Bert Martinez:
Welcome. Today on the show, Dr. Ellen Langer. Dr. Ellen. She is a renowned psychologist known as the mother of mindfulness and the mother of positive psychology. I am thrilled to have her.
Dr. Ellen Langer, welcome to the show.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Thank you for having me.
Bert Martinez:
All right, I gotta ask you this off the top.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
All right. You have to ask me.
Bert Martinez:
Oh, I, I, we’re gonna have so much fun. I want to talk about the, the, the path, your journey, if you will. I don’t want to sound too mystical, but your path, I mean, what initially sparked your interest in psychology and kind of maybe give us a description of your path to becoming the first woman tenured in psychology at Harvard.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Okay. One never knows how they got to wherever they are. It’s an accumulation of all your past experiences. When I was an undergraduate, I was majoring in chemistry, and then I took an intro psychology course with Phil Zimbardo. He was a spectacular teacher. And that’s why I went into psychology, the social psychology. So that one was easy. And then I don’t really remember making any decisions in my life that if you did well as an undergraduate, it was expected you were going to graduate school.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
If you did well in graduate school, it was expected you were going to become an academic. If you’re a young academic, junior faculty, there’s an expectation, hopefully, that you’ll rise in the ranks and become senior. So it all just sort of happened.
Bert Martinez:
Sure, sure. Absolutely. Okay. So speaking of tenure, let me ask you this. What is your thoughts on tenure? Is it still a viable strategy for school?
Dr. Ellen Langer:
I think so, especially in today’s world. It’s the major reason for tenure is so that people can pursue their strange ideas without having to worry about how well they’re being received at the time. Of course, there are always subtle ways that people can make you uncomfortable and make you want to leave, you know, whether you have tenure or not. Right. But it serves that purpose. It did in the past. And in today’s world, where there’s so much dislike, distrust and what have you, I think it’s even more important rather than less important.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah. To your point, now we have, I think for the first time, when I think of, of going to college, I think of, of an environment where you could discuss things. You could debate openly and, and, and not be afraid of debating different points of view. But in multiple, yeah, multiple campuses now.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
It’s we, they, yes. The good guys, the bad guys. And it’s interesting because this speaks to a lot of my work where no matter what somebody says, there’s a way of understanding it so that it’s yay or nay, right? And you know, so once you, you assume that posture where they know nothing or they’re the bad guys, the evidence becomes overwhelming. And supported that. But the same evidence could just as easily been used in reverse.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
It’s so interesting to me that after 45 years of doing all the work I’ve been doing, we get findings that I think are quite remarkable. People living longer, being healthier, happier, and so on. But the one thing that I think meant most to me in all of this was the realization that behavior makes sense from the actor’s perspective or else the actor wouldn’t do it. And that means every time you’re taking somebody to task, you know, you’re being judgmental, negative, you’re being mindless because they’re not you. The fact that you’re inconsistent can drive me crazy. But if I’m mindless, but you’re not intending to be inconsistent, so what are you intending? Well, you’re intending to be flexible. For me, I’m very, very gullible. And you can get me to try not to be gullible.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And you’ll point out all the time, believe me, you wouldn’t have difficulty finding very good examples, evidence for that. And so I agree with you, I should be less gullible. But it’s not going to hold over time because going forward, it’s not my intention to be gullible. What I am is trusting. And as long as I’m trusting, I’m going to be gullible. So for each and every negative way of characterizing somebody’s behavior, there’s an equally strong but opposite balanced alternative. And you know, we did this study forever ago where we gave people about 200, 100, somewhere between 1 in 300 behavior descriptions. And we said circle those things you keep trying to change about yourself, but you’re unable to, you keep failing.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
So for me, I would circle gullible. I would circle impulsive. I won’t tell you the rest. Then you turn over the page and in a mixed up order, the question is, which of these following behavior descriptions, things about yourself do you really value? And so for me, I would circle being trusting and being spontaneous. And as long as I value being trusting and spontaneous, I’m going to be gullible and impulsive.
So, you know, and so what a nicer world, you know, much nicer world we live in. Right, right. And so that means that for all these bad guys, all the, the people on the other side, rather than just you Know, presuming that they’re all idiots or nasty or whatever way we describe them, if we were more mindful, we’d understand that each of the things they’re saying and doing in some other context makes sense.
