The Mind and Body Are One Thing with Ellen Langer

In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to the mother of mindfulness, Dr Ellen Langer. Dr Langer is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard and for over 40 years has studied Mindlessness/Mindfulness, concluding that mindfulness (without meditation) results in improved health, well-being and improved relationships. She has written over 200 research articles and 13 books, the most recent of which is The Mindful Body (2023). Dr Langer is also a gallery exhibiting artist. 

Referenced during this episode:
The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Lasting Health (2023)
Counterclockwise: A Proven Way to Think Yourself Younger and Healthier (2010)

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Transcript

Scott Allender: 0:04

So Jean, from day one of the evolving leader, we've been exploring how our body and our mind should be considered an integrated whole rather than separate entities.

Jean Gomes: 0:15

Yeah, we've had a diverse range of guests all pointing to the same conclusion that for centuries logic centred in the brain, that the mind has been the ultimate pinnacle of human evolution. But what that's all missing is the evidence that it's the body that was the original sensory organ, and it works together, providing the brain with the data to make sense of things.

Scott Allender: 0:39

Yeah. And I'm thinking of many guests, but particularly, I'm thinking about Annie Murphy, Paul and her work on the extended mind. I'm thinking about Lisa Feldman Barrett, on how our emotions are constructed from the interplay of our physical feelings and our language, and our memory. And this idea is really important for leaders because it opens up new ways of being and helps us to make better sense of the situations that we face.

Jean Gomes: 1:08

And in this conversation, we're deeply honoured to have a true pioneer in the field. Ellen Langer, for decades has proven out the fact that the mind and the body are one integrated whole.

Scott Allender: 1:21

It's an incredible conversation. So let's get going. Folks, welcome to the evolving leader. I'm Scott Allander.

Jean Gomes: 1:49

And I'm Jean Gomes.

Scott Allender: 1:51

How are you feeling today? Mr. Gomes?

Jean Gomes: 1:53

I am feeling peak excitement here. This. I've been looking forward to this conversation for months. And from the moment that I guess said, Yes, I had to kind ofwhoop in the office and everybody was going what's going on? And so I just gathered up like the five or six books that happened to be around that a guest had written and just went and she's coming. So yeah, I'm feeling very excited. How are you feeling Scott?

Scott Allender: 2:19

Yeah, I'm feeling something on electric I'm feeling a buzz. I woke up actually a little bit tired because I've been having some late nights this week. But as soon as I remembered what this morning was about for me, I got I got really excited because I know we've talked about our guests work together many times. And I'm just so excited. She's here because today, we are joined by a pioneer and a giant in her field for over 40 years, Dr. Langer has studied mindlessness and mindfulness and everyday situations where mindlessness is pervasive and very costly. Her research at the Langer lab has brought to life in some very vivid ways that mindfulness without the need for meditation can dramatically improve our lives enhance well being health, and relationships in everyday situations and a wide variety of environments, from schools, to businesses to nursing homes. She has published hundreds of research articles and 13 books and has written extensively on the illusion of control ageing, stress and decision making. She's the recipient of three distinguished scientist Awards, the stats award for unifying psychology, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Liberty science Genius Award. For many years, her students at Harvard have voted her one of the university's favourite professors. Dr. Langer, welcome to the evolving leader.

Ellen Langer: 3:44

Scott, thank you. That was very nice introduction.

Jean Gomes: 3:47

How are you feeling and welcome to the show?

