Speaker 1: When you're mindless, you see somebody do something, you have
Speaker 1: one explanation for it. The more mindful you are, the
Speaker 1: more nuanced everything becomes, and you're aware that things can
Speaker 1: happen for many different reasons.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wealth. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is Ellen Langer. She's an
Speaker 2: American professor of psychology at Harvard University. In nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: Ellen became the first woman ever to be tenured in
Speaker 2: psychology at Harvard. She studies the illusion of control, decision making, aging,
Speaker 2: and mindfulness theory. Today, Ellen and Eric discuss her new book,
Speaker 2: The Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way into Chronic Health.
Speaker 3: Hi Ellen, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. Eric.
Speaker 3: I am really excited to have you on. As I
Speaker 3: was telling you beforehand, I have followed your work for
Speaker 3: a long time, and you're really in the psychology field,
Speaker 3: and sort of by the nature of the fact, you've
Speaker 3: talked about in mindfulness in the mindfulness field, you know,
Speaker 3: a really for a long time. So this is a
Speaker 3: real honor. We're going to be discussing your latest book,
Speaker 3: which is called The Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way to
Speaker 3: Chronic Health. But before we get into that, we'll start
Speaker 3: like we always do with the parable. In the parable,
Speaker 3: there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One's a good wolf, which represents
Speaker 3: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other
Speaker 3: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear. The grandchild stops. They think about it
Speaker 3: for a second. They look at but their grandparent. They say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do well.
Speaker 4: I think that it's fine.
Speaker 1: I probably would have had a good dog and a
Speaker 1: bad dog rather than a wolf.
Speaker 4: It's easier to imagine this little puppy.
Speaker 1: Surely all of us have had experiences where we were
Speaker 1: our best selves or our worst selves. I think that
Speaker 1: too many people assume that we have to be stressed.
Speaker 1: There are just going to be times where are the
Speaker 1: bad wolf or our bad selves. And I think that
Speaker 1: the more mindful you become and the wiser you become,
Speaker 1: the less likely that bad wolf is going to show up.
Speaker 4: And I think.
Speaker 1: Obviously that when you say feed the wolf, that's an
Speaker 1: interesting question.
Speaker 4: Also, how do you feed it?
Speaker 1: I think that just by an awareness of how much
Speaker 1: control we actually have over our health, our happiness, our
Speaker 1: well being, our social interactions will lead us to be
Speaker 1: doing the right thing that would lead to food for
Speaker 1: the better animal or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, or something like that. And I too would
Speaker 3: prefer to dogs, being a fan of the dog as
Speaker 3: I am. So let's start with asking you to maybe
Speaker 3: define a couple things real quick. You use two words
Speaker 3: in there that I'm interested in. The first was mindfulness
Speaker 3: and the second was I think you said the wise
Speaker 3: thing to do, so I'd be interested in. Also, what
Speaker 3: wisdom means to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about mindfulness. So many people confuse mindfulness
Speaker 1: with meditation. Meditation is fine, but it's not the same thing.
Speaker 1: Meditation is a practice you go through in order to
Speaker 1: result in post meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness, says we study, it
Speaker 1: is more immediate. It's not a practice, it's a way
Speaker 1: of being, and it's so simple Eric it almost defies
Speaker 1: belief when you look at the consequences of being in
Speaker 1: this state of mind.
Speaker 4: All you need to do is notice.
Speaker 1: Now, everybody thinks they're noticing, because when they're not noticing,
Speaker 1: when they're being mindless on automatic pilot, they're not there,
Speaker 1: so they're not there to know they're not there. Sadly,
Speaker 1: forty five years of research that I've been doing says
Speaker 1: that most of us are mindless most of the time.
Speaker 4: So all you need to do is know you don't know.
Speaker 1: Now, everything we've been taught works in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: You know, you go to school and you're taught absolute facts.
Speaker 1: Your parents tell you absolute facts. Because everything looks different
Speaker 1: from different perspectives, these absolutes.
Speaker 4: Need to be questioned.
Speaker 1: And so what I often do when I start these
Speaker 1: talks is take a fact that everybody is sure of.
Speaker 4: So, how much is one plus one?
Speaker 3: Eric? Two?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: But it isn't always two. If you're using a base
Speaker 1: ten number system, one plus one is two. If you're
Speaker 1: using a base two number system, one plus one is
Speaker 1: written as ten. Easier to understand. If you add one
Speaker 1: pile of laundry to one pile of laundry, one plus
Speaker 1: one is one. You add one cloud to one cloud,
Speaker 1: one plus one is one. You add one wat of
Speaker 1: chewing gum to one want of chewing gum, one plus
Speaker 1: one is one. So in the real world one plus
Speaker 1: one doesn't equal to as a more often as it does.
Speaker 1: And the importance of this is once you realize this,
Speaker 1: you respond to everything differently. You know, if somebody came
Speaker 1: up to you after we finished speaking today and said, Eric,
Speaker 1: how much is one plus one?
Speaker 4: Very likely event right.
Speaker 1: You're not going to just blurt out too anymore, because
Speaker 1: now you're going to be a little unsure. You're going
Speaker 1: to pay attention to the context, and you're going to
Speaker 1: answer more mindfully, and you'd probably say it could be
Speaker 1: too if you want to give them what they expect,
Speaker 1: or you might want to shock them and say it
Speaker 1: could be one. And so basically, when we know we
Speaker 1: don't know, we approach things in a very different way,
Speaker 1: with an openness that doesn't exist most of the time
Speaker 1: for most of us.
Speaker 4: Now all of us know we don't know.
Speaker 1: The problem is we think we should know, so people
Speaker 1: pretend the avoid situation.
Speaker 4: So I'm here to free everybody. Nobody knows.
Speaker 1: Nobody can know, because again, everything looks different from different perspectives.
Speaker 1: And when you know it's okay not to know, then
Speaker 1: everything is potentially new again. And so in these forty
Speaker 1: five years of research, we found that this simple process
Speaker 1: of noticing results literally and figuratively enlivening everything gets better.
Speaker 1: And to answer the second question about wisdom, you can't
Speaker 1: be mindless and wise. You can be mindful and not
Speaker 1: wise only because you haven't experienced whatever the situation is,
Speaker 1: if you've never been there, if you're a young child.
Speaker 1: But as you get older, what you need to do
Speaker 1: is embrace your experience. And there's something I write a
Speaker 1: lot about that. It's kind of interesting to me, Eric
Speaker 1: that I have so many Forty five years is a
Speaker 1: long time, right, So I have lots of findings. Many
Speaker 1: of these findings are showing enormous improvements and chronic disease,
Speaker 1: people living longer, and so on. But the thing that
Speaker 1: actually was the most important to me was when I
Speaker 1: realized that a very simple thing behavior makes sense from
Speaker 1: the actor's perspective, or else the actor wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, you know, today,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be anoxious, clumsy and whatever. So whenever
Speaker 1: we're casting aspersions, evaluating somebody in some negative light, what
Speaker 1: we're doing is looking at their behavior from our own
Speaker 1: perspective mindlessly. If we look at it from their perspective,
Speaker 1: you get a very different thing. I'm to share this
Speaker 1: with you so you can see how relationships will change
Speaker 1: almost instantly. So you can't stand me because I am
Speaker 1: so gullible, which I am now, and you can convince me. Oh,
Speaker 1: and look, we can't be friends unless you just stop.