Bert Martinez:
Yes. And to your point, we see this again now in politics. You see it all over social media, where if you don’t agree with my point of view, you’re an idiot and you should be destroyed or eliminated or.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
There are very few of us for whom that’s probably true.
Bert Martinez:
Right?
Dr. Ellen Langer:
No, I’m joking.
Bert Martinez:
Oh, my goodness. Okay. All right. So. So I want to talk about mindfulness here. You are the mother of mindfulness. And see if how you define mindfulness today, let’s say in the context of your research and how you think it differs from the commonly understood concept of mindfulness.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
When many people hear the word mindful, they think of meditation. And meditation is fine, but it’s very different from what I study. Although I did some of the early work on positive consequences of meditation, meditation isn’t mindfulness. Meditation is a practice you undergo in order to result in post meditative mindfulness. You take yourself out of the world and sit still for 20 minutes twice a day. Mindfulness, as I study it, you’re very much in the world, and it’s not a practice. In some sense, it’s a way of life. Once you recognize that you don’t know.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
The people know they don’t know, so they pretend they think they’re supposed to know. When they realize that, because everything is always changing, everything looks different from different perspectives. Nobody knows. So you can be confident and uncertain, which I think is the most successful posture any of us should assume. Right? When you know, you don’t know, you listen.
If you know what I was going to say next, why pay attention? And so the problem is, all of us, especially the ACE students like myself, memorized and learned a lot of absolute facts. And these facts are simply wrong in some contexts. So to persuade you, I’ve said this so many times now, soon everybody will know the answer.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
But if I were to ask you, how much is one plus one two. No, not always. If you add one cloud plus one cloud, one plus one is one. You add one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry. One plus one. One plus one is one. Here’s one that’s fun. Even though if you put one pizza on top of another, so you’re adding one pizza plus one pizza, that would equal two pizzas.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
But if you put one lasagna over one lasagna, one plus one would be one. It would just be a taller, bigger meal.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
So in the real world, one plus one probably doesn’t equal two as often as it does. Moreover, most people are not aware that 1 +1 is 2. If you’re using a base 10 number system. If you’re using a base 2 number system, 1 +1 is written as 10. So now, the reason I find this potentially enlightening is if after we finish speaking, someone were to come over to you and ask you, so how much is one plus one? You’re not going to mindlessly blur it out. Two, you’re going to pay attention to the context. And now you have choices. And that’s very important because when you’re mindless, the past is dictating your present.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
When you’re mindful, you have many options. So you can see how it has nothing to do with meditation. Now, it’s interesting, while so many people in the world use the word mindful and in context where meditation would be totally ridiculous, but are not, not aware of the way we study it, which I think is important for people to understand because the consequences are enormous. The simple process of noticing new things. Remember, you’re not going to notice if you think you know. Right?
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
So very simply, noticing new things, the neurons are firing. And 45 years of data shows me that it’s literally and figuratively enlivening. And when you’re mindful, you light up. People find you more attractive, as I said a moment before, that recognize that people’s behavior makes sense because you understand, no matter what you’re trying to explain, has potentially many understandings. So your relationships are better, your memory is better, virtually everything. And if 45 years is a lot of time to study this, and you know, so we find we make people more mindful, they live longer. It improves your health, it improves your relationships. But beyond all of that, it leaves its imprint on the things that you’re doing.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And so everything is in some sense improved. And it’s so easy. So there’s either. There are two ways to get there. Either, top down, recognize you don’t know, so then you’ll naturally tune in, or bottom up, have experience after experience where you’re looking for new things about the things you think you know. And then all of a sudden you see, gee, you didn’t know it as well as you thought you did, and your attention will naturally go to it.
Bert Martinez:
I like that. That’s all right. So something that you said, mindfulness will extend life. You live longer with mindfulness Talk about this. What do you.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
What do you mean? Okay. In many ways, you know, you’re going to end up living a happier, longer life. Lots of the work that I talk about in the new book, the Mindful Body, I deal with mind body unity. Not, you know, there’s many other things in the book. But this takes. This is one of the major points people don’t realize. You know, people think they have a mind and a body. And if you think in terms of mind and body, then the question is, how do you get from this thought to the body to something real? And I point out, these are only words.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
If we put the mind and body back together, then wherever we’re putting one, we’re necessarily putting the other. It’s one thing. So now imagine all of the things that you can think of with respect to your health and happiness and so on. And so we have lots of studies. The original study is called the counterclockwise study, which I can tell you is a famous study.