Ellen Langer: 3:50

Thank you, I'm feeling just fine, eager to talk to the two of you. So before we dive into your work in detail, maybe we can start with a broad narrative arc of your career and the significant significant milestones so that our listeners can build kind of a big picture of your journey. I have been doing this for so long that I don't know if I can remember each of the milestones, but relevant to my my new book, The mindful body. There were several things that led to this some positive, some negative. A large part of the book, but certainly not all of it is about mind body unity, which I'll discuss in a moment. And the book started off as a memoir. So I was recalling things that had you not? I was recalling things that actually helped me answer your questions. I was married when I was very young. I was 19 going on 30 When I went to Paris for my honeymoon, and because I was now all grown up after all, I was a married woman. When we went out to eat I saw there was a mixed rule that I ordered on the mixed grill was pancreas. And I asked my then husband who was more worldly than I, which of these is the pancreas and he pointed to something. And I ate everything else with gusto. Now came the moment of truth. I had to eat the pancreas because after all, wouldn't every married woman do so. And I ate it as I started to eat it, I was literally getting sick. And he starts laughing. And I said, Why are you laughing? He said, because that's chicken, you ate the pancreas a while ago. Okay, so that was the very first instance of this Mind Body unity. I have two pancreas stories, which is fun, because most people don't even have one. The second one was my mother had breast cancer that had metastasized to her pancreas. And as you may know, that's the end game. And then magically, it was gone. And the medical world couldn't explain it. But the mind body unity idea could explain it. And I think, as a side note, that spontaneous remissions are far more common than the medical world recognises. So these things lead to my believing there was something going on that the fields of the world I didn't think was really capturing. And I had also early on, done a study where we took elderly people, we gave them choices on simple decisions to make. So they were made mindful, and they live longer. And so now how could that happen? How could it be that this fuzzy thing called a phone could result in bodily changes. And so and that was what I was trying to discover. And what I thought was really, the field talked about mind body, as if these were two separate things. That's the way the medical world understood the words the world, what was going on, and to the medical world, the medical model decades ago, believe that the only way you were going to get sick was the introduction of an antigen. So I'm sure they felt being happy is nice. And being stressed is not good. But those were irrelevant to health, then everything move forward. And people then started to talk about mind body connection, you still have the problem? How are they connected? How do you get from the thought to something material, I said, this is ridiculous, that there's so much evidence mount and I had so much myself. Maybe we should be talking about mind body unity, that this is one thing. And if we put them back together, then wherever you put the mind, you're necessarily putting the body. Now to actually answer your question, what was a milestone, when I got tenure, Harvard was willing to support my first study on mind body unity. And this was a study that's called the counterclockwise study. I can say, Jean and Scott, this is a famous study. The reason I can say that, in all modesty is if you turn on The Simpsons go to Havana, they actually discuss the stuff he essentially all we did was retrofit a retreat to 20 years earlier. So it looked like he was stepping back in time. And you know, low budget not setting. And we had elderly men live there for a week as if they were their younger selves. So we put their mind back in time, essentially, they talked about the past in the present tense, and watched movies and TV and had discussions all about the past, but as if it was just unfolding. And in a period of time, less than a week, what we found was their vision improved, the hearing improved, their memory improved their strength, and they look noticeably younger. All of this without any medical intervention. So that was the first test of Mind Body unity. And then in the counterclockwise in the excuse me, the mindful body books. I talked about lots of the studies that we've done since that time. Can we just ground everybody in a basic definition of mindfulness? Because a lot of people are confused about it. Perhaps they've tried something, you know, maybe a headspace headspace app or something? Yeah. I think that's, I mean, I've been working in this area for so long. But the most basic thing I myself forgot, which is kind of mindless of me. All right, you know, and I'm called the mother of mindfulness because I've been studying this since the early 70s. And somebody thought that mindfulness was just meditation and looked at me, you know, you're the mother. My wife said, Yes, Buddha was my husband. I'm talking about mindfulness. And by the way, meditation isn't mindful. Unless it's great, but it's not mindfulness. Meditation is a practice you undergo in order to result in post meditative mindfulness, mindfulness, as we study it is more immediate. And it's the simple, it's so simple, that it's going to be hard for people to grasp all of the positive consequences that result from it. But it's simply noticing, noticing new things about the things you think you knew. And then you say, gee, you didn't know him as well as you thought and your attention naturally goes to them. And that this act of noticing is the experience of engagement. So it feels good. And we also find that it's energy beginning now. And one of the reasons that are the main reason I think that we don't notice is because we think we know, and a way of understanding mindlessness is being frequently in error, but rarely in debt. So now, it's fun for me, and I'm gonna say to you, but whoever knows the answer first can take the question, how much is one plus one? Because this is the thing that we know the best?

Scott Allender: 11:08

Go on, Scott, you're the best. You're the best experts got gone? Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, too, but I feel like I'm stepping out of the trap. Now. Of course, yes. I mean, why would I ask the question, right? Very clever.

Ellen Langer: 11:22

