Speaker 1: Hey fam, Hello Sunshine. Today on the bright Side, it's
Speaker 1: Wellness Wednesday. We're talking mindfulness and mindlessness with Harvard professor
Speaker 1: doctor Ellen Langer. Her studies on decision making, healing, and
Speaker 1: aging have taken over the internet. Let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: what if age was just a mindset? We'll find out
Speaker 1: if it is.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, August fourteenth. I'm Danielle Robe.
Speaker 2: And I'm Simon Boyce. And this is the bright Side
Speaker 2: from Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together
Speaker 2: to share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten your day.
Speaker 2: Today's Wellness Wednesday is presented by Coliguard Danielle. Today's show
Speaker 2: is all about mindfulness and this topic reminds me of
Speaker 2: one of my most mindful periods of life. It's when
Speaker 2: I was at that retreat a few months ago in Nashville.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, the life changing retreat.
Speaker 2: I'll never forget it, the life changing retreats. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'll be honest, it's really easy to be mindful when
Speaker 2: you're on this beautiful campus in the middle of the
Speaker 2: countryside with no access to phones or screens. Was it verdant?
Speaker 2: It was very verdant. It was lush, it was verdant,
Speaker 2: not bucolic though.
Speaker 1: So what kind of mindful practices did you learn there? Like,
Speaker 1: what'd you do well?
Speaker 2: We spent most of our time in therapy, so you
Speaker 2: have no choice but to be dialed in and present
Speaker 2: when you're in therapy. But there were some other mindfulness
Speaker 2: hacks that I picked up. Just checking in with yourself,
Speaker 2: so acknowledging what is the time the place that I'm
Speaker 2: in right now, it's a great way to sent to yourself.
Speaker 2: I also learned how to practice meditation in a way
Speaker 2: that looks easier for me. I'm never going to be
Speaker 2: that girl that wakes up every morning and is able
Speaker 2: to just meditate and complete silence. However, for me, I
Speaker 2: can do it through an instrumental track, through an orchestral track.
Speaker 2: I can do it through walking or even an ice bath.
Speaker 2: I don't know how regularly I'll do that, but that
Speaker 2: was fun.
Speaker 1: How did that mindfulness shift things for you?
Speaker 2: I've found that when I'm more mindful, I'm more open
Speaker 2: to my intuition. I'm more open to community, to conversation,
Speaker 2: to truth, and to serendipity, which is the most fun.
Speaker 1: I really like that I do a heart meditation in
Speaker 1: the morning. It's ten minutes. I just do it in
Speaker 1: my bed. And when you breathe light out from your heart,
Speaker 1: it makes you more open and does breathe into serendipity.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounded very woo woo, but it's true.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 1: And our guest today has done a ton of research
Speaker 1: on mindfulness. She's way less woo wu than we sounded
Speaker 1: because she is an American professor of psychology at Harvard
Speaker 1: and according to her research, mindfulness has shown to be
Speaker 1: literally and figuratively enlivening. I'm talking improve relationships, health, well being,
Speaker 1: even aging. It affects our aging process. I know, right,
Speaker 1: that's the crazy part.
Speaker 2: Doctor Langer has written over two hundred research articles and
Speaker 2: thirteen books, including her most recent book called The Mindful Body,
Speaker 2: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, and through all her research,
Speaker 2: doctor Langer always does demonstrates the power of our thoughts.
Speaker 2: So let's bring her in, Doctor Ellen Langer, Welcome to
Speaker 2: the bright Side.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Doctor Langer. You are a leading expert in mindfulness. You've
Speaker 2: conducted more than ninety studies in this field. So my
Speaker 2: first question is, how would you define mindfulness?
Speaker 3: It's so simple it almost defies belief. What many people
Speaker 3: think of as mindfulness as meditation. And meditation is nice,
Speaker 3: but it has nothing to do with mindfulness as I
Speaker 3: study it. Mindfulness as we study it is immedia. All
Speaker 3: you need to do is notice. So there are two
Speaker 3: ways of becoming mindful. One is bottom up, which means
Speaker 3: the things you think you know, just notice new things
Speaker 3: about them, and you'll see you didn't know it as
Speaker 3: well as you thought you did, and your attention naturally
Speaker 3: goes there. When I started to paint, for instance, I
Speaker 3: thought leaves would green, but then I went outside and
Speaker 3: I started looking at the leaves, and they're hundreds and
Speaker 3: hundreds of different shades of grain, and each of these
Speaker 3: change depending on where the sun is in the sky.