How could I call my own study famous? Because if you tune in to the Simpsons, Go to Havana, they talk about the study. But this was the first test of the mind body unity. We took a retreat, retrofitted it to 20 years earlier, and had elderly men live there as if they were their younger selves, speaking about past events as if they’re just unfolding and so on.
What we found was their vision improved their hearing, improved their strength, their memory, and they look noticeably younger. Now we have many, many studies that I report in the book. Let me just tell you the second, and then I’ll go to the left so we can talk about other things. Things as well. We took chambermaids, and first thing we do is just ask chambermaids, how much exercise do you get? And oddly, I mean, it’s all these women are doing all day long, right? Cleaning hotel and motel room. They don’t think they’re getting any exercise because they think exercise, and according to the Surgeon general, is what you do after work. And after work, they’re just too tired.
Now we have women who are doing all this exercise but are oblivious to it. Okay? Now, so they should be healthier, right? Right. But it turns out they’re not. So now we divide. It’s such a simple study. Alec Crummond, I did this. We divide them into two groups and we teach one group, your work is exercise. Making beds is like working on this machine at the gym.
Dusting is like working on this machine at the gym. And, you know, and so on. So now Again, we just have two groups. One group that realizes, gee, my work is exercise. The other group doesn’t realize their work is exercise. We take many, many measures before we start, and then at the end turns out that the two groups are not working any differently. One group isn’t working any harder, they’re not eating any differently. Seems really all that’s different at this point is the belief that the work is exercise.
As a result of that change in mindset, they lost weight, there was a change in waist to hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure came back. Wow. Yeah. This is much more important in some sense than. Than I even realized when we first did the study and reported it. This is a study on the nocebo effect. Okay? Now, everybody knows what the placebo is, right? You take a pill that you think is something, but it isn’t. It’s right.
It’s just a sugar pill. It’s in it by definition. And yet you get better. And that’s, by the way, probably the strongest evidence for mind body unity, right? Nothing is happening except the change in belief and your health improves. The nocebo is, in some sense the opposite of this. You take something real, but you don’t think it’ll have an effect. And it turns out it doesn’t have an effect here. These women are exercising, both groups, everybody who’s got that job as a chambermaid, but they don’t realize they’re exercising and they don’t reap the benefits.
Now, you think about that, because if you go to a therapist, for example, and it could be medical, psychiatric, doesn’t matter, but you’re given medication and the medication doesn’t work, what is the doctor likely to do? Give you a different medication or raise the dosage and when?
Perhaps what you should be told is you’re a partner in all of this. You know, if you don’t believe it’s going to work, it’s not going to work. So let me tell you, the last study, we have many, many of these with all sorts of illnesses and the like. We inflict a wound now, I bet you knowing me now for all of 10 minutes, think I probably really hurt these people. But it was a minor wound, but a wound nonetheless. And the people are individual. Iran, they’re in front of a clock unbeknownst to them. For a third of the people, the clock is going twice as fast as real time.
For a third of the people, the clock is going half as fast as real time. For a third of the people, the clock is real time. The question we’re asking is, does this clock time influence the healing? One would expect it’s going to heal when it heals right, doesn’t matter what the silly clock says. But that’s not what happened. Perceived time determines how long it takes to heal. We have people in asleep, so we have so many people in a sleep study, they wake up. And I have a lot of clock studies. I’m not sure, you know, once you start doing something, you do too much of it.
But anyway, we change the, the clock again. They’re sleeping, they wake up, they say, oh, they got two hours more sleep than they got two hours fewer or the amount of sleep they actually got. Biological and cognitive functions seem to follow clock time. Perceived time. Our thoughts about our health are crucial. Now. You know, when people. There was an article written about all my stuff, it was a.
