240And we're going to try to figure out what the hell you were doing during those times.
01:41:51.820So, with depressed people, for example, you find that they want to isolate themselves.
01:41:56.540But if they go see family and friends, they almost invariably feel better.
01:42:02.660So, well, you can see that the same thing might apply in a situation that's characterized by illness.
01:42:09.020And you could also imagine that that would have a profound physiological effect.
01:42:12.960Because imagine that you're in a situation now, and you're suffering from cancer, and you're having a relatively good day.
01:42:21.160Now, because you're having a good day, you're not stressed out.
01:42:23.740You have more positive emotion and hope.
01:42:25.580And there are situational determinants of that.
01:42:27.860Now, it could easily be, if you could maximize the probability that you would stay there, and then look for improvement even in that, that you would tilt your physiology in a direction of having a better probability of combating the illness itself.
01:43:00.100So, if we call them periodically, and how stressed are you now, and is there more or less than before, and why, and so on, then what happens is, Jordan, you might find out that you know you're really stressed when you're speaking to Ellen Langer, but not when you're not.
01:43:17.760You know, there's something else that I want to get your view on, which is, you know, I was very active in the beginning, the creation of, say, cognitive behavior therapy.
01:43:29.720And people have asked me, well, what's the difference between, let's say, a mindful therapy and cognitive behavior therapy?
01:43:35.720And so, I want you, I'm going to tell you what I think.
01:43:39.740And then the question to you is, is it a difference that makes a difference?
01:43:44.340So, you go to the therapist with some problem, and you tell them you see the world in this particular way.
01:43:50.900And the cognitive behaviorist says, well, perhaps it's this other way.
01:43:56.960Now, because the therapist is an authority figure, what I think people too often do is then take the therapist's frame of reference as real.
01:44:09.180And mindful therapy would be to come up with many explanations.
01:44:14.360And the more explanation, you know, it's just like what I was saying about stress, that if you think of five reasons why it might not happen, the situation changes.
01:44:26.580You know, how else might we understand this?
01:44:41.500Now, the psychoanalysts observed first that if you impose a solution on a client or a patient, even if it's an intelligent solution, there's a high probability that you'll produce resistance.
01:44:55.420And part of the reason for that is that you're stealing the person's destiny.
01:44:59.140It's like, look, if you come to me with a problem, and I give you a solution, and you implement it, it's not your victory.
01:45:08.660And if you fail, it's your failure, not mine, because you're going to suffer for it.
01:45:13.620And so, people are naturally inclined to tell an authority figure to go to hell if they impose a solution.
01:45:20.860A good cognitive behavioral therapist won't say, here's another way of looking at it, although there may be situations where that's necessary because of an emergency, say.
01:45:29.760What they will do instead is say, look, could we collaborate on imagining alternative conceptualizations of that situation, right?
01:45:41.980And what you really want, you want the person to come up with the alternatives.
01:45:45.960And I think that actually does the rewiring, right?
01:45:48.560If you deliver the alternative, people don't act it out, and they don't remember it.
01:45:54.680And I think it's because they haven't undergone the cognitive reorganization necessary to actually expand their horizon.
01:46:21.700And it doesn't make the original one wrong.
01:46:23.140And by recognizing that this thing you were sure was an X, could be a Y or a Z, leads you to think of most, you know, when I said to you before, when the horse ate that hot dog, it didn't just change my mind about whether horses are herbivorous or not.
01:46:46.540And so if the person in therapy is dealing with, you know, you're sure it's this, and then the therapist helps you to come to, could be this, could be that, could be the other, there are many people who can walk away from that one instance now with an entirely new life before them.
01:47:05.660So you do that, that's actually been technically termed collaborative empiricism.
01:47:11.060So the notion would be the person's in a fixed mindset.
01:47:13.960You help them develop a proliferation of alternatives, and then you say, well, look, go home for a week and try this attitude and watch, attend, be mindful, come back and tell me how it went.
01:47:28.740And we're either going to find out that it's better or the same or worse, and you'll be able to tell me.
01:47:34.000If it's the same or worse, we'll try another attitude.
01:47:39.940And that does two things, as you pointed out.
01:47:42.720Now, it may lead to a proximal solution to the proximal problem, but it also teaches the person that they're the sort of creature that can generate alternative hypotheses and then test them and evaluate.
01:47:56.620And that's kind of a meta-learning, right?
01:47:58.220That would be more learning not to be attentive to the situation, but to be attentive, period, to make that a habit of mind.
01:48:23.760We had an interview between—it was actually a professor at Yale when I did this when I was a graduate student.
01:48:30.220And so we take this interview, and we call the person being interviewed either a job applicant or a patient.
01:48:39.220And then we showed them to therapists of all different stripes.
01:48:43.580And almost always, when we called them a patient, they saw him as sick, potentially having this and that disorder.
01:48:51.140When we called them a job applicant, they saw him as well-adjusted, the same person on the same tape.
01:48:55.880It was interesting because behavior therapists, since they were more attuned to the specific behaviors, were a little less likely to do this.
01:49:07.260But I think that, you know, I think a lot of therapy needs to be reconfigured because whatever lens you put on is determining what you're going to see.
01:49:20.160And it doesn't make sense to go pay a therapist top dollar for telling you how wonderful—you're telling them how wonderful you are, them telling you how wonderful you are.
01:49:30.940And so the focus on problems, in some instances at least, I'm sure itself is a problem.
01:49:36.740So, you know, so the therapist, I think, has to always say, you know, that in this small realm, this is what's going on, not, you know.
01:49:47.840Because as soon as you walk into a therapist's office, you're declaring yourself a patient.
01:50:24.520I can listen, and we can exchange ideas, and we can investigate.
01:50:29.960But in the final analysis, the decision to attend and to change—and Carl Rogers knew this, too, and laid it out beautifully in his work on humanism, humanistic psychology—the impetus has to come from the client, him or herself.
01:50:45.940It has to be voluntary and attention-focused.
01:50:48.640And on the same note, humorously, that if you charge $5 for the hour versus, let's say, $5,000 for the hour, in the second case, the person would get better faster.
01:51:03.340Not because it's costing so much money, but because they value it so much more.
01:51:08.160That's very interesting in regard to pricing, period.
01:51:10.800You know, we've developed a variety of psychological interventions and tried to determine how to price them.
01:51:18.260And you might think that the compassionate thing to do and the generous thing to do would be to make them free.
01:51:26.340And it's partly because the act of paying, first of all, is fair exchange, and that keeps the interaction, like, neutral and morally untrammeled.
01:51:35.340And second, it is the case that part of how you determine whether something is valuable is whether or not you've had to exchange something of value for it.
01:52:13.240For everybody watching and listening, many of you know this.
01:52:15.400We're going to continue for another half an hour on the Daily Wire Plus site.
01:52:18.480And if you found this conversation interesting and compelling, which was the point, then please do join us there.
01:52:24.220Otherwise, I'll just let everyone know, again, the name of Ellen's new book, Dr. Langer's new book, The Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.