Speaker 3: So my mindless notion of green became a multitude of sensations.
Speaker 3: The other way to be there, which is top down,
Speaker 3: is to appreciate that everything is always changing. Everything looks
Speaker 3: different from different perspectives. So when you realize you don't know,
Speaker 3: then you naturally pay attention. So if the two of
Speaker 3: you are going to come visit me in Massachusetts, you
Speaker 3: wouldn't have to practice anything. You'd walk in everything would
Speaker 3: be new to you, and you'd say, oh, did she
Speaker 3: do that painting books? What is that over there? And
Speaker 3: you'd notice because it's new and it feels good. It's
Speaker 3: the essence of what we're doing when we're happening. So
Speaker 3: you actively notice the neurons are firing, and the research
Speaker 3: shows that it's literally and figuratively enliven it.
Speaker 2: In your most recent book, you write that quote, we
Speaker 2: all already have a potent tool for improving our health
Speaker 2: and we may not even know it.
Speaker 3: That is so powerful. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 3: So the title of the book is The Mindful Body.
Speaker 3: The subtitle is Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, And
Speaker 3: so a lot of the book is about what I
Speaker 3: call mind body unity. Now, people have a notion you
Speaker 3: have a mind, you have a body. The problem with
Speaker 3: that is how do you get a thought, something immaterial,
Speaker 3: to affect the body something material. This is wrong. Let's
Speaker 3: just put the mind and body back together. If it's
Speaker 3: one thing. Wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting
Speaker 3: the body. Wherever you're putting the body, you're necessarily putting
Speaker 3: the mind. The studies that I report in there, the
Speaker 3: examples I give from my own life other people's lives
Speaker 3: makes clear that we have enormous control over our health
Speaker 3: and well being. We've barely even tapped the surface of
Speaker 3: what we're able to do. So we have lots and
Speaker 3: lots of studies where we put the mind in strange
Speaker 3: places and take the measurements from the body. So the
Speaker 3: first study in that series was the counterclockwise study. Now
Speaker 3: here we retrofitted a retreat to twenty years earlier, had
Speaker 3: old men live there as if they were their younger selves.
Speaker 3: So they spoke about past events as if they were
Speaker 3: just unfolding, and in a period of just a week,
Speaker 3: their vision improved, the hearing improved, their strength, their memory,
Speaker 3: and they look noticeably younger, all by changing their minds.
Speaker 1: I have so many questions, what do you mean by
Speaker 1: changing their mind.
Speaker 3: Let's take the second study in the series. We took
Speaker 3: chambermaids and we asked these chamber maids how much exercise
Speaker 3: do you get? Well, they believe that they're not getting
Speaker 3: any exercise because the Surgeon General says exercise is what
Speaker 3: you do after work, and they're just too tired. So
Speaker 3: all we did was change their minds and teach them
Speaker 3: that their work was exercise. Making a bed is like
Speaker 3: working at this machine at the gym. Dusting the wind
Speaker 3: is like working at this other machine. So on and
Speaker 3: so forth. So now we have two groups, one group
Speaker 3: whose mind has been changed, who believes their work is exercise.
Speaker 3: The other group who doesn't realize this. They're not eating
Speaker 3: any differently, they're not working any harder. All that's changed
Speaker 3: is that mindset. As a result, the group that now
Speaker 3: sees their work is exercise lost weight. There was a
Speaker 3: change in waste to hip ratio, body mass index, and
Speaker 3: their blood pressure came down just by changing their minds.
Speaker 3: Let's take the last study in the series. We inflict
Speaker 3: a wound. It was a minor wound, but still a wound.
Speaker 3: And so people are in front, individually, are in front
Speaker 3: of a clock. Unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged.
Speaker 3: So for a third of the people, the clock is
Speaker 3: going twice as fast as real time. For a third
Speaker 3: of the people, it's going half as fast as real time.
Speaker 3: For a third of the people it's real time. Now
Speaker 3: most people would assume that stupid, I'm just going to
Speaker 3: heal when that wound heals, What difference does it make
Speaker 3: what the clock says but the clock is controlling our
Speaker 3: perceptions of time, and it turns out the wound heals
Speaker 3: based on clock time perceived time. You sort of imagine,
Speaker 3: now you know that you can control your healing, you
Speaker 3: can control your memory, your vision. I mean, we have,
Speaker 3: you know, so many different studies.