The COVID story for the New York Times Sunday Times many years ago. And the editors just kept asking, but what’s happening? You know, they, they want to know what is the mechanism. But if it’s one thing, we don’t have to look for a mechanism. However, people shouldn’t misunderstand. I’m not saying there’s nothing going on under the hood. What I’m saying is what’s going on internally tends to happen simultaneously rather than this affects this and affects this and so on. But anyway, we have lots and lots of studies showing that our thoughts are far more powerful than most of us understand them today.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. Well, I know for years, for example, let’s say athletes, professional athletes especially, will spend hours on visualization and they, and they can feel, they put their body in there in that situation over and.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Over again, really important. So let me, let me interrupt you to say that other labs, not, not I, but I report this in the mindful body, have found that imagined exercise, so you’re, you’re not lifting weights, you’re thinking of yourself. Lifting weights has virtually the same effect as the actual exercise.
And that’s really important for a whole different reason that when you’re diagnosed with a chronic illness, you along with most people would probably think, well, the symptoms are going to stay the same or just get worse. Nothing moves in only one direction. You’re led to believe or, you know, not explicitly, but I think most people assume chronic means that’s it, there’s nothing you can do. But there are lots of things you can do about it. Not the least is imagined exercise.
If being mindful, you know, when you’re told you have a chronic illness, most people shut down in Some way they’re depressed, they reduce the number of activities and interactions they have, and so on. And those things increase their mindlessness. And when you’re mindless, the system is turning itself off. There’s no reason. When you have this chronic illness, you can’t have a lively, active mind. And then the neurons are firing, and that will be good for your health.
Bert Martinez:
One of the things. One of the things real quick that. That I’ve enjoyed so far, I’ve never thought about.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Have I enjoyed all of this?
Bert Martinez:
I’ve enjoyed it so far.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Every minute.
Bert Martinez:
Every minute of it. But I’ve never thought of mindlessness. Yeah, I. I love that description. And it really helps you to understand that when your mind is going in all these different directions and you’re stressed out, you’re being. Mindlessness.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
No, no. Stress. Stress is mindless.
Bert Martinez:
Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. Stress is mindless. So. Yeah, yeah. And so this idea of. Of mindlessness, to me is.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Is very powerful.
Bert Martinez:
Very powerful.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Yeah. No, when I. You’ll enjoy this since we’re having such an intimate conversation. Many, many years ago, when I started all of this work, I was studying mindlessness. I don’t remember who. I can’t even remember the situation, but the abstract version of this where somebody said to me, not nice, I guess. You are what you study. And so I switched it around and started studying mindfulness.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And it was at that point that I started to learn about Buddhism and, you know, meditation. I was already in a very different place, but that was very rewarding because I saw from this Western scientific perspective, one was able to come to many of the. The very same advantages.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah. That’s incredible. And going back to the person who says, you are what you study, that’s the same thing as saying the same thing is that you are what you eat or whatever you focus on, you get more of. So back to living in a. In a negative environment, you’re gonna feel worse. And then this. The study where you took these older guys and they were feeling younger because they were in that state of thinking about being younger.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Yeah. And their earlier cells was primed. And most of the things we think we can’t do are just a function of our mind. And so if you start to realize there’s no evidence that you can’t, you know, all you can. There’s no way of doing an experiment to show that something can’t be. All you can do is see, test something and see if that does result in whatever you’re looking for. Doesn’t and if it doesn’t, that doesn’t mean there isn’t some other way of doing it. But we start off with so many negative mindsets that are limiting.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
You know, mostly as you get older, the assumption is you can’t. And so the first experience, you know, many older people worry so much about their memory. So, you know, I teach Harvard students and these are very bright, wonderful kids. Right. And you know, so periodically when I give one lecture on age or two on aging, and to make clear that they don’t have to worry the way many of their grandparents and great grandparents are worried, I just ask them, what, what was the last thing I said on the last lecture?
Nobody remembers. The point being, these very smart young people are also not infrequently forgetful. But if you believe that as you get older you’re going to be, your memory is going to leave you and that could result in dementia and big bad things, then as soon as you get a little evidence, it becomes again a self fulfilling prophecy. If people don’t realize that since everything can be understood in so many different ways, we can find support for virtually anything we believe.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And so if I asked you, what are all the ways you’re wonderful, you’re going to generate all the ways you’re wonderful. Now, all the ways you’re awful are not the opposite of this. You know, we have to be careful about the way we talk to ourselves.