But it turns. So this is the thing we know, the best that we're taught, one plus one is two. And then we don't pay any attention to anything, right. But if you're adding one cloud plus one, cloud, one plus one is one, if you add one pile of laundry, plus one pile of laundry, one plus one is 111 of chewing gum plus one, one of chewing gum, one plus one is one. So in the real world, it doesn't equal to as a more often as it does. Alright, now that you know that just sort of imagine, very, very, very likely, as soon as we finish, somebody comes over to you and says, Scott, how much is one plus one, you're no longer going to say to that quickly, you're going to look at the context. And then you're going to answer more conditionally, you can say it could be too, right. And that's the way we should be approaching everything in the world with this. Understanding that everything can be seen in multiple ways. And you need to pay attention to see which way is the most appropriate for that context. And so the all of our institutions, schools, parents, podcasts, you know, talk about things as an absolute terms. And when you know, something, absolutely, there's no reason to pay any attention to it. But everything is always changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives, so you can't know. And so anytime we think we know, we're actually being mindless. So I was at this Horse Event many years ago. And I remember I, as you introduced me, Scott and Harvard, Yale all the way through, I mean, I was in a plus plus two, okay, I'm at this horse event. And this man asked me, Can I watch his horse because he wants to get his horse a hotdog, Well, come on. Horses don't eat me, I know that I must have gotten it right on some tests at some point in my distant past. And but I'm trying to be nice, even though I think this is ridiculous. He goes, gets the hot dog, it comes back and the horse ate it. And that's when I realised that everything I think I know could be wrong. And that was very exciting for me. While it might have worried somebody else, it was exciting for me because it meant all sorts of things are possible, that people are oblivious to that have just accepted that we can't. Let me give you another example of the Mind Body unity, and then come back to things not seeming not being impossible any longer for us to think about these. So we did a very simple study, where we're going to study fatigue, and we look at fatigue as context dependent and that people believe you know, the body is built to get exhausted. That's all there is to it. Okay. And the first one was just so simple. We ask people to do 100 Jumping jacks and tell us when they're tired. They get tired around the seven day, we asked another group do 200 Jumping Jacks tell us when you get tired? Turns out they get tired at 140. And we have lots of these studies showing that gee, you change the context and you're not tired one that your audience and at least I'm sure the two of you will love was not a study of mine to study Frank beach did I think in the 50s, where he took a little boy rat, and the introduces a little girl rat and they copulate and then the little boy rat can't take anymore, right he's just exhausted fatigue and he needs Time to before he can come back. Okay, it needs a refractory period. However, when Frank beach introduce another little girl read, he was ready to go immediately. All right now people, it's hard for people because we've all get tired. And it seems just there's nothing we can do about it. When I teach this, in my health class, I asked people, How far is it literally possible to run? Human li possible? And, you know, they know. And just as Scott was hesitant to answer in my how much is one plus one? They know, I wouldn't ask the question, if the answer were 26 miles because that's a marathon. We've seen people do it, right. So it becomes like an auction. Somebody says 2830 35, they never get past 50. And the person who says 50, elicits all sorts of groans from everybody. Oh, my God, really? Right. Then i play them a video of the Terry Amara, which is a tribe in Mexico, who can run over 200 miles without stopping. And just think about it, I can't run three miles. But I know it's humanly possible to run 26. Well, this suggests kept driving. And we are so off base when we're trying to figure out what we're capable of. And that's what all of this book is about, in so many ways that most of what we want is just a thought away. If we can change our minds, we can change virtually everything because the mind and body are one. But another one would be Mind Body unity studies. So the next one in the series, I'm not going to go through all of them. But let me just tell you two more, was a study with chambermaids. So what we did was, first we asked chambermaids, how much exercise do you get, and they say they don't get very much exercise. And that's because they think exercise is what you do after work. And they're just too tired. Because the Surgeon General says that because the Surgeon General's desk all day long. All right. So now what we do is we divide them into two groups. And very simply, we teach one of the two groups that their work is exercise. Mopping is like, you know, this exercise at the gym, making a bed like this other so on. So now we have two groups, one is oblivious to the fact that they work as exercise, one believes they work as exercise, and short time we start taking another set of measures. And first thing we find is that the two groups are not differing and how much they're eating, or how hard they're working. Okay, all that is different is the mindset. This work is exercise. As a result, we find they lost weight, there was a change in waist to hip ratio, body mass index and their blood pressure, blood pressure came down. Remarkable. The one of the other studies we have many of them is a study on wound healing. So what we did was inflicted wound now, I'm not going to hurt people. So it's a minor wound, but you can call it a wound nonetheless. And people are in front of a clock and one condition and unbeknownst to them, the clock is going twice as fast as real time. For another condition, the clock is going half as fast as real time. And the third condition it's going in real time. The question we're asking is, does that wound heal based on real time? Or is it influenced by clock time? And it turns out, it's clock time, perceive time. We don't need to get tired than both this makes us makes healing depends on our perceptions of how long it's going to take to heal. I was interrupting myself because one of these other studies is very quick. I'm clock crazy. So in this study, people are in a sleep lab, they wake up the clock tells them they got two hours more two hours fewer the amount of sleep they got. And again, biological and cognitive functions follow perceived Amandus.