Speaker 1: We have to take a quick break. Stick with us,
Speaker 1: and we're back with doctor Ellen Langer. So mindfulness is
Speaker 1: the act of noticing. And you say mindlessness is actually
Speaker 1: very costly. What is the cost of mindlessness?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, you're not there. Every time you're
Speaker 3: in a situation where there are new opportunities available to
Speaker 3: you're going to be blind to them because the past
Speaker 3: is dictating your present, your rule and routine bound you're
Speaker 3: oblivious to alternative perspectives. In fact, in general, when we're
Speaker 3: learning anything, we should learn it in a conditional way,
Speaker 3: sort of kind of this way. Maybe this way not absolute,
Speaker 3: because when you're learning something absolutely, then you don't vary
Speaker 3: it by context. You don't vary it as a function
Speaker 3: of your age, your ability at the time and so on,
Speaker 3: or your difference from the person who wrote the rule
Speaker 3: in the first place. And the very important point that's
Speaker 3: hidden in here that I may clear in the mindful body,
Speaker 3: which is everything. Everything that is was at one point
Speaker 3: a decision. It wasn't handed down from the heavens that
Speaker 3: there should be nine innings in a baseball game, cabinet
Speaker 3: should be of this height. All of these things were decisions, right,
Speaker 3: And so what that means is that everything is mutable.
Speaker 3: Everything can be changed, but it doesn't occur to us
Speaker 3: to change it. We just sort of accept what is
Speaker 3: as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: It's clear, doctor Langer, that you question absolutely everything thure,
Speaker 1: and what I'm hearing you talk about is perspective and
Speaker 1: flexible thinking. And I learned through therapy that rigidity is
Speaker 1: actually protection in many ways. So my question for you
Speaker 1: is how did you become so flexible? Was it your upbringing?
Speaker 1: Was it your parents? Where does this mindset come from?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I was very, very fortunate. My parents were extremely
Speaker 3: supportive and loving, and that gave me license to explore
Speaker 3: new things without having to worry about breaking the toy
Speaker 3: or showing up ten minutes later or whatever else. And
Speaker 3: so even as a little girl, I remember people would
Speaker 3: be complaining about one thing and I'd say, oh, look
Speaker 3: at it. This other way. And so I have a
Speaker 3: long life of doing this, and everything that I've written
Speaker 3: basically has been trying to share that with other people.
Speaker 3: I think people don't realize that events don't cause us stress,
Speaker 3: they don't cause us unhappiness, they don't cause anything. It's
Speaker 3: our views of the events that lead us to our feelings,
Speaker 3: and our views or a function of our thoughts, we
Speaker 3: have control over them. So if you look at this
Speaker 3: in this awful way, of course you're not going to
Speaker 3: feel good. If you look at it as an advantage,
Speaker 3: then you are going to feel good. People often ask
Speaker 3: me how do you change from seeing negatively to seeing
Speaker 3: it positively? And you know, I don't change. I just
Speaker 3: see it positively in the first place. But it is
Speaker 3: neither positive nor negative. It just is.
Speaker 1: You do a lot of work on decision making, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that you actually named is the
Speaker 1: illusion of control. I'm fascinated by this. HM is the
Speaker 1: illusion of control positive or negative for human beings.
Speaker 3: I'll give people the bottom likes rather than waste your
Speaker 3: time trying to make the right decision. I think people
Speaker 3: would be better off making the decision right.
Speaker 1: Does that include spouses?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Wait, my friend says this. She says, choose your choice.
Speaker 2: She says, make a choice, and then your behavior and
Speaker 2: actions are in validation of that choice. Choose your choice.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, what's interesting is that when you make a decision,
Speaker 3: you're making a decision to take action. As soon as
Speaker 3: you take that action, you can't make a comparison anymore.
Speaker 3: If you say, should I have this pie or that pie?
Speaker 3: So you take the first pie and you eat it.
Speaker 3: Now you want to see, oh, maybe I should have
Speaker 3: had the other pie. Well, your stomach is now full.
Speaker 3: The other pie is not going to taste the way
Speaker 3: it would have tasted if it were the first you,
Speaker 3: so we can never really compare. So you can't hit
Speaker 3: them up to know what to do. Not only that,
Speaker 3: how much information should you gather? I have some friends
Speaker 3: who are so ambivalent because they think they should know,
Speaker 3: so they come up with this, yeah, but then I
Speaker 3: can go there, and they go back and forth and
Speaker 3: back and forth, very very creatively. And the mistake is
Speaker 3: thinking there's a right answer.