Bert Martinez:
Yes.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
So, for example, the, you know, am I rigid about how am I wonderful? I’m very consistent. How am I awful? I’m, you know, I’m very boring or rigid, you know, so everything can be turned around in multiple ways. But the way we talk to ourselves and our beliefs are far more important, far, far more important than I think most people realize. You talked a little about stress. And people need to understand that stress is psychological. It’s in our heads, it’s not in events. Events don’t cause stress. It’s the way you view the event.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Sure. If you say to yourself, this thing is going to happen and when it happens it’s going to be awful, how could you know it would be irrational to feel good after that. It’s a simple little way of turning it around. If you said to yourself, what are three, five reasons that this thing won’t happen? So you immediately feel better, yeah, maybe it’ll happen, maybe it won’t. But then I like to do the next step is, let’s assume it does happen. How was that actually a good thing? Oh, and then, you know, when you do this Often enough. I’ve done this my whole life. You just sit back, it doesn’t matter.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Whatever happens, you know, is going to be fine, you know, so we’re talking now. If we lose the connection, you know, I’ll go have lunch. It won’t be bad, right? Right. But you know, then you become very powerful. Right? Once you recognize, you don’t have to be afraid of events. And for stress. Two things I want to point out. One is almost always the thing that you’re stressed about doesn’t happen, you know, so look at all that time you’re wasting.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
People are wasting. Second, that if we’re having the conversation now and it happened and then you got through it, you know, So I think people, when some, when they get themselves crazed, need to take a breath and just ask themselves, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience? I didn’t finish the assignment. I burned the, you know, who cares? And, you know, so I, I think that again, my view is a little more extreme than most people. But I’d make you a Wager that in 10 years the whole world will agree with me, which is that stress.
No, I mean this seriously, that stress is the major killer. That I wanted to do this research was before COVID and I was doing it with people in China, and for a million reasons, we couldn’t, didn’t end up doing it. But if we took people who were just diagnosed with cancer, pick whatever cancer we can do with five different kinds of cancer, then no one is going to be happy. And you tell somebody you have breast cancer, and then I say, oh, well, wonderful.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Or who cares? Okay, so give them then, let’s say a couple of weeks to adjust to it. Now, if we measure their level of stress every three, four weeks, I think the stress that they experience will be a better predictor of the course of the disease than genetics, nutrition, and I even think treatment. All right, now think about that, because stress is psychological, right? All right, you know, so I. I think we’ve just scratched the surface. And let me tell you something. I mean, you’re talking about athletes. This is, I think probably it will be interesting to people. You take something like fatigue.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Most people who have notion of mind, body dualism, so they don’t think your thoughts have anything to do with how you feel. Believe. You know, you just keep doing. At some point you just become exhausted. Don’t tell me I can change that. I experience myself as well. Okay? So I asked my students, how far is it humanly possible to run? And they know a marathon is what, 26 miles? So they say 26 miles. They know it’s more than 26, so they keep guessing.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And then eventually somebody will say something like 50 miles and everybody groans because that’s just too far from where they are. Then I turn on a YouTube showing the Tarajamura, who are a tribe in Copper Canyon, Mexico, who as a rule can run over 200 miles without stopping.
Bert Martinez:
Wow.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
The difference between what people tend to think they can do and what, you know, what’s already been shown people can do doesn’t even compare to the difference, I think, between the, the control we think we can exert over our health and what we can actually exert. And another way of understanding this is that everything is mutable because people think there are these things that I just can’t deal with and then I’m going to be a failure. And they work themselves up and diminish every aspect of their life.
But when you recognize that virtually everything that is was at one point a decision, somebody decided, make it that way. Right, right. And those people lived at a different time or different from you and have different biases and so on. And when you simply recognize, yeah, this was decided by people, I’m a different person, who cares, Then you feel the freedom to do things differently. And it really makes a difference.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Most of the time, you know, if you ask somebody if they can change the height of their chair, you know, anything, they’ll say yes, but it won’t occur to them because we take what is as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Right. And give up all the control we can actually exercise over our, our lives.
Bert Martinez:
You know, I’m reminded, I’m reminded of. Was he an author, Norman Cousins, when he was diagnosed with cancer and he.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Laughed himself into hell.
Bert Martinez:
Right. To prove that point, that, that it is psychological. And so he would just watch comedy shows for eight hours, ten hours a day.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And humor, humor is mindful, you know, that what something is only funny when you’re thinking one thing and then you get to the punch. Oh yeah. Haha. At this point, I often break into telling you jokes to prove the point, but I’m not going to. Do I even remember the jokes? But anyway, so yes, I think it was the mindfulness that did in fact affect his health.