Speaker 1: And I'll look back. I can't believe how gullible I am,
Speaker 1: and I'll try to change. But I'm going to fail,
Speaker 1: and the reason I'm going to fail is that going forward,
Speaker 1: my intention is not gullible. My intention is to be trusting. You,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, are so inconsistent it gets on
Speaker 1: my nerves. But from your perspective, what you're being is flexible.
Speaker 4: So if I want to change.
Speaker 1: Your behavior, I have to get you to stop valuing
Speaker 1: being flexible.
Speaker 4: Perhaps what will happen.
Speaker 1: Is I'll now start to value the very behavior that
Speaker 1: got on my nerves before. This happens around New Year's
Speaker 1: every year when people make their New Year's resolutions, and
Speaker 1: almost always they fail because what they're doing. I'm trying
Speaker 1: not to be gullible, you're trying not to be inconsistent, but.
Speaker 4: Again, going forward, that's not what we're being. So you
Speaker 4: can see.
Speaker 1: I think that for every single negative description of behavior,
Speaker 1: there's an equally strong but positive alternative interpretation, right, and
Speaker 1: people are moving forward in this world because of that
Speaker 1: positive interpretation. So when you're mindless you see somebody do something,
Speaker 1: you have one explanation for it. The more mindful you are,
Speaker 1: the more nuanced everything becomes, and you're aware that things
Speaker 1: can happen for many different reasons, and it makes life
Speaker 1: much more interesting and much kinder.
Speaker 4: Basically that listener.
Speaker 3: As you're listening, what resonated with you in that I
Speaker 3: think a lot of us have some ideas of things
Speaker 3: that we can do to feed our good wolf, and
Speaker 3: here's a good tip to make it more likely that
Speaker 3: you do it. It can be really helpful to reflect
Speaker 3: right before you do that thing on why you want
Speaker 3: to do it. Our brains are always making a calculation
Speaker 3: of what neuroscientists would call reward value, basically, is this
Speaker 3: thing worth doing? And so when you're getting ready to
Speaker 3: do this thing that you want to do to feed
Speaker 3: your good wolf, reflecting on why actually helps to make
Speaker 3: the reward value on that higher and makes it more
Speaker 3: likely that you're going to do that. For example, if
Speaker 3: what you're trying to do is exercise, right before you're
Speaker 3: getting ready to exercise, it can be useful to remind
Speaker 3: yourself of why, for example, I want to exercise because
Speaker 3: it makes my mental and emotional health better today. If
Speaker 3: you'd like a step by step guide for how you
Speaker 3: can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf,
Speaker 3: go to Goodwolf dot me, slash change and join the
Speaker 3: free masterclass. Part of your definition of mindfulness that I've
Speaker 3: seen written is this idea of being sensitive to context
Speaker 3: and perspective, which perspective to me is you can't not
Speaker 3: take a perspective, right, it just happens automatically. But what
Speaker 3: I can do is know that that is happening and
Speaker 3: then say and what else?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And what else am I not seeing? What else am
Speaker 3: I not thinking? You know, I've done a lot of
Speaker 3: Zen practice and one of the key phrases in Zen
Speaker 3: is not knowing is most intimate. Right. It's this whole
Speaker 3: idea that like, if you want to be closer to life,
Speaker 3: you got to know you don't know and wake up
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as soon as you know you don't know,
Speaker 1: everything becomes new, everything becomes potentially interesting. So a lot
Speaker 1: of our work also shows that as you're noticing, drawing
Speaker 1: these distinctions from any particular perspective, recognizing alternative perspectives, neurons
Speaker 1: are firing and you seem alive. We have evidence that
Speaker 1: when you're mindful, people see as charismatic. When you're mindful,
Speaker 1: you're healthier, you're likely to live longer, everything is just improved.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's even the case that the things that
Speaker 1: you do bear the imprint of your being mindful, so
Speaker 1: you seem better, your relationships are better, your health is better.
Speaker 4: And it's so easy.
Speaker 1: It's sort of unclear to me why anybody who's listening
Speaker 1: wouldn't immediately try to change.
Speaker 4: In this way.
Speaker 1: And now the problem is that when you're mindless again,
Speaker 1: you're not there to know you're not there, and so
Speaker 1: it's not so easy to change. But when you're learning
Speaker 1: anything new, you certainly can learn it in a mindful way.
Speaker 1: You add to it. It could be that's one way.
Speaker 1: Perhaps on the one hand, on the other hand, and
Speaker 1: so on, you make it richer and a little more tentative.
Speaker 1: If you've been doing something a thousand times like a robot,
Speaker 1: it's often hard to change it.
Speaker 4: However, there are ways.
Speaker 1: And simply when you're suffering, you know, when something didn't
Speaker 1: go right is the time you're talking to yourself. And
Speaker 1: now is an opportunity to talk to yourself more mindfully.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me ask a question that taking what you've
Speaker 3: said so far and kind of goes right into the
Speaker 3: core of the book, right, and you say early on,
Speaker 3: our psychology may be the most important determinant of our health. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a pretty bold statement.
Speaker 1: Oh and I made it even more strongly than you
Speaker 1: just quoted me as.
Speaker 3: Saying your editor told you to tone it down.
Speaker 1: You know, the medical model, not that long ago, had
Speaker 1: been one that said psychology was virtually irrelevant. I'm sure
Speaker 1: doctors wanted people to be happy and not stressed, but
Speaker 1: they didn't think that that was relevant to health.
Speaker 4: The only way you were going to become unhealthy was
Speaker 4: the introduction of an antigen.
Speaker 1: Right now, things have moved quite a bit, and people
Speaker 1: realize stress is unhealthy and so on. But I don't
Speaker 1: think it's moved nearly as much as it should be,
Speaker 1: And psychology is probably the most important determinant. So almost
Speaker 1: everything I'll say now and that I write about it
Speaker 1: is based on lots of studies that we've done. This
Speaker 1: particular thing is not yet born out, but still I
Speaker 1: believe it. Which is that stress I think is the
Speaker 1: major determinant of our health.
Speaker 4: So if we took.
Speaker 1: People this is the study I'd like to do but
Speaker 1: haven't gotten to do. If we took people who are
Speaker 1: just diagnosed with some dread disease, some kind of cancer,
Speaker 1: let's say, now, nobody if they get that diagnosis is
Speaker 1: going to be pleased, so we give them a little
Speaker 1: while to adjust to it, and after let's say three weeks,
Speaker 1: we start evaluating their stress level.
Speaker 4: I believe that.