Jean Gomes: 19:19

I'd love to ask you a question here because what has constantly captivated me in reading, the studies that you do is that they are there at the high end of counter intuitiveness they really every single time you read one of your studies and the counterclockwise study was one of the first that I came across. When I was starting off in my career. You have this kind of moment of excitement about the fact that there's some mystery in life that has been revealed to you. So you've you've kind of given us a basic definition of, of what mindfulness is and this basic idea of paying attention noticing, and how that informs the type of mindset, what you're paying attention to the different information. And the chambermaid study is a great one. It's a reframe of workers exercise where you start to notice that you're bending over, you're squatting, you're picking things up, and so on, you start to reframe that as exercise.

Ellen Langer: 20:19

And you've brought to live loads of amazing evidence that shows that's what's happening. But what is primary, what's the primary thing that's actually happening that's translating that belief into a physiological change? There is nothing going on that is on the sword that you're asking about. It's one thing, the mind and the body are one thing, this is what we're testing. Now, doesn't mean there aren't things happening under the hood, so to speak, physiologically, however, they're not causal. And essentially, they're happening all at the same time. So I raised my hand, my brain is different. I have a thought, my brain is different. And that affects every organ in the body is one thing. That's super helpful, because I think everybody listening is searching for a different answer to that. And that's why because we've been living with Mind Body dualism for so long. It's why Ray's dad, you know, it is how you know it. When I saw that horse eat the hotdog, it was the same thing for me what, you know, how can that possibly be? He's not supposed to do that. But you know, it's interesting, because once I saw him eat the hotdog, and I thought about an afterwards, and I realised, wait a second, most of what we know, comes from science. And and science can be trusted. But people don't realise science does not give us absolutes. So yeah, science can't do a study that says all horses don't eat meat, right? Depends on how big the horse is how hungry the horse is, how much meat is mixed with how much grain a host of factors, all science tells us is that if we were to do the exact same study again, and it can never be exact, doing it in time, it's a different times that we are likely to get the same findings, that probability is translated as absolutes. Right. So even with respect to serious diseases, when you're told, for example, you have cancer, we don't know that you have cancer, we know it's likely given these findings that we have, that you have cancer, when a doctor might tell you that which I think is just appalling, I have great respect for the medical community, but you know, tells you you have only six months to live, they cannot know that. And what people need to understand is that even when you're given a probability, the probability is for large number, not for the individual case. So let me make that clear. Because prediction is actually an illusion, we're not able to predict we can post it, we can look back and make everything look like it made sense. But let's say I say to you, we're gonna have a wager, John. And here's a nice Mercedes dealership, 100 cars, and we'll pick one at random, you can pick any one you want. And if that car starts, when you turn that key, I will give you a million dollars. If it doesn't start, you give me your pinky. Or you can either give me a million dollars, or you or one of your fingers, right? People are not going to take the bet, maybe because they know just sometimes things happen. Right? And so we're never able to predict to the individual case. Now. I when I teach this to my students and tell them look, I have taught a version of this course for 40 years, I have never missed a class never. What is the likelihood that I'll be here next week. So we go around the room. There are 12 students, the seminar, and these are Harvard kids. So they're not going to say 100% They say silly things. 97%. I don't know how the next one says 99. Essentially, they're all saying I will be there and they're sure of it. Now I say Okay, let's go around the room. And I want each of you to give me a good reason why I won't be here. tomorrow, next week. The first person oddly invariably says, I've been there so long. I deserve the time off. The next person says My dog has to go to the vet. The next person says I got a flat tire. We get 12 really good reasons. And then I say to them, okay, now tell me what is the likelihood I'll be here next week. And that 100% drops percent At basically 50%, realising we don't know, looking back, we can make a story. And so we think we know going forward, we have no idea. I mean, if your listeners say, What am I going to say next? Will their computer signal go out, then just don't know. And not knowing is actually good. Because when you don't know, then you set up and you pay attention. And when you're being mindful, mindfully noticing the things around you aware of the implicit uncertainty and everything the neurons are firing, and a host of experiments that we've done, show that it's literally and figuratively enlivening. It feels good. That's the thing. So if the two of you came to visit me, right now, I'm in my house and Provincetown, mass is beautiful here, you've never been here before. As soon as you get here, you don't have to practice being mindful, it's all new to you, you're going to notice, and it's going to be fun for you. Alright, so we have the case where doing this being mindful is energising it feels good, it's good for your health. What happens on other studies that we've shown is that when you're mindful people find you more attractive, more trustworthy, more authentic, it's good for your relationships. Then we have other studies where we have people performing their tasks, either mindfully or mindlessly. These are orchestras for example. And when they're mindful, the performance is better. And people can hear the difference, see the difference? So it's a win win win. So you start the book with an important insight that the research on risk misunderstands risk taking, can you talk us through? Yeah, the idea that it's an entirely subjective observer phenomenon, and also how our social identity plays a central role in our perception of risk. Sure. I mean, everybody knows risk taking is subjective, because some people take them and some don't. So. But that's not the important piece here, which is that in some very real way, I think we're all much more similar, then most people believe that they are to their neighbours, their spouses and what have you. And then, if you saw what I saw, if you felt what I felt, you do what I did, so if I have my hand on a radiator, and you have the hand on, you have your hand on the radiator, and I lift my hand quickly, you seem stronger in some way. But if you felt what I felt, I think you'd lift your hand as well. Alright, so essentially, and this is very important, and it's part helped me remember to come back to it. Something that's very important for our relationships and for our relationships to be successful. So let's say, I'm driving, and you're sitting next to me, and I'm driving that Mercedes that started, okay. And I make a turn at 80 miles an hour. You go, wow, oh, my God, you know, Wow, am I a risk taker? You know, what that means is that you would never do your belief in your competence is such that you would never do what I just did. However, nobody takes an action that they don't think is going to be successful. They can be wrong in that belief. But when I take that turn at 80 miles an hour, it's because I believe I'm going to be able to make that journey. 80 miles an hour. Okay? Not because I think, hey, who knows, maybe we'll get killed, maybe not what the hell, I'll do it. Okay. Now, it's very important if you think about it, if you want it because risk taking is admired in many ways. Maybe not the taking your turn at 80 miles an hour, but let's stay with that for a moment. That if you want it to be able to have the guts, whatever it takes the courage to make that turn at 80 miles an hour, you might think that what you need to do is go to some coach is gonna say you can do it, you can do it, you know, and so on, and you're still not going to do it and be able to do it. What you need to do is be a better driver. So Mario Andretti, who is a racecar driver, when he takes a turn at 80 miles an hour, he's not taking a risk. Right? If you asked me to dive into a small body of water from you know, great height. I wouldn't do it because like I can die if I would be scared, right. When a Greg Madonna's does a wonderful swimmer, he's not taking a risk. He knows how to die. If, but if we had either Mario Andretti and Greg gunness, taking risking money going to you pay $100,000 to take the psychology test. And the win, if you get it right is, let's say 10 million, they're not going to do it. I'll do it. Because I know psychology. So you want to seem to be taking more risks, learn more about the thing you're afraid to do. So then you're not afraid to do it. The larger piece here that I was teasing you with, with its effect on relationships, is that behaviour makes sense from the actors perspective, or else the actor wouldn't do it. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, Today, I'm going to be bigoted, selfish, gullible. Okay. So when you see anybody doing anything, where you're casting aspersions, and think about yourself as well, when Oh, God, how could I have been so stupid, lazy, you know, whatever. It's because we're observing the behaviour and ignoring the sense of the behaviour makes to the person who's enacting that. Now, when you're mindless, you tend to only have one view of things. So it doesn't occur to you that actors and observers are seeing very different worlds. Right? I'm observing. I see the two of you now you see me. It's different. Right? Okay, so let's say, I want to be you call me gullible? And I am. I'm extremely, I mean, it's amazing. So I'm, it's embarrassing how gullible I am. Right? And so when I look at myself, after you talking to me about how could I have done this or that, then I say, Yeah, I'm not going to be gullible anymore. And I may change very briefly, but I'm always going to become gullible again. Because from my perspective, I'm not being gullible. From my perspective, I'm being trusting. All right. So if you want me to stop being gullible, what you need to do is get me to stop valuing being trusting. Now, Scott, you are so inconsistent, that you get on my nerves. It's terrible. Okay, but from your perspective, you're being flexible. And on John, you're so boring. But that's because from your perspective, what you're being stable, consistent, somebody we can count on. So it turns out for each and every negative way of describing yourself or somebody else, there's an equally strong, but oppositely valence alternative for every negative, there's a positive way of viewing it. And so, you know, we did a study forever ago, where we gave people like 300 of these behaviour descriptions, and we said, circle those things, you keep trying to change about yourself, and you're not successful doing so. And so if it were, um, I circle, impulsive, gullible, and I won't tell you the others, okay, then you turn over the piece of paper. And there's the positive version of each of these. And now we tell people circle those things you really value about yourself, my spontaneity Am I being trusting, right? So as long as I value again, being trusting, I'm going to, at least at times seem gullible? So it's a wonderful for relationships, just simply recognise that the person you care about is not doing this thing to get you is not doing it because of some failing on their part, that it makes sense, and that your mindless view is preventing you from seeing the sense that it makes in the, the kind of polarising world that we are in at the moment, this idea of the research that you've done into perspective taking and how we can benefit from empathy. I think that's incredibly useful. Can we talk a little bit more about what you've learned about perspective taking and how to increase it? Well, this is all I mean, mindfulness is all about perspective taking. You know that people believe that the way they see things is the way they should be seen, oblivious to the fact that from a different perspective, it makes you know, I mean, just imagine what we've already said that a kid in a class when asked how much is one in one says one, and what's, what are most teachers going to do? They're going to correct the child, they're going the child is going to end up feeling stupid. The kids will laugh at the child when a more mindful approach would have been for the teacher to say how did you come to that Scott's and then Scott says, you know you take one one of chill In Ghana, one wad of chewing gum and it's one and everybody learns something. And you know, so if you just say, very simply that there's a sense that this must make, and you can either come up with it as let's say trusting and gullible. Or you can just assume that there is something that is driving this. That's reasonable. So you don't look down on the person. It seems that it takes more calories to do that. Right. So you mentioned earlier that our brains would rather be certain, right? So we feel certain, it's easier to sort of just say, this is the way it is, yeah, but what we're so funny, Scott, because we, we want certainty, because we think then we'll have more control over things. But since things are changing, when you're holding it, still, you're deluding yourself, you know, the the mindset is holding it still. But all the while the world around you is changing. And so you're giving up the control you actually could have. So, yeah, now when people want certainty, it's because largely because they think it's available. And you know, so we have a world of people who are constantly pretending they know, because they think you're supposed to know. And so they don't have the meaningful conversations that they might otherwise have, and so on. So I'm here to free everybody. And to get people instead of making a personal attribution for not knowing, I don't know, but you may know. So therefore, I have to hide, to recognise nobody knows. And it also makes you very powerful. Because when you're face to face with one of these people, who knows, now, you know, they don't know. And you could embarrass the person by poking them at the edges with questions and what have you. But in either case, not knowing is good. And what we need to do is exploit the power and uncertainty, when we don't know we sit up and we pay attention. And then we're able to take advantage of benefits to which would otherwise be blind, and avert the danger not yet arisen. And again, doing this is is the essence of when you're having fun, you know that you don't have fun, mindlessly, right? When you're mindless, you're not there. Now the problem is and you can't people can't listen to me and then say, Oh, I'm going to be more mindful and, and just leave it at that. Because and think that, you know, you should be in the moment. It's a sweet but empty suggestion. Because when you're not in the moment, you're not there to know you're not there, so you can easily correct it. But 45 years of research has shown me that virtually all of us are not there almost all the time. So you've done a lot of work on how we can get better at noticing these unconscious assumptions that shape our life, and particularly in the context of ageing, and I'd love to hear more about some of those, those studies and insights you've gained from them. Yeah, well, it was many years ago that I recognised this strange thing, then I took offence to that, that when you're young, you're developing, and then all of a sudden, turns around, and you're ageing. And ageing means something negative. And so lots of my work has been aimed at finding growth in late adulthood. And you know, there are changes, but many of the changes have nothing to do with necessity, rather by choice, you know, let's say you're a young up and coming in business, and you think it's good for you to learn everybody's name. And if so, you make sure you know everybody's name, then you get to a certain point with frankly, who cares, right? If you're going to meet the person again, you'll have another option. So if you don't know somebody's name, it's not necessarily because you forgot it. Oftentimes, we think we forgotten things that we didn't learn in the first place because our values have changed. There's some very easy to understand things that happen because of our beliefs that getting old, we fall apart. Let's say John, you you hurt your wrist and you're going to you don't expect your wrist to hurt you too young for for that so you do something to make it better. At my age, I hurt my wrist and I say well, what do you expect as you get older, you start to fall apart so I don't do anything to make it better. And so you know, a month out the difference between us has nothing to do with age and has to do with you believing you could heal yourself and taking the steps and my just accepting that there's this There's lots to be said about ageing. I think that the original counterclockwise study made clear that things like our vision and hearing, which we assume are just going to get worse and worse, and doesn't have to be that way. And I think that people now are trying to find ways to add more years to their lives. And what I'm fond of saying is, I think they're better off adding more life to their years. And as a consequence, though, they'll probably end up living longer, but you want to extend the useful part of your years, I'm interested in understanding how you've applied it to yourself as well, because you obviously show up with a huge amount of energy and focus and presence in every have watched loads of videos, and you're always the same, thank you are not the same as the good or bad. But yeah, I don't really have a sense of myself at my age. In fact, my spouse said to me, I was helping this woman. And it was clear, I was helping her because I thought she was old. And then it was said to me later, you know, she's probably 10 years younger than I am. So I just, I don't see myself as any particular year, the only time I become aware of that is because of technology. And when you're supposed to put in your birthday, and you go down from 2020. Well, I can Oh, my God. And in I don't know why somebody can't do it by decade. Yeah. So you don't have to feel quite so ancient. But people are living much longer these days. So you know, perhaps, at some point in the, I'd be mid middle aged.