Bert Martinez:
So, okay, going on that same thought stream there, something like you mentioned, chronic illness or immune disease, lupus, fatigue. Chronic fatigue, whatever it’s called, if, if somebody was to be mindful about it and just pour in more, would it be positive thinking? Would it be what. How do you go about. Yeah, how do you go about using mindfulness to correct or to.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
I’ll tell you. So in the mindful body, I talk about how, you know, I wanted to find. Since placebos are so important, so powerful is. And we can’t give ourselves a placebo because, you know, you can’t, you know, take this thing that you know is nothing and believe it’s something. But so then I came up with instead of that, what I call attention to symptom variability. That’s just a fancy way of saying being mindful Variability has changed. Noticing change. Oh, it’s not what I thought it was.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And you, you tune in. Okay, so now we’ve taken many big diseases, and all we do is call people periodically and we say, you know, is the symptom better or worse than before? And why? All right, so now, this little procedure is wonderfully effective for four reasons. The first is that when you.
When you have a chronic illness and believe there’s no. You have nothing you can do for yourself, you feel helpless. That’s bad for you and bad for your health. Second, by examining that, you know, how this symptom is now perhaps a little better than it was before, you realize, gee, I’m not always in maximum pain, for example. Third, by this process of why now? Why now is a little better or a little worse than before, that engages mindful search, and that mindfulness itself is good for your health.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And then finally, I believe you’re more likely to find a cure if you’re looking for one than if you’re not. So we did this simple thing with people who have Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, stroke, arthritis, chronic pain, a host of biggies, we’ll say, and in each case, we get very positive results. And. And this is something that there’s no downside. You know, it’s not like taking medication that turns out to be the wrong medication for you.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And you don’t have to do this in place of anything medical you might want to do. But it’s often the case that there’s a long time between you take the test and you get the results or you get the appointment in the first place. And so there are things that we can do to help ourselves.
Bert Martinez:
I think that. Back to your thing about. Your point about we’re just scratching the surface, which I find intriguing, that we’re just. That you’re thinking were just scratching the surface. We’re still finding out about it because you’ve been studying it for 45 years. There’s tons of books on, on not only positive thinking, but the, but just different things about visualization and changing your thoughts changes your, your environment.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Yeah, but I don’t want to call it positive thinking, even though I know positive psychologist, positive psychology, because what’s the difference? Go ahead. I’m going to tell you that people who, who are being positive with a friend who’s being negative sees you as, you know, soft. Right? I mean, just, you know, and, you know, the person who sees things positively is sure they’re right.
The person who sees things negatively is sure they’re right because both, both are potentially right. So I think that what we need to do is this act of noticing and not evaluate whether it’s positive or negative. Now if I can think of three good reasons to do, to do this thing and maybe one negative reason to do it, but the good things that I’m thinking of are much bigger. I’m going to choose to do it, to think about the advantages. Right? I mean, once, once you have a choice, I can see you again as impulsive, in which case I don’t want anything to do with you, or I can see you as spontaneous, in which case I look forward to the interactions, you know, and so when you start living this way, you come to the point, what’s the point in that? Negativity.
Bert Martinez:
I like that so much. But it’s training, right? It’s a habit that you have to build that back to this mindfulness. It’s when you’re experiencing whatever you want to call it, whether it’s, it’s that stress or negative thinking. What’s the counter to that? How do I go do. Okay, I’m so I’m, I start thinking negatively now. I’m aware of it. So that makes me mindful. And then.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Yeah, and, and at that point, then you look for other ways of explaining the event. So if it’s stress, the first thing to do would be to ask yourself how it’s not going to even happen. You know, people mistakenly think they can predict things and prediction is an illusion. You know, you can predict for the group, but no scientist, no thinking person after they think about it, will believe you can predict any individual action.