Speaker 1: That stress will be a better predictor of the course
Speaker 1: of the disease than genetics, nutrition, even treatment. That's how
Speaker 1: and stress is psychological. Events don't cause stress. What causes
Speaker 1: stress is the view you take of the event. The
Speaker 1: more mindful you are, the more potential views are available
Speaker 1: to you. And once you generate and oh my god
Speaker 1: view and a huh, that's pretty good view, most people
Speaker 1: are going to cling to the pretty good view. But
Speaker 1: we've been taught there are good things, there are bad things.
Speaker 1: People kill themselves to get to the good, do everything
Speaker 1: they can to avoid the bad. Once you see it
Speaker 1: is neither good the bad. It's nothing. Until you frame it,
Speaker 1: you're basically at peace rather than racing around trying to
Speaker 1: avoid or garner these rewards.
Speaker 3: Let me ask a question, because I think that the
Speaker 3: mind body connection, and you go further, and I actually
Speaker 3: agree with you. To say that, like, to even talk
Speaker 3: about them as being connected is to understate the case.
Speaker 3: They are one thing, right, which I don't understand. How
Speaker 3: we don't see that. I mean, they are literally connected
Speaker 3: in every possible way, but that what our mind does
Speaker 3: is a huge determinant on our overall health. And I
Speaker 3: think that there's enough studies that show this to be
Speaker 3: unequivocally true. Here's the rub that I'd love to hear
Speaker 3: you talk a little bit about, which is, if I
Speaker 3: am diagnosed with cancer and that cancer continues to progress,
Speaker 3: isn't there a sense in which we could be saying
Speaker 3: that the way I'm thinking about that and the way
Speaker 3: I have process thoughts in my life is the cause
Speaker 3: of that, and thus I'm a bad person.
Speaker 4: Even tell me blaming the victim?
Speaker 1: Well kind of, yeah, yeah, No, I understand completely. I
Speaker 1: think that if we were all taught the kinds of
Speaker 1: things that I keep writing about over these forty five
Speaker 1: or so years, then it could be conceivable. But when
Speaker 1: the world tells you that you have no control over
Speaker 1: these things, that we have a bunch of chronic illnesses
Speaker 1: where the symptoms are going to stay the same or
Speaker 1: just get worse, it doesn't matter what you do. How
Speaker 1: can you be responsible for believing that? Can I back
Speaker 1: up a second, because there's something I just wanted to
Speaker 1: tell you about stress, And then.
Speaker 4: I'll talk to you about the unity.
Speaker 1: So I have a couple of one liners that people
Speaker 1: find useful and I thought i'd share one with you,
Speaker 1: which is, next time you're stressed, ask yourself, is it
Speaker 1: a tragedy?
Speaker 4: Ron inconvenience? Oh my god, I missed the bus? Oh
Speaker 4: my god. Most of these things.
Speaker 1: If you just say to yourself is it a tragedy
Speaker 1: or and inconvenience, many of us just become.
Speaker 4: More relaxed and able to deal with it.
Speaker 1: And also just for people to realize that most of
Speaker 1: the things were stressed about never happen, and so a
Speaker 1: simple little thing for people to do might be, next
Speaker 1: time you're stressed, think about the last two three times
Speaker 1: you was stressed and what happened, and you'll see the
Speaker 1: event didn't happen, or it happened, and you would just
Speaker 1: fine with it.
Speaker 4: So again then we would relax.
Speaker 1: Now, as far as the mind body unity, so before
Speaker 1: there was no relationship.
Speaker 4: You had a mind, you had a body.
Speaker 1: Right now we talk about mind and body being connected.
Speaker 1: You have the same problem as having two things where
Speaker 1: how are they connected? You know, how do you get
Speaker 1: from a fussy thing called a thought to something material
Speaker 1: called the body, and that has delayed lots and lots
Speaker 1: of research. And so I said, mind and body, these
Speaker 1: are just words. And if we put the words back
Speaker 1: together and we put the mind and body as one thing,
Speaker 1: the amount of control we have over ourselves is enormous
Speaker 1: because wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting the body.
Speaker 1: Put the mind in a good place, that's where the
Speaker 1: body is going to be. And as I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: talk about at some point, I have a host of
Speaker 1: very exciting studies testing.
Speaker 4: This mind body Nday.
Speaker 1: What I thought you were going to say when you
Speaker 1: started to talk about the person being diagnosed with some
Speaker 1: dread disease, Separate from should we blame the victim or
Speaker 1: does it sound like we're blaming the victim? Is something
Speaker 1: that I don't say often enough, but I think people
Speaker 1: really need to understand that science can only give us probabilities.
Speaker 1: And so if you are given a diagnosis you have cancer,
Speaker 1: we don't know that you have cancer. There's no study
Speaker 1: that gives us absolutes all of our research, whether it's psychological, medical,
Speaker 1: any research says if you were to do the exact
Speaker 1: same thing again, you're likely to get these findings, and
Speaker 1: those are translated as absolutes. So when you recognize that
Speaker 1: it's a maybe rather than an absolute again, you know,
Speaker 1: you feel better and don't give up and try to
Speaker 1: do things to in fact make you part of the
Speaker 1: percentage that doesn't actually have or the people who for
Speaker 1: whom the diagnosis won't go in a certain direction. And
Speaker 1: you know, so when the medical world gives us information,
Speaker 1: somebody might be told this I think is criminal. Although
Speaker 1: I have great respect for most physicians, for a physician
Speaker 1: to say you have three months to live, there is
Speaker 1: no way they can know that. And so too much
Speaker 1: in the medical world becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. And
Speaker 1: you know, if you assume something's going to happen, then
Speaker 1: you do those things that make.
Speaker 4: It more and more likely.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't get out of bed, you don't
Speaker 1: eat good foods, you don't keep your mind active, and
Speaker 1: you slowly give into whatever the illness is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and when I was talking before, it was less
Speaker 3: about us blaming the victim versus the victim blaming themselves.
Speaker 3: And then thus seeing that like, oh, I guess I'm
Speaker 3: not being mindful enough. I guess I'm not having a
Speaker 3: good enough attitude, which then of course perpetuates stress, so
Speaker 3: it can become bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, it's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I think that when people are given the diagnosis, they
Speaker 1: should be told a few things. They should be told
Speaker 1: about the probability.
Speaker 4: You know, that it's a may day rather than a
Speaker 4: definite most of the.
Speaker 1: Time, and that people have not been taught to understand
Speaker 1: the amount of control they might.
Speaker 4: Have over their illnesses.
Speaker 1: So it would be foolish for us to blame ourselves
Speaker 1: when we become ill.
Speaker 4: Not in those.
Speaker 1: Words, but essentially it's information that can be given to patients.
Speaker 3: It might be helpful now to have you talk about
Speaker 3: the borderline effect, because I think this really draws a
Speaker 3: clear line that says you have something or you don't
Speaker 3: have it. As you've said, really things are on a continuum.
Speaker 3: So talk about the borderline effect and some of the
Speaker 3: studies you've done around that, because I think this is
Speaker 3: really fascinating.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, So the line effect is another way of
Speaker 1: showing this mind body unity. Let's say you have a
Speaker 1: donut and the donuts freshness is going to expire at
Speaker 1: twelve o'clock. Nobody would think that at twelve oh one.