Speaker 1: I love this thinking, and I particularly like not judging
Speaker 1: the decision as right or wrong, or good or bad.
Speaker 3: Let me throw something at you that I think is
Speaker 3: probably it's funny because I've done so many studies as
Speaker 3: you mentioned earlier, and have many many studies where we're
Speaker 3: able to make people live longer and they're happier and
Speaker 3: everything is glorious. The one thing that I came to
Speaker 3: and all of this time, over forty five years of
Speaker 3: thinking about these issues, that means more to me than
Speaker 3: anything else, is the following behavior makes sense from the
Speaker 3: actors perspect or, else he or she wouldn't have done it.
Speaker 3: And it's the same thing for yourself. If you did
Speaker 3: it at the time there was a reason to do it,
Speaker 3: or else you wouldn't have done it. Now, the problem
Speaker 3: is if we're not aware of why we did what
Speaker 3: we did, and we look back on it, we can
Speaker 3: see it from a different perspective, and then we take
Speaker 3: ourselves to task. So, for instance, I am extraordinarily gullible,
Speaker 3: very gullible. Now I keep trying to change, I'm never
Speaker 3: going to be able to change. Why is that because
Speaker 3: going forward, I'm not intending to be gullible. I'm trusting.
Speaker 3: And as soon as I realize that the reason I
Speaker 3: did what I did was because I was trusting, I
Speaker 3: wouldn't change for a moment. Every single negative description of
Speaker 3: our own behavior or the behavior of others has an
Speaker 3: equally strong but oppositely valenced alternative. You don't like me
Speaker 3: because I'm impulsive. That's because I value being Spontaneou I
Speaker 3: can't stand you because you're so inconsistent. That's because you
Speaker 3: value being flexible and so on.
Speaker 2: We need to go to a quick break, but we'll
Speaker 2: be right back. Don't go anywhere. We're back with doctor
Speaker 2: Ellen Langer. Doctor Langer. We are coming to you from
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. We are in the land of crystals and
Speaker 2: sunshine and sand and manifestation. Manifestation is I think, something
Speaker 2: that comes to mind whenever we are trying to close
Speaker 2: the gap using our mind between where we are and
Speaker 2: where we aspire to be. Is mindfulness related to manifestation
Speaker 2: at all? And can you share how?
Speaker 3: Yes? And no. If I want to speak Greek and
Speaker 3: I don't speak Greek, and I think about wouldn't it
Speaker 3: be nice speaking Greek and I get myself dressed as
Speaker 3: a Greek, I'm not going to be able to speak,
Speaker 3: you know. So it depends on the what we're talking about,
Speaker 3: the particular content. I think that if you say to
Speaker 3: yourself you have cancer, but if you keep saying to yourself,
Speaker 3: I don't have cancer, I don't have cancer, you will
Speaker 3: still have cancer because the fact of saying that to
Speaker 3: yourself means that you believe you have cancer and you're
Speaker 3: trying to change it. All right, So there are clearly similarities,
Speaker 3: but it's very different. And the work that I talk about,
Speaker 3: especially the work I report in The Mindful Body, is
Speaker 3: all research s based. There's a a great deal of
Speaker 3: science behind it.
Speaker 1: Doctor Langer, I want to better understand what you mean
Speaker 1: by mindfulness when it comes to your work with healing,
Speaker 1: because what you just said to Simon was really interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to just visualize that. I'm i can
Speaker 1: speak Greek. But when your mother was fifty six years old,
Speaker 1: she was diagnosed with cancer, and her breast cancer had
Speaker 1: mestasticized and was in her pancreas, which oftentimes means it's terminal.
Speaker 1: But then something strange happened.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you pointed that up. So her cancer had
Speaker 3: metastasized to that pancreas and then magically it was gone,
Speaker 3: and the medical world couldn't explain it. The mind by
Speaker 3: the unity idea does explain it. So when you're feeling
Speaker 3: you know the game is over, and now you tune
Speaker 3: yourself out. The amount of mindlessness is increasing. You're not
Speaker 3: doing anything to support better health. You're helping to bring
Speaker 3: about your own demise. And a lot of that is
Speaker 3: what I object to. When doctors tell you things like
Speaker 3: you have three months to live, there's no way for
Speaker 3: them to know anything like that. And this is not
Speaker 3: magical thinking. This is research based. Views that are based
Speaker 3: on are understanding that the medical world only gives us probabilities,
Speaker 3: and there's probabilities, then often became self fulfilling when they
Speaker 3: don't need to. I am not suggesting me be positive.