Jean Gomes: 41:51

Yeah, that really resonates that whole scribbling scrolling thing down that really resonates. So one of the things that I think

Ellen Langer: 42:00

people would prosper from hearing about is about stress. Because stress, I think, is the major killer, that, you know, if you took people who were diagnosed with any disease, and let's say, and you're able to measure how stressed they were repeatedly, that I believe I don't have data for this, but I believe that stress level would predict the course of the disease over and above genetics, nutrition, and even treatment. And what people need to understand is that stress is psychological. Stress is a function of your thoughts. events don't cause stress, what causes stress are the views you take of the event. So if you open it up and look at it more mindfully, you'll have many more choices. And life just becomes better, easier, and you end up looking younger, or whatever. But that, as you said to yourself, realise rather that stress requires two things. One, it requires a belief that something is going to happen. Now, as I said a moment before, we can't predict, okay, what's going to happen? Second, so if you if you're stressed, believing something's going to happen, and you just ask yourself, give yourself three reasons, five reasons why it won't happen. I think you'll immediately feel better. But now let's assume it does happen. How is that actually a good thing. And so when you do this, you end up in a place where it can happen or not happen, it's fine, I'm fine. Either way, we go out, I don't I keep using the same example, which is probably mindless of me, but let me use it. This will be the last time that let's say we go out for dinner. And the food is wonderful, great, it's a win. Now we go out for dinner and the food is awful. For me, it's still a win, that means I'll eat less. And that'll be better for my waistline, I'll pay more attention to what you're saying rather than, you know, only attend to the food, and so on. So the way you feel is going to be a function of the way you understand the world. And if you take a single minded view, and that view is negative, obviously, you're going to be in trouble. I have a one liner that some of my friends have put on there in a written out and put on their refrigerators to remind them, which is ask yourself, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience? Almost always, the things that we're stressed about are simply inconveniences. And when you realise that then you take a deep breath and get back to yourself. If you looked at the things that you were stressed about in the past, you'd recognise that almost all of them never happened. Again, helping you go forward. So now one of the biggest stressors for people are making decisions. And my view of decision making is, again, radically different from what most people assume decision theory is in particular, that, you know, you're worried about making the right decision. But you can't know what the right decision is. Because we've already said prediction is an illusion. Not only that, I just told you that things in themselves are neither good nor bad. It's the way you understand them. So how do you do a cost benefit analysis? When every cost is a benefit, every benefit is a cost, it's not going to tell you what to do. And so my suggestion is don't worry about making the right decision. Simply make the decision, right? So I have my students, I said, Okay, why don't you spend the week in between classes, until you come back next week. And don't make any decision on us whatever simple rule, you want the first alternative that occurs to you or flip a coin, but have have some decision a way you're going to decide independent of what you're actually deciding. Okay, so just don't make decisions. They spend a week like this, and they come back the following week. And, you know, they said it was stress free and wonderful. And so I think that people in general are doing the right thing. People are not really doing cost benefit analysis. Sometimes they gather information, just so when someone says How could you been so stupid to do that, then you can come back with well, because of a b and say that you've information you've gathered, so people are probably doing the right thing already, but thinking that they're doing the wrong thing. And they're stressed, you know, let's say should? Should somebody have a baby? How can you decide if you should have a baby, you have no idea what your life is going to be like, if you have a baby, you have no idea what your life is going to be like, if you don't have a baby. And that's why it turns out that people who don't have children are happy. People who have children are happy people who have children and miserable other people people's. It's, um, if you can't, no, you can't decide. And but you can always make whatever you're faced with work.

Scott Allender: 47:23

Friends, if you're enjoying the evolving leader, I encourage you to order a copy of Jean's new book leading in a non linear world, which provides a new understanding of mindset, and how to build it in order to thrive in a more uncertain future. It's available online at all major retailers, and there's a link in the show notes. I'd like to come back to what you said about you know, when you're not there, you don't know you're not there. Because which is the problem of awareness. Right? So you're talking about all these incredible, we could spend an hour on each of the things you've talked about already. In your research, did you find differences in the way people are mindless? So for example, I work with individuals and leaders. And sometimes I find people are a bit mindless in the present, because they're really stuck in the past, or they're mindless in the present, because they're worried about the future. How did you how did your research depict the different ways people might be mindless? And how, if they're not there to know that this is the way they've distracted themselves in the way that they're being mindless? How do they develop that level of awareness? Yeah, that's a very good question. Well, first, no, I didn't differentiate how you ended up mindless.