Speaker 1: They shouldn't eat the donut, right, it's expired. But you know,
Speaker 1: so between eleven fifty nine twelve twelve oh one, it's
Speaker 1: really all the same. So there's some point where you're
Speaker 1: given a diagnosis.
Speaker 4: There are some people who are just below that.
Speaker 1: They don't get the diagnosis. Some people, you know, the
Speaker 1: rest who are above it get the diagnosis. But right
Speaker 1: at that borderline, there's somebody who is no different from
Speaker 1: you anymore than the donut is at twelve o'clock and
Speaker 1: twelve oh one. Let me give it a different example.
Speaker 1: I think makes it better that. Let's say you take
Speaker 1: an IQ test. We have many people taking IQ tests.
Speaker 1: You get a sixty nine, somebody else gets a seventy.
Speaker 1: Now the person who's getting the sixty nine is going
Speaker 1: to be seen as cognitively efficient, but the difference between
Speaker 1: sixty nine and seventy is meaningless. Right, you could have
Speaker 1: sneezed and misread a question that are being.
Speaker 4: A little tired and so on.
Speaker 1: Right, And nevertheless, once you're told that you're cognitively deficient,
Speaker 1: how do you organize yourself? I mean, you become a
Speaker 1: very different person, and then two months later you're likely
Speaker 1: to be at sixty nine. You know, the score of
Speaker 1: sixty nine different from somebody who got a score of seventy.
Speaker 1: So it's the same thing with any physical disease. You
Speaker 1: know you have diabetes, there are some people a little
Speaker 1: bit lower, not significantly different from you. They don't get
Speaker 1: the diagnosis. You get the diagnosis, and it becomes.
Speaker 4: A self fulfilling prophecy, right.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter if there are twenty different measures
Speaker 1: that you're taken for any disease that no matter how
Speaker 1: you combine them, there's still going to be somebody who
Speaker 1: you know, right below that borderline is no different from
Speaker 1: the person at the borderline and is not told that
Speaker 1: they're sick.
Speaker 3: Well, what you're saying studies have shown is this idea
Speaker 3: that the outcomes for those people, the people who are
Speaker 3: at just under the diabetic line and just over, I mean,
Speaker 3: you show dramatic changes in their long term outcome and
Speaker 3: prognosis based on just the fact that they had the
Speaker 3: diagnosis or they didn't, which is amazing, right.
Speaker 1: And so the way of understanding that is if at
Speaker 1: time won, they're not different because at that borderline, it's
Speaker 1: like the twelve o'clock versus twelve oh one donut at
Speaker 1: that borderline may have the same down the road they're different.
Speaker 1: We assume then it was the diagnosis and the effect
Speaker 1: is psychological.
Speaker 4: You know when we talk about this mind by.
Speaker 1: The unity, there's lots of evidence that people already accept
Speaker 1: without realizing. Most people understand placebos. They know, you take
Speaker 1: this nothing pill, you think it's something, and then you heal.
Speaker 1: That's probably the best medicine we have, are placebos. We
Speaker 1: have lots of our studies that now speak in a
Speaker 1: similar way. One that's fun for me to describe is fatigue.
Speaker 1: You know that most people think the body is the body,
Speaker 1: and at some point it just wears down and the
Speaker 1: way you think about things has nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: There's a study that Frank Beach did in the fifties,
Speaker 1: I think, where he takes a little boy rat, introduces
Speaker 1: a little girl rat, and they copulate and them a
Speaker 1: little boy rat.
Speaker 4: Needs a refractory period. He can't go on, he's exhausted.
Speaker 1: However, if immediately a new little girl rat is introduced,
Speaker 1: he's able to start all over again.
Speaker 4: Let me give you a human example.
Speaker 1: Let's say your word processing all day long and your
Speaker 1: back is hurting your fingers, you're tired, and then you
Speaker 1: go home and you're able to play the piano. All right,
Speaker 1: as soon as we change the context is renewed energy.
Speaker 1: And so I ask my students we talk about fatigue,
Speaker 1: how far is it humanly possible to run? They know
Speaker 1: a marathon is twenty six miles, So these are Harvard students,
Speaker 1: they start above them.
Speaker 4: So let's say.
Speaker 1: Somebody will yell out twenty eight thirty thirty five. And
Speaker 1: when somebody says fifty, everybody grooms because that's outrageous.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Then I turn on a video of the Taria Moro,
Speaker 1: which is a tribe in Copper Canyon, Mexico, who as
Speaker 1: a rule, are able to go.
Speaker 4: Over two hundred miles without stopping.
Speaker 1: And that's a very big difference, right the twenty six
Speaker 1: fifty two. And I think that that represents a small
Speaker 1: part of the difference that I believe exists between what
Speaker 1: we think we're capable of and what we're actually capable of.
Speaker 1: And so in our fatigue study, what we have done
Speaker 1: a few of them. But the one that's fun is
Speaker 1: we have people in a sleep lab. They wake up,
Speaker 1: they think they got two hours more sleep than they
Speaker 1: got or two hours fewer or the amount of sleep
Speaker 1: they got, and cognitum physiological indicators follow perceived amount of
Speaker 1: sleep rather than the actual amount of sleep.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. I mean you also talk about studies where
Speaker 3: you tell people they're drinking a sugary drink and you
Speaker 3: tell other people they're not, and then you test their
Speaker 3: blood sugar afterwards, and if they thought they had a
Speaker 3: sugary drink, even if it wasn't sugary, their blood sugar
Speaker 3: goes up. So that's amazing. I have a question for
Speaker 3: you about all this, though, because we certainly do know
Speaker 3: the placebo effect works, but it doesn't work all of
Speaker 3: the time. My mother had a back surgery last summer,
Speaker 3: and if we follow the thinking, which is that a
Speaker 3: sham pill is not as good as a sham injection,
Speaker 3: which is not as good as a sham surgery, meaning
Speaker 3: the placebo effect should be stronger in each of those,
Speaker 3: and yet her experience of that was that she was
Speaker 3: no better, right, despite a great deal of hope going in.
Speaker 3: So we know cases where the placebo effect doesn't appear
Speaker 3: to be working. Do we have any idea what the
Speaker 3: mediating thing is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Eric, we don't really know that because we don't
Speaker 1: know what individual people are actually thinking.
Speaker 4: You know, we.
Speaker 1: Don't know if she thought, well, you know, surgery is
Speaker 1: I don't want to do it, and these things don't
Speaker 1: work anyway, but please please work. So essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: rooting against you or thinking against yourself, and there's no
Speaker 1: way to figure that stuff out. But placebos have been
Speaker 1: enormously effective, even with these sham surgeries, you know, the
Speaker 1: surgery for Parkinson's. So they cut open a person's head,
Speaker 1: do some minor things, nothing medical, and then sew it up.
Speaker 1: So the person now is sure that they've had the
Speaker 1: surgery and they're cured. And you know, now, are they
Speaker 1: cured for the next twenty years.
Speaker 4: Well, there's no research.