So if I were going to make a wager with you, we’re going to go to a Mercedes parking lot and you can randomly choose a car and you put that key in the car. Will the key, will the engine start or not? And we’re going to bet if it doesn’t start, you give me your little pinky okay, let me cut that off. And if it does that, I’ll give you a million dollars. Okay.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Now, you know, Mercedes is a great car. I mean, chances are most of the. But are all of them gonna start at this? You know, nobody’s gonna take the bet. So we know that you can’t predict the individual event. Now, when you deeply know this, then you see all your stress is a function of making this prediction, which you can predict. And so the best way to, to train yourself not to think you can predict is to predict the opposite and explain it. You know? You know that he’s been miserable for so long. When I see him this time, he’s probably going to be happy because, you know, he can only be down for so long or he’s been miserable for something going to continue to be.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
There’s no way of knowing. Everything is always changing. And we have to realize we confuse the stability of our mindsets with the stability of the underlying phenomena. Every time you think something is steady state, it’s because of your thoughts, because it’s changing. It’s sort of like the, the proverbial brook. You know that, yeah, it’s the same brook, but it’s not that none of the water is the same. None of the water, not one molecule. Yet we hold it still by calling it a brook and seeing it as the same brook.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
So once we recognize that everything can be understood in many different ways, that everything keeps changing, and, and we’re aware that we don’t have to worry about outcomes because the, our experience of those outcomes is going to be dependent on the way we frame events, then, you know, every day is new. Everything is potentially exciting.
Bert Martinez:
All right, let me ask you this. As, as humans, we need a certain level of dependability, of certainty that, hey, you don’t think so? Because it seems like that would be like, if you’re constantly saying, hey, things are changing all the time. Nothing’s the same.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
No, but the dependability is in yourself. You know, once you know that, you can deal with whatever happens. You know that. I just came back from a brief trip to the cave, and the, the weather report was that it was going to rain and it was going to be cold, so I packed all these rain and cold clothes. It was beautiful. You know, it could have been the reverse. Right, right. You know, I’m expecting, you know, but so what? You know, there are ways of being fun in the. Having fun in the rain and so on. So again, the more mindful you are, the more choices you have.
Bert Martinez:
Oh, I like that. Right.
Bert Martinez:
The more mindful you are, the more choices you have. That is a great, great slogan. I don’t know. It’s just a great thought, right? It’s a. It’s good. I like that. Write that one down. That was good.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Well, I mean, it’s also interesting because it illustrates many of the other points we’ve been talking about, because people hate doubt. Right. But if you don’t have doubt, then you can’t have a choice.
Bert Martinez:
That’s interesting. I like that idea.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Let’s write that one down.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah. So if you don’t have doubt, you don’t have a choice. What a spectacular way of thinking about that. Again, That’s. That is something good to write down.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Okay, now, I’ve written almost all of these down, so all you really have to do is read Mindful Body.
Bert Martinez:
Mindful Body. All right. And I’m going to put it. I’ll put. I’ll put a link here in the show Notes for Mindful Body. It’s available on Amazon on or where you get your favorite books. Yeah. So I like this idea.
Bert Martinez:
All right, so. So as you’ve been doing this again for 45 years, you’re. Are you constantly just, I guess, read? I mean, I’m sorry, not rediscovering, but discovering, I guess, a new level where, Wow, I didn’t.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
I didn’t know that everything is, you know, feels new. And. And if it doesn’t feel new, that’s because you’re mindlessly holding it still. So you’re looking at the brook as if all the water is the same, you know, as it’s always been. You know, before I started to paint, if you had asked me what color are leaves? I would have said green. You know, leaving aside the fall where they change colors in the meanwhile, then I started to paint and I started, oh, my God, there are hundreds and hundreds of shades of green, and they all change depending on the time of the day, you know, and this thing that was just green became multifaceted and exciting. So, you know, we do this with our spouses, our close friends, whatever, where you think you know them and you don’t pay any attention to them. That’s the way relationships fall apart.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Right. If you start, you know, just go home today, and if you live with somebody, if not, knock on your neighbor’s door and just notice three, five new things about them. And the beautiful thing about that is that they then feel seen. And that’s the. The essence of a good relationship. So it’s good for everybody.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. And to your point, there is a. There’s a show called 48 Hours that has. Has gone all in on spousal murder. Every episode is. They look like the perfect family. They had a loving this and a loving that. And you know, you know, it’s.