Ellen Langer: 48:36

But it's a function you're going to how do we Why did you think one on one is too, because that's what you were taught? And it could have been, you're older, and you're reading a newspaper, or you're listening to a lecture or whatever. And that's where you get the misinformation, the belief that this thing that sometimes is an all the time. All right, but how do you fix something? When you don't know you're doing it in the first place? It's a wonderful question. I wrote a book called on becoming an artist reinventing yourself through mindful creativity. It's got my art in it, but it's not really about art. It's about interpersonal mindfulness. And the way I suggest there to do it, one way is to throw yourself into some new activity. So for me, it was painting, it could be photography, poetry, you know, whatever it is, but it has to be new. So you have the experience of Oh, wow. Alright, and then as soon as that feeling changes, so let's say Jean calls you Scott, you know, you're happy class. And all of a sudden you because you're there you can experience a way Wait a second. It's fleeting. And then you know, and either don't answer the phone or change the relationship or or what have you. I think that once people I recognise that everything is changing. And off. And so if you just actively Notice five new things about people at work person you live with at home, on how effective this or that thing is that you're doing. You know, when I started painting, before I started painting, I thought it trees are green. All right, in the fall, there are many colours, but the green, and then I'm painting because now it's Oh my God, there's so many greens, you know, what should I do, and I'm looking him, there are hundreds of different grains. And all of those greens changed depending on where the sun is, you know, and so on. Alright, so we went from a single thing to many things, right, looking at the same stimulus, so to speak. And you do that often enough, and you just, it just becomes very natural, when you realise that you're not going to get punished for not knowing, and then not knowing comes with so many rewards, it will be self sustaining. But one thing that people can do immediately, is, as soon as they feel them hear themselves being judgmental, and value to putting themselves or somebody else down to recognise that they're being mindless. Right? And so then that goes a long way, because so many people are judgmental versions of themselves or others almost all the time. Another thing that one can do is that as soon as your stress use, go through what I've just said a moment before and ask yourself, how else might you understand the situation? If you were mindful, you're noticing that everybody exposed to these circumstances are going to be stressful? What are they doing? What might you do? How might you open up your view of the situation and see how it might actually be an advantage, and how it probably won't even happen anyway. And, and then you have people who are mindless with respect to their own healing. And so so much of my work is devoted to making us healthier, you know, if you're happier, you're going to be healthier, but we can do things about our health, immediately. So we have a mindless notion that if you have some chronic illness, you're going to stay the same or get worse, and nothing stays the same. And it never moves in only one direction. So we have this treatment for chronic illnesses. It's also good for stress. It's also good for other aspects of relationships. And we'll be clear maybe in a moment, which I call attention to symptom vulner variability. That's a mouthful. It's just really being mindful, being mindful, you're noticing change. So what we did here, a price lots of diseases, we would call people periodically, and say, How are you is a symptom better or worse than before? And why? Okay, and we do this throughout the week, few weeks, depending on what the disorder is. Now, that leads to three things. The first is that you noticed, gee, you're not always as bad as you thought you were and as much pain, for example, so you feel a little better. Second, by asking yourself, why now, why now is a little better or a little worse, you're engaged in a mindful search. And we've already said that itself is good for your health. And finally, I believe, if you're looking for a solution, you're more likely to find one. And that's when people are, you know, are just so mindless Scott, the doctors give them these probabilities, the diagnoses they assume, is going to play out the way it sometimes plays out. They give up. And we find that it doesn't have to be that way that we've done this with people who have multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, arthritis, stroke, Parkinson's disease, you know, and in each case, we're able to get rid of the symptoms, and you can do this for yourself. Be and it all started, I was looking for replacement and replacement, but oh, a way to give yourself a placebo. And you just think everybody believes that placebos do the work they do. It's because of the Mind Body unity. How could it be that you take this nothing, and all of a sudden you're better if a doctor gives it to you, and why do we have to go through that charade? Because placebos have been shown to be effective across almost all diseases. Okay, at least 27% Presumably of the people who have it are able to get better with with But nothing. So if the sugar pill isn't making you better, what's making you better you're doing yourself. And so a lot of my life's work has been to find how to get people to be able to do this more directly. So that led to these attention to symptom variability studies, and most people have smartphones. And so you set the phone to ring in two hours, and it rings and you ask yourself, How is it now? Is it better or worse than before? And why? And then set it to ring an hour and 10 minutes later, and just keep doing this various times? Through the day, the week, you know, and so on. And what happens here? By asking yourself, why is it better? You feel better because you're doing this mindful search? By going through this procedure, you feel better because you're taking some control over your health, rather than just waiting? For to hear something from the medical world?