Speaker 1: That's able to continuously look but for a year or
Speaker 1: two after, the effects seem to maintain themselves. I think
Speaker 1: we have lots of evidence about the mind and body
Speaker 1: being connected, that being one thing rather and that we
Speaker 1: should pay more attention to, which would make us more
Speaker 1: apt to believe the powers that we might have that
Speaker 1: we're not yet using. Everybody knows you're walking in the
Speaker 1: fall and all of a sudden a leaf blows in
Speaker 1: front of your face, and you get startled.
Speaker 4: Nothing's happened.
Speaker 1: It was a leaf, but the thought that it was
Speaker 1: something is what led to your pulse and heart rate
Speaker 1: and everything going up. When people see people regurgitating on
Speaker 1: the side of the road or wherever, you yourself feel
Speaker 1: like you're going to vomit. I mean, we've all had these.
Speaker 1: I had an experience that I report in the Mindful Body,
Speaker 1: a little more dramatic than these. Perhaps that started my
Speaker 1: thinking about mind by the unity. Well before I had
Speaker 1: those concepts in mine. I was eighteen years old, nineteen,
Speaker 1: and I was married.
Speaker 4: God people don't do good anymore.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, we went to Paris on a
Speaker 1: honeymoon and we go into a restaurant and I order
Speaker 1: a mixed grill. On the plate was going to be
Speaker 1: a pancreas. Now, for some bizarre reasm, I thought, now
Speaker 1: that I'm married, I'm supposed to be a woman of
Speaker 1: the world, much older than my years, more sophisticated. Surely
Speaker 1: I can eat the pancreas. So this was going to
Speaker 1: be the challenge for me. So I asked my then
Speaker 1: husband which of these items was the pancreas. He points
Speaker 1: to something. I eat everything with gusto now the moment
Speaker 1: of truth. Could I eat the pancreas and I start
Speaker 1: eating it and I literally get sick. He had a
Speaker 1: very strange reaction to that. He starts to laugh.
Speaker 4: Terrible.
Speaker 1: Why are you laughing, he said, because that's chicken. You
Speaker 1: ate the pancreas a while ago. So clearly I had
Speaker 1: made myself sick. And if you can make yourself sick,
Speaker 1: there are probably ways. When we found ways we can
Speaker 1: make ourselves well. That's something that I haven't talked about
Speaker 1: a lot, but I think is very important, which is
Speaker 1: all of the things we can do for ourselves when
Speaker 1: the medical world gives us a diagnosis of illness, the
Speaker 1: one that I describe in the book, the attention to
Speaker 1: symptom variability is the strongest. But before we get to that,
Speaker 1: there are other people who've done research on imagined exercise,
Speaker 1: you know, so that you're lifting weights without actually lifting
Speaker 1: the weights, you're just imagining it, and the results are
Speaker 1: almost as if you are actually doing it yourself. And
Speaker 1: there's a fair amount of evidence. So let's say you're
Speaker 1: not able to.
Speaker 4: Exercise, well, you can still do something.
Speaker 1: And I have again decades of research showing that being
Speaker 1: mindful of the neurons are flowing, and that's going to
Speaker 1: be good for your health. So instead of giving into
Speaker 1: the disorder, keep living your life as fully as you can.
Speaker 4: That will be good for your health.
Speaker 1: The attention to symptom variability was my way of coming
Speaker 1: up with sort of a placebo that we could give ourselves.
Speaker 4: You can't give yourself a.
Speaker 1: Placebo if it requires you believing that it's not a placebo. Right,
Speaker 1: So this won't start off similar to placebo.
Speaker 4: But let me tell you about it.
Speaker 1: I call it attention to symptom variability, which is polysyllabic
Speaker 1: and some What is that? It just being mindful. When
Speaker 1: you're mindful, you notice change, all right, That's what variability is.
Speaker 1: So when people are diagnosed with some chronic illness, they
Speaker 1: tend to think that their symptoms are going to stay
Speaker 1: the same or get worse. But nothing stays the same.
Speaker 1: There are always slight movements. Now, sort of imagine the
Speaker 1: stock market. When the stock market is going up, it
Speaker 1: doesn't go up in a straight line. It goes up,
Speaker 1: and it goes down a tiny bit, and it goes
Speaker 1: up down, you know, and so on. What's happening during
Speaker 1: those moments when there's relief from those symptoms. So what
Speaker 1: we do is we call people at random times throughout
Speaker 1: the day and we simply ask them, how is the
Speaker 1: symptom right now? Is it better or worse than the
Speaker 1: last time we spoke, and why? And what happens is
Speaker 1: that why creates a mindful experience for you. Right, So
Speaker 1: four things happen when we do this. The first, just
Speaker 1: by doing something for yourself makes you feel good, because
Speaker 1: with most of these chronic illnesses, people feel helpless. Second,
Speaker 1: as soon as you see that it's not always that
Speaker 1: it's worse, you feel better. Third, you become more mindful
Speaker 1: and trying to find out why now rather than before
Speaker 1: is it better? And Fourth, I believe you're much more
Speaker 1: likely to find.
Speaker 4: A solution if you're looking for one.
Speaker 1: So now we did this with people with Parkinson's, stroke, arthritis,
Speaker 1: multiple sclerosis, biggies right, and across the board we find
Speaker 1: symptom relief. And so, how is this similar to the placebo?
Speaker 1: You don't need me calling you or anybody else. You
Speaker 1: set your smartphone ring in an hour, it rings, how
Speaker 1: is a symptom? Is it better or worse than before?
Speaker 4: And why? Set it again? For two hours? An hour
Speaker 4: and thirty. It doesn't matter vary the times.
Speaker 1: So even and if you can't figure out why is
Speaker 1: it better now than.
Speaker 4: Before, you feel useful, You're.
Speaker 1: Becoming more mindful, You will be healthier as a result
Speaker 1: of all of this, and there are no negative side effects,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's not going to interfere with any
Speaker 1: other treatment.
Speaker 4: You know, you might want to pursue.
Speaker 1: To say to people there's nothing that a chronic illness
Speaker 1: means that there's nothing you can do about it is
Speaker 1: simply wrong, and medical will will tell you that it
Speaker 1: just means the medical world doesn't have.
Speaker 4: A solution yet, doesn't mean that there isn't a solution.
Speaker 3: And you're not eliminating the fact that there are medical
Speaker 3: causes to the things that go wrong with us. You're
Speaker 3: just simply saying that we have a whole lot more
Speaker 3: influence on how the outcome that occurs based on our
Speaker 3: ability to be less stressed.
Speaker 4: Active and our mindful in our own care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, active in our own care.
Speaker 4: I like that.
Speaker 3: That's a good way to say it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Because right now people too often just hand
Speaker 1: themselves over, which might make sense if science gave us absolutes.
Speaker 1: So if you knew something was absolutely true and I
Speaker 1: needed to know it. I could easily ask you and
Speaker 1: trust it. When I recognize that you don't know, you
Speaker 1: may know maybe more about it than I do, but
Speaker 1: you don't know for sure, And then it becomes less
Speaker 1: smart for us to just turn ourselves over. And some
Speaker 1: of the very early work I did back in the
Speaker 1: seventies was how important exercising control over your own health,
Speaker 1: believing that you have control over your health, how good
Speaker 1: it is for our health. So, no matter what the circumstances,
Speaker 1: just turning yourself over would not be wise.