Speaker 3: I'm not suggesting me being negative. What I'm suggesting is
Speaker 3: we remain uncertain. It's not a problem, it's not a solution.
Speaker 3: It's not positive or negative. It just is, and then
Speaker 3: we act on it to form our own experience of it.
Speaker 2: We want to end on a positive practical takeaway for
Speaker 2: our right side besties. It's no secret that stress is
Speaker 2: a huge problem in this country. Some studies show that
Speaker 2: nearly half of Americans say that stress negatively impacts their
Speaker 2: behavior or their lives. Can you share one mindfulness practice
Speaker 2: that we can start using today to minimize our stress
Speaker 2: and establish that mind body unity.
Speaker 3: Yes, I write a lot about stress and mindfulness as
Speaker 3: I study. It isn't a practice, it's a way of
Speaker 3: being that naturally results when we recognize we don't know,
Speaker 3: so then you naturally to all right, Now, stress is
Speaker 3: not a function of events. It's a function of the
Speaker 3: view you take of events. If you take a single
Speaker 3: minded negative view, you're going to experience stress. If you
Speaker 3: open up that view to see the many different things
Speaker 3: that might be good, bad, and different, you're going to
Speaker 3: feel differently. What people need to realize is that most
Speaker 3: of the things we worry about never end up happening,
Speaker 3: you know, So that seems the total waste of time.
Speaker 3: One liner for people that some of my friends that
Speaker 3: put on their refrigerators is ask yourself, is it a
Speaker 3: tragedy or and inconvenience? It's almost always just an inconvenience.
Speaker 3: I bang the car, I missed the appointment, I rip
Speaker 3: the dress, I mean whatever it is, and then take
Speaker 3: a deep breash. Right now, stress is purely psychological, and
Speaker 3: my own view is that stress is the major culprit
Speaker 3: in causing disease. All right, So that means if we
Speaker 3: took people who were dietnose with dread diseases and we
Speaker 3: measured their stress. I personally believe that level of stress
Speaker 3: would determine the course of the disease over and above genetics, nutrition,
Speaker 3: and even treatment. That's how important the stress is. But
Speaker 3: since stress is psychological, that means we can control it.
Speaker 3: And what we need to do is recognize that events
Speaker 3: are only what we make of them. You know that
Speaker 3: if my internet goes out, now, oh my god, No,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't be Oh my god, I'd go and I
Speaker 3: visit with a friend who's waiting for me inside. We
Speaker 3: tend not to realize that most of the things that
Speaker 3: happen are just not important. The older you get, the
Speaker 3: more you realize this. You know, you're two years old
Speaker 3: and you bang your knee and you're screaming bloody murder.
Speaker 3: You're seven years old and Johnny or Janey doesn't send
Speaker 3: you a Valentine, and oh my god, your world's going
Speaker 3: to end. Then at some point you start to realize
Speaker 3: this is all kind of selling. Now you two are young,
Speaker 3: and what I try to teach my students is why
Speaker 3: wait until you're four day? This is something available to
Speaker 3: all of us right now to recognize the control we
Speaker 3: have over our health and our well being, and it's
Speaker 3: our thoughts that we can control that determine how we're
Speaker 3: going to experience the life that we lead right now.
Speaker 3: Too many people are sealed and unlived lives, and I've
Speaker 3: taken it as my mission essentially to try to break
Speaker 3: that seal.
Speaker 2: Doctor Langer. Your advice about having an internal locus of
Speaker 2: control and being really in tune with that, I think
Speaker 2: that's everything. That's the key to happiness.
Speaker 1: Well said doctor Langer. Thank you for joining us today
Speaker 1: on the bright side.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, doctor Langer.
Speaker 3: This was fun. Be well.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ellen Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University.
Speaker 1: She's written more than two hundred research articles and thirteen books,
Speaker 1: including The Mindful Body Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.
Speaker 2: That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, Emma Gred and Ashley
Speaker 2: Graham join us to talk about the season two premiere
Speaker 2: of Side Hustlers, which is out next week. Thank you
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Speaker 1: Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: I'm Simone Boye. You can find me at Simone Voice
Speaker 2: on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 1: I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok. That's r O
Speaker 1: b A Y.
Speaker 2: See you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.