Jean Gomes: 56:08

How can we, how can leaders build more mindful organisations? Yeah. Okay, so

Ellen Langer: 56:16

let me tell you about the orchestra study, because it had a surprise finding that I thought was relevant to leadership, but I didn't realise until they wrote the paper up. So here, we take many orchestras, and we're going to have them be mindful or mindless, when they're mindless, and they're all going to play the same music, and we're going to tape the performance. So when they're mindless, they're told, remember a time you played this piece, and you were really happy with it, and just replicated as well as you could. The mindful musicians were told, make it new in very subtle ways that only you would know. And they're playing classical music, not jazz, so you can be sure, the changes are subtle, alright, we record it, we play it for people, the overwhelmingly prefer the mindfully played piece, and the musicians prefer playing it that way. So now I'm writing it up. And I realised Wait a second. Here, we have enhanced group performance, with everybody doing their own thing. Right. And that was because they were all taking their cues, in some sense from the same ongoing situation. And so that led me to think that the major job of leader is to increase the mindfulness of those being led. And rather than, and also, that, again, since everything is always changing, the leader needs to know that he or she doesn't know. And when you know, you don't know, then you pay a different kind of attention to other people who might know, you know, and find out also I was saying, telling this little story, I was lecturing in South Africa. And I took an afternoon off, and I'm dance in this fancy hotel, the pool, just resting, reading, whatever. And I noticed there was a massive amount of real estate that was not being used, it was clearly part of a hotel. And it was not being used, and the only person who would know it was that lonely cabana boy, because he was the only one down there. And so if we recognise, when we know that we don't know, it wouldn't be nice if we also knew, in some ways that everybody doesn't know something, but everybody knows something else. And when you see that everybody knows something else, everybody comes becomes more valuable. Right? And so if we mix and match many of the things that I've said that you have your leader who's putting down Jean, Jean, he's just, you know, he's just not doing what you want him to do. And if you said to yourself, his behaviour must make sense from his perspective, or else he wouldn't do it. And you figure out why he might be doing it, you feel better about him, he can feel that you're looking at him differently, your relationship improves, he's going to be working harder, enjoying it more. And that's another thing you know, there are people I don't know, you know, somebody has said I must be from Mars. We have people saying, seek work life balance. I know, again, you know, it's always we're able to move things from bad to better, but there's always in my mind, this even better place that we don't seem to want to get to. And that work life balance is certainly better than work life imbalance. But I think we should seek work life integration, be the same person you are, wherever you are, and don't be afraid to be that person. And so when I when I teach just this, I, you know, people think their work has to be hard has to be stressful, nothing is necessarily stressful, it shouldn't be stressful. There are ways I know it personally, of living your life, mostly without any stress at all. And so people think that there's a big difference between work and play. And I think that we should make everything playful. If you're going to show up to do it, if you're going to do it, you should show up for it. So there's this wonderful video, I don't know if you've seen it, it's called piano stairs. And these people, I think, Scandinavia, in some ways all over the world, apparently, there's an escalator, and stairs. And invariably, except for the young boy, who's running up the stairs, because he's on his way, from the gym, or whatever, everybody is on the escalator, then what these clever people did was laid down piano keys on the stairs. So as you go up to two minutes, and it makes sense, great fun. And in almost no time, everybody leaves the escalator. And everybody, no matter age, gender, is taking the stairs. And when I say to my students is that's wonderful. But why wait for somebody to put these keys on the on the stairs, you know, I do do do anyway. There's a way to make whatever you're doing interesting, at least, and many of those things become fun. You know, so a surgeon, I don't think, you know, needs to be laughing while he's, he or she is performing surgery. But maybe so, but at least make it interesting. Because if it's not interesting, you're not going to be there. And if you're not going to be there for there are going to be errors. And depending on which group you're talking to Scott, you know, to improve their leadership abilities, some of those areas can be very costly. What else should we be asking you? And I don't know if you have to if you have a hard stop right now, if there's anything? No, no, I don't have a hard stop. Let me let me just say, No, there's lots more in this book, I, I'm have a goal. You know, yeah, keep reading these books, you know, why should I be the only person who's happy, healthy, virtually stress free, I keep trying to share it. And the way to get there, I just think is, you know, is fun and easy. So there should be no real, there's no downside for people to at least try the things I talk about in the book. But something occurred to me that, you know, when I was saying to you that the world knows that, as I said before, imbalance is not as good as balance, work life, imbalance, but we have this with almost everything. So one of the things that I found kind of fun, I like language. And so I'm very sensitive to things. And we have some studies on trying. So trying is certainly better than thinking you can't do it and giving up in the first place. But trying is not really as positive as people think it has built into it in expectation for failure. You wouldn't try to have an ice cream cone. Right? You just have it right? hope, hope also has built into it an expectation for failure. You don't go down to me when I go to the kitchen in the morning. I'm not hoping I'm going to have a cup of coffee. I assume I'm going to have a cup of coffee. Alright, the funniest one of these, I think, and maybe we can end it after this was about forgiveness. So I was asked many years ago to give a sermon at Harvard. Well, I'm not religious. And not only that, but I'm Jewish. But I say yes, a lot. And so I'm going to give a sermon, and I don't what am I going to talk about? So I can't be able to Tada. So forgiveness that sounds sort of religiously, I can get away with it. And I start thinking about forgiveness, and like, oh my gosh, that got everything wrong. Okay, so here, Jean, if you ask 10 people, is forgiveness good or bad? What are they going to say? Probably say it's good. Okay, Scott, if you ask 10 people is blame good or bad? What are they going to say? Probably bad. It's bad. But you know, you can't forgive unless you first blame. So that's interesting. Are forgive us are I blamers? Now, do you blame people for good things or bad things? When you blame people for bad things, but things in and of themselves are neither good nor bad? So what do we have here? We have people who see the world negatively who blame have an opportunity to forgive and I think it's hardly divine. Now of course, forgiving is better than staying in that net. Get into plays in not forgiving the person. But there's a much, much better way to be in this world, which goes back to understanding that that person who you're blaming their behaviour made sense from their perspective or else they wouldn't have done it. So that mindful understanding replaces the need for blame. And when you don't have blame, and you have no need for forgiveness, I mean, I think the very last thing I would say is that the amount of control we have over our health and well being is enormous. And most people have no idea that if they want to be someone different, if they want their bodies, their minds, their happiness, their day to day experience, to be different, really all you need to do is change your mind. Dr. Langer, thank you so much for joining us. I can honestly listen to you for hours and this was

Scott Allender: 1:06:08

the conversation I needed to have today. So we really appreciate you been here. Oh, that was great. It was fun for me as well. Thank you so well, and folks get get your copy of the mindful body. We'll put a link in the show notes. Get Get your copy of mindfulness counterclockwise on becoming an artist, get all the books, get them all because you're going to enjoy every minute of it. And we've barely scratched the surface today and next until next time, remember, the world is evolving. Are you