Speaker 3: I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
Speaker 3: This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
Speaker 3: see people making. And that's really that we don't think
Speaker 3: about these new howbits that we want to add in
Speaker 3: the context of our entire life. Right, Habits don't happen
Speaker 3: in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
Speaker 3: that we have. So when we just keep adding I
Speaker 3: should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
Speaker 3: we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
Speaker 3: we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
Speaker 3: So it's really helpful for you to think about where
Speaker 3: is this going to fit and what in my life
Speaker 3: might I need to remove. If you want to step
Speaker 3: by step guide for how you can easily build new
Speaker 3: habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
Speaker 3: dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. I'm
Speaker 3: curious whether you've done any research in this particular area,
Speaker 3: which would be dementia and Alzheimer's, because what's interesting about
Speaker 3: that is that, I mean, I think it would be
Speaker 3: hard to do because again, the thing you would be
Speaker 3: asking the person to use is the thing that is
Speaker 3: becoming problematic, and their ability to report on their symptoms
Speaker 3: would be But I'm just curious whether you have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we started. These things are very hard to run.
Speaker 1: They take a lot of person power and money and
Speaker 1: so on, but it should be an easy thing to
Speaker 1: follow through with this attention to variability. So let's say
Speaker 1: you know what happens is when you're with somebody who
Speaker 1: has dementia, it's very hard for you not to lose
Speaker 1: patience with them. We forget that it's not wilful. You
Speaker 1: know that they're saying the same thing they just said
Speaker 1: two seconds ago, and so on, and we tend to
Speaker 1: think that whatever we're witnessing is sort of generally true
Speaker 1: for them, and people do this to themselves. You know,
Speaker 1: you forgot something. You're seventy five years old, and you
Speaker 1: see yourself forgetting, and you don't pay any attention to
Speaker 1: what did you forget? You know, how much did you remember?
Speaker 1: In other words, when you say somebody do something and
Speaker 1: you don't generalize, and you say, what did they forget?
Speaker 1: Why did they forget this and not these other things?
Speaker 1: Let's be more differentiated about it. Then you put this
Speaker 1: horror disease back into perspective, and we can do this
Speaker 1: for ourselves, just for the memory problems, which are interesting
Speaker 1: in and of their own right. You know, people again,
Speaker 1: because of their mindlessness, don't realize that the way you
Speaker 1: respond to the world when you're forty may be very
Speaker 1: different from the things you care about when you're seventy
Speaker 1: five years old. So if I'm forty and you're introducing
Speaker 1: me to people, let's say at work, I'm going to
Speaker 1: feel that I have to learn their names because these
Speaker 1: people may be important to my future. In some sense,
Speaker 1: I'm seventy five, you're introducing me to the same five.
Speaker 4: I don't care. It doesn't matter what their names are.
Speaker 1: If we're going to have continued interaction, at some point,
Speaker 1: I'll learn the name. Now if you ask me what
Speaker 1: that person's name was, I would think of myself as
Speaker 1: having a memory problem. But to remember something means you
Speaker 1: have to learn it in the first place. If you
Speaker 1: don't learn it in the first place, when you don't
Speaker 1: know what in the second place, it has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with memory. So a large part of what we
Speaker 1: see as a memory problem is not caring, you know,
Speaker 1: not paying attention to the same things. Again, if everybody
Speaker 1: finds a particular TV show interesting in the family and
Speaker 1: the eighty year old doesn't find it interesting, we tend
Speaker 1: to think it's because of some attention problem they have,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than realize that they've been there, done that,
Speaker 1: it's just not so interesting. So there are often many
Speaker 1: other explanations for the ills that people seem to suffer
Speaker 1: as they get older, but for dementia early stages, it's
Speaker 1: a perfect opportunity to test attention to variability. People are
Speaker 1: not forgetting everything, so what are they remembering? What are
Speaker 1: they forgetting? Why are they forgetting what they're forgetting? And
Speaker 1: part of it could be that they didn't care.
Speaker 4: Anymore about it. My father went into a dementia facility.
Speaker 1: It was ninety and I went to visit him and
Speaker 1: we started to play gin. And while we're playing, I
Speaker 1: say to myself, it was is sad to me that
Speaker 1: I would do this, given that I've been studying older
Speaker 1: people since i was very young. But I'm saying, should
Speaker 1: I let him win? And while I'm entertaining the possibility
Speaker 1: of letting him win, he then says, gin and beat
Speaker 1: me for you know, which is is another indication of
Speaker 1: when we lose things, we don't lose it all at once.
Speaker 1: And if we recognize the things that we could still do,
Speaker 1: I think we would feel better and that would possibly
Speaker 1: help us recover some of the things that we've lost.
Speaker 3: Maybe we could just review a couple more of these
Speaker 3: mind body unity studies that you've done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the first one was done a long time ago.
Speaker 1: We call that the counterclockwise study. So what we did
Speaker 1: was we retrofitted a ritree to twenty years earlier, and
Speaker 1: we had elderly men live there for a week as
Speaker 1: if they were the younger selves, so they would be
Speaker 1: speaking about past advents as if they were just unfolding.
Speaker 1: We'd be watching an old movie or TV show and
Speaker 1: then discuss it as if it was just filmed and
Speaker 1: so on current events.
Speaker 4: That not current. They were from twenty years earlier.
Speaker 1: And in a period of time as short as a week.
Speaker 1: What we found was amazing. I think their vision improved,
Speaker 1: their hearing improved, their memory, their strength, and they looked
Speaker 1: noticeably younger.
Speaker 4: And I don't know about.
Speaker 1: You, but I still to this day, and the study
Speaker 1: was done in nineteen seventy nine or something, we ran
Speaker 1: that I still have not heard people's hearing or vision
Speaker 1: improving without medical intervention, and rarely when you're ninety years
Speaker 1: old with medical intervention.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: So it was astounding and that led to a host
Speaker 1: of studies that I report in The Mindful Body.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that we hear about in
Speaker 3: psychology a lot these days is replication failure. I'm curious.
Speaker 3: I assume that a lot of these studies you've done
Speaker 3: have either replicated or there's been follow on studies that
Speaker 3: have shown the same sort of phenomenon.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let me tell you the next study in
Speaker 1: the series. All testing the idea of mind body unity.
Speaker 1: Wherever you put the mind, you're necessarily putting the body.
Speaker 1: So we took chamber maids. These are people who are exercising.
Speaker 1: Their work is exercise, right, but we ask them how
Speaker 1: much exercise are you're getting and oddly they say they're
Speaker 1: not getting any exercise because they think exercise is what
Speaker 1: you do after work, and after work they're just too tired.
Speaker 4: Study couldn't be said.
Speaker 1: But we divide them into two groups and we teach
Speaker 1: one group that their work is exercise. We teach them
Speaker 1: to think differently about their work. Making the bed is
Speaker 1: like this machine at the gym and so on. So
Speaker 1: now we have two groups. One group doesn't realize their
Speaker 1: work is exercise. The other group now has changed their
Speaker 1: mind as a result of that.
Speaker 4: The first thing we do is you want.
Speaker 1: To make sure at the end, are they eating any differently? No,
Speaker 1: are they working any differently harder? No, no differences. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: just find the change of mind now seeing their work
Speaker 1: as exercise. They lost weight, there was a change in
Speaker 1: waisted hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure
Speaker 1: came down. And this is really a study.
Speaker 4: And the no sebow.
Speaker 1: You know, just as a plus cibo is something positive
Speaker 1: you take that brings about positive outcomes. A no cebo
Speaker 1: would be taking away the positive effect that you might expect.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: So a study somebody else a while ago is ipocac,
Speaker 1: which is used to make you vomit in case you
Speaker 1: accidentally insuome poison. Right, So people who are having trouble,
Speaker 1: who are vomiting, are given ipichac, but they're told that
Speaker 1: they're not giving it by name, that medication will stop
Speaker 1: their vomiting, and they're vomiting stuffs, which is you know,
Speaker 1: if you think a little bit about that. You know,
Speaker 1: we have people let's say you're getting an antidepressant and
Speaker 1: the antidepressant doesn't work, the therapist is likely to increase
Speaker 1: the dosage even change the medication, when instead the person
Speaker 1: needs to be aware that they need to participate in
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of any of these drugs, because you can
Speaker 1: stop the effectiveness of the drug just by not believing
Speaker 1: in it, like your mother might have with that operation.
Speaker 1: At any rate, that was a conceptual replication. The next
Speaker 1: one was the study you alluded to on diabetes. We
Speaker 1: had people come in who had type two diabetes and
Speaker 1: we're going to sit them in front of a computer.
Speaker 1: All of this will become clear when you get to
Speaker 1: the end of it, and next to them is a clock,
Speaker 1: and they're told to play computer games for the next
Speaker 1: fifteen minute or so and then change the game they're playing.
Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged. So for a
Speaker 1: third of the people, the clock is going twice as
Speaker 1: fast as real time, for a third of the people
Speaker 1: it's going half as fast as real time, and for
Speaker 1: a third of the people it's real time. And the
Speaker 1: question we're asking is will their blood sugar be affected
Speaker 1: by the actual passage of time or their perception of
Speaker 1: how much time pass And it was the perception of
Speaker 1: how much time, which means we can go quite a
Speaker 1: distance in controlling these type two diabetes. So we have
Speaker 1: lots of these studies. The most recent we inflicted a wound,
Speaker 1: a minor wound, but still a wound. People, I think
Speaker 1: I'm clock crazy. I don't we use clocks again, And
Speaker 1: the clocks were rigged in front of a clock, it's
Speaker 1: going twice as fast as real time, half as fast
Speaker 1: as real time or real time. And it turns out
Speaker 1: the wound heals based on clock.
Speaker 4: Time perceived time. You know. So in study after study
Speaker 4: coming out of our lab and labs all over the world.
Speaker 1: Now it seems we have an enormous amount of control
Speaker 1: over our health that we've only begun to realize.
Speaker 3: That is all remarkable. I wanted to pivot here for
Speaker 3: a second, and I wanted to talk about a phrase
Speaker 3: of yours, which is, don't try to make the right decision.
Speaker 3: Make the decision right.
Speaker 1: First of all, one of the most stressful things for
Speaker 1: people making decisions about things that are important. Most people
Speaker 1: believe that the way to do this is gather information
Speaker 1: and then do a cost benefit analysis, and it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It can't work because when you recognize, as we were
Speaker 1: talking about with stress itself, things in and of themselves
Speaker 1: are neither good nor bad. So if this cost is
Speaker 1: also a benefit, and the benefit is also a cost
Speaker 1: when you add them up, they're not going to tell
Speaker 1: you what to do. When you're gathering information, how much
Speaker 1: information you know, because the next piece that you don't
Speaker 1: look at could have changed the decision entirely.
Speaker 4: And so that's why people keep gathering and gathering.
Speaker 1: There's no natural endpoint, But most important is that decisions
Speaker 1: are made to take action. The moment you take the action,
Speaker 1: you cannot evaluate the other alternatives. So if you're asking yourself,
Speaker 1: would you like peach pie or blueberry pie? Okay, so
Speaker 1: you decide. However, you decide you're going to take the
Speaker 1: peach pie. You take the bite of the peach pie.
Speaker 1: Now your palette is no longer naive in some sense,
Speaker 1: so when you taste the other pie, you can't make
Speaker 1: the comparison should I go to Harvard or Yale?
Speaker 4: So you decide to go to Harvard, and you don't
Speaker 4: like it. So now you're going to go to Yale.
Speaker 4: It's not the.
Speaker 1: Same thing because you're no longer a new bite. You know,
Speaker 1: you're no longer first semester freshmen, all right, So we
Speaker 1: can never evaluate the quality of our decisions. Now you
Speaker 1: add to all of that that when you make the decision,
Speaker 1: whether it's experienced as good, bad, or indefferent is solely
Speaker 1: a function.
Speaker 4: Of the way we choose to think about it.
Speaker 1: So this is complicated, and I spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time because I'm arguing with you Nobel Prize winners and
Speaker 1: what have you, who telling us to do very different
Speaker 1: things from my recommendation. And my recommendation is very simple.
Speaker 1: Randomly choose, just make the decision. Don't worry about it
Speaker 1: and then make it work, then make it right. And
Speaker 1: so I told my students and a decision making class,
Speaker 1: go spend the week. I don't want anybody to make
Speaker 1: any decisions. Have a rule of thumb, you know, flip
Speaker 1: a coin. You can say to yourself, whatever the first
Speaker 1: alternative is, that's what you're going to take. But no
Speaker 1: known decision making. And they came back and they all
Speaker 1: had a wonderful week that was stress free. So, you know,
Speaker 1: regrets are mindless. Regrets that we've made the wrong decision,
Speaker 1: that we've done the wrong thing suggests that the alternative
Speaker 1: that wasn't taken would be better. It could be worse,
Speaker 1: it could be the same, and not only that, it
Speaker 1: is neither good, bad, or and different independent of how
Speaker 1: we make it. So if you know why you're doing
Speaker 1: what you're doing, then after you do it, you don't
Speaker 1: regret not having done something else. All of our negative emotions,
Speaker 1: it turns out, eric too much for us to go
Speaker 1: into now, but they're all a function of our mindlessness.
Speaker 3: Let me just follow that question up right before we end,
Speaker 3: which is around regret, because certainly, I think in what
Speaker 3: you're talking about that makes a lot of sense when
Speaker 3: my son was getting ready to go to school. We
Speaker 3: talked a lot about this, like, there isn't a right
Speaker 3: choice here, right, You're just going to make the best
Speaker 3: choice you can, and then it's all about living into
Speaker 3: that choice and making it it good. So I can
Speaker 3: see how regretting that I didn't eat the peach pie
Speaker 3: versus the blueberry pie, or I went to Yale versus
Speaker 3: Harvard doesn't make sense. But regrets can serve another function,
Speaker 3: which is a way that we can reflect on our
Speaker 3: behavior and say, hey, that's not the person I wanted
Speaker 3: to be, in which case regret is serving perhaps a
Speaker 3: useful purpose in that case.
Speaker 1: I don't agree, Okay, I think that regret is mindless.
Speaker 1: I think that people take themselves to task far too frequently,
Speaker 1: and that's part of why the number of antidepressants being
Speaker 1: sold is enormous, because they don't realize that their behavior
Speaker 1: makes sense, or else they.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: And going forward, if you know why you're doing something,
Speaker 1: then you're not going to take yourself to task for
Speaker 1: not doing something else. Too often we're doing things without
Speaker 1: that awareness. Now, the reflection that you're talking about, one
Speaker 1: can do that without regret. You know, that I've done
Speaker 1: many things in my life and I could say, well, gee,
Speaker 1: I wonder what it had been like if I had
Speaker 1: done this other thing or I had done that thing differently,
Speaker 1: And you can't know. But in thinking about it, then
Speaker 1: you're providing yourself with more options in the future.
Speaker 4: But all of those things can take place without the unks.
Speaker 3: Right, because I mean, I was a homeless heroin addict
Speaker 3: at one point, from one perspective, that behavior made sense.
Speaker 3: It was a response to certain situations. It no longer
Speaker 3: made sense, though, And I guess what you're saying is,
Speaker 3: at that point, I was mindlessly re enacting a behavior
Speaker 3: that had far long ago lost its useful purpose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you can do all of that without thinking
Speaker 1: less of yourself or having gotten into it in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 4: I was saying the other day, I think.
Speaker 1: I've written this in one of my books, probably The
Speaker 1: Mindful Body. If somebody tells you that they're really anxious
Speaker 1: and then they do X, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they feel good, you would think that it's good that
Speaker 1: they're doing X, right, it's not the least bit irrational,
Speaker 1: And then you find out that it's drinking too much.
Speaker 4: If we didn't teach.
Speaker 1: People that they were weak and that's why they were
Speaker 1: engaging in these behaviors, that their behavior did make sense,
Speaker 1: then they might have the strength to find alternative ways
Speaker 1: of meeting the same need.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a deep discussion that I could spend
Speaker 3: a long time on. I think a point of agreement
Speaker 3: we would absolutely have is that the shame around it
Speaker 3: perpetuates the behavior, and that if you don't have the shame,
Speaker 3: you're much better able to evaluate options and make better decisions. Right.
Speaker 3: That shame perpetuates the problem instead of giving you the
Speaker 3: resources to change the problem.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that we have a language
Speaker 1: out there. I talk about a lot of this in
Speaker 1: the mindful body that goes from something that's bad to
Speaker 1: something that's better, and somehow we settle for that and
Speaker 1: then realize there's a better than better way. So let
Speaker 1: me give you an example. I went to see my
Speaker 1: friend Eva. She had a terrible case of cancer. She'd
Speaker 1: just come back from the hospital. I said, Eva, how
Speaker 1: are you? She said, you know, well, her cancer is
Speaker 1: in remission. And at that moment I thought, wait a second.
Speaker 1: If I took the exact same tests, presumably they tell
Speaker 1: me I don't have cancer.
Speaker 4: Why is it?
Speaker 1: I don't have it, but she has it in remission,
Speaker 1: and so remission is better than having the cancer be active,
Speaker 1: but not nearly as good as seeing yourself as cured.
Speaker 4: And when you have a.
Speaker 1: Cold and then you're finished with the cold, you see
Speaker 1: yourself as cured. You could see yourself as in remission.
Speaker 1: And then you get another cold. Oh it's the same,
Speaker 1: damn cold. I can't get rid of it. But each
Speaker 1: cold is similar to each.
Speaker 4: Other, which is why we can call them colds.
Speaker 1: But just as certainly, each cold is different from each other,
Speaker 1: which is why we can see ourself as cured. You
Speaker 1: have cancer and then it goes away. If cancer comes back,
Speaker 1: it's a different cancer in some ways the same, in
Speaker 1: some ways different, and it would behoove us to pay
Speaker 1: attention to the ways it's different. We've done research where
Speaker 1: we have people who see themselves as in remission versus cured.
Speaker 1: We go back six months later, and those who see
Speaker 1: themselves are cured are indeed happier and healthier.
Speaker 4: Lots of words like this.
Speaker 1: Another one that's kind of fun for me is forgiveness.
Speaker 1: Forgiveness sounds good, right, Ask ten people is forgiveness good
Speaker 1: or bad. For forgiveness is great, And if you ask ten people,
Speaker 1: is blame good or bad?
Speaker 4: And blame is bad.
Speaker 1: But you can't forgive unless you blame. So our forgivers
Speaker 1: are our blamers. Now do you blame people for good?
Speaker 4: Things? Are bad things?
Speaker 1: You blame people for bad things, But things in and
Speaker 1: of themselves are neither good nor bad. So we have here, Eric,
Speaker 1: we have people who see the world negatively, blame and
Speaker 1: then forgive, which doesn't seem to me divine.
Speaker 4: And there's a whole other way.
Speaker 1: You know, if you blame, certainly it's good to forgive.
Speaker 1: But if you understand and are more mindful and recognize
Speaker 1: that people's behavior makes sense from their perspective, or else
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have done it, you don't blame in the
Speaker 1: first place, and then there's no need for that forgiveness.
Speaker 1: The bottom line for me, whether we're talking about relationships,
Speaker 1: talking about our sense of self, or our physical health,
Speaker 1: is that we're very far from where we could be.
Speaker 1: That most of the people who are helping help get
Speaker 1: us from a bad place to a better place. And
Speaker 1: I guess my goal is to get us to a
Speaker 1: better than better place.
Speaker 3: So listener and thinking about that and all the other
Speaker 3: great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
Speaker 3: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
Speaker 3: would it be. Remember, little by little, a little becomes
Speaker 3: a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly taking positive action.
Speaker 3: And I want to give you a tip on that,
Speaker 3: and it's to start small. It's really important when we're
Speaker 3: trying to implement new habits to often start smaller than
Speaker 3: we think we need to because what that does is
Speaker 3: it allows us to get victories. And victories are really
Speaker 3: important because we become more motivated when we're feeling good
Speaker 3: about ourselves, and we become less motivated when we're feeling
Speaker 3: bad about ourselves. So by starting small and making sure
Speaker 3: that you succeed, you build your motivation for further change
Speaker 3: down the road. If you'd like a step by step
Speaker 3: guide for how you can easily build new habits that
Speaker 3: feed your good Wolf, go to Goodwolf dot me, slash
Speaker 3: change and join the free masterclass. Well, I think that
Speaker 3: is a beautiful place to wrap up. Ellen. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for coming on the show. It's been a
Speaker 3: real pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 4: It's been fun talking to you. Thank you Eric.
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