Bert Martinez:
Somebody’s gonna kill somebody in some weird way. And so we never really truly know anybody, even though you might know him for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. But I love this idea of looking, being mindful and noticing 1, 2, 3 different things or. Or focusing on some of the more positive attributes.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Relationships, in some sense, just like gaining weight, you know, one morning you wake up and your clothes don’t fit well. You don’t gain 10, 20 pounds overnight. If you’re not paying any attention and you only notice when there’s something big, then it’s much harder to deal with things. If you noticed you gained a pound, two pounds. Anybody could take off a pound or two pounds without it being a big deal. And we do this with most things. Once we think we’ve got it, then we go to something else and think, whatever that thing we’ve got, the success at work, the relationship or what have you is going to be as. As it was initially.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And even though things need care, it’s almost like dusting. Although I’ve never really realized the relationship between relationships and dusting. You know, it’s not. If you dust terrible. Who likes dusting? But you dust. You can’t then leave it forever, right? The dust is going to come back. And so, you know, you have to organize yourself differently rather than trying to complete. And that’s another mistake, I think, that people make.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
They don’t realize that it’s the. The doing, the creating, the journey. Other people have said this as well. That’s fun. Not getting there, you know, once you get there. And an example that I use frequently is you’re a little kid in the elevator and you can’t reach that button. And let’s say your father picks you up and now you can reach and you’re excited. Then you get a little.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Next time you go in, you’re a little taller and so. And at some point, wow, you hit that button, you can reach it yourself, you’re ecstatic, and then that’s the end of it. I mean, when was the last time you were excited when you went into an elevator? You know, so the point. The point is that my. Can we stop right there in just a second? Because my battery seems to be. And I don’t understand why something’s not plugged in. Right. Okay.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
This shouldn’t be. The mistake people make is that they think life is going to be wonderful once they’ve mastered something. Right. And it’s the mastering that’s fun. Once you think you’ve mastered it, then it becomes mindless. And when it’s mindless, you’re not there to enjoy it one way or the other. And so if we recognize that, then the difficulties we experience will be part of the experience, you know, rather than something to let us lead us to quit and say it’s too hard.
Bert Martinez:
Right, right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
I mean, if you wanted to win every competition, you know, or let’s say play tic tac toe against four year olds or a five year old, you’re going to win all the time, you know, but what fun is that? Right?
Bert Martinez:
Right. Well, and, and I think this is something that takes time to understand because we’re all excited about reaching that goal. We, we got to get there. You know, I got to get this degree, I got to get, I got to get, you know, the, the job or whatever. But when you think about college, you spend almost no time talking about, yeah, I graduated and got this degree, look at my degree. You think about the friends that you’ve made, the experiences, the ups, the downs, the whole journey. And then you and people always talk about, when I look back, I look back in fondness because of this and that and this event or this person. So you’re right.
Bert Martinez:
But this journey, this, this enjoying the journey is a mindful thing because most of us don’t enjoy it as much as we should. We don’t appreciate it.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
No, very often we don’t enjoy it at all. We think we’ll enjoy the final outcome, but the final outcome, you know, so you get the award, Great, the day is over. You know, it no longer has that zing. But I think that what people don’t realize is, or you know, when I say it, they’re going to say, of course.
But every action suggests that that’s not leading them to how they’re being in this world, that all the money people seek and the success and the status is empty in its own right. The only reason we want it is so that we’ll have the respect of other people, so that we’ll have our self respect. Now if you, if that’s true, you can, you know, bypass all of this nonsense by simply acknowledging that what everybody does makes sense or else they wouldn’t do it. And so there’s no reason to be taking yourself to Task all the things that people regret.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Regrets are mindless. You know, it’s so funny to me when somebody said, oh, you know, whatever they’ve chosen doesn’t work. They should have done the other thing. The other thing could have been worse, could have been better. There’s no way of knowing. But more than that, you don’t have to rely on this mindless understanding of the outcome. You know, no matter what happens, there’s a way that it’s actually an advantage. You know, there’s some data, not from my lab that people, once they have heart attacks or even they get a diagnosis of some dread disease, then they first come alive.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Then all of a sudden you realize we’re not going to be here forever. And why do I care about this silly thing? You know, all the things that seem so crucial all of a sudden fade in importance. And we can adopt those attitudes without having to get that dread diagnosis. But it’s all to get to a place where we can get to without the mindless part of that journey.
Bert Martinez:
You know something I’m wondering, I find that interesting that all this activity to again get the accolades, the, the money or whatever is to get the self respect of others so we can have our own self respect. So you look at somebody, let’s say an extreme version of that, Jeff Bezos, who’s one of the richest men in the world and just recently retired. So I guess, I guess he finally got enough self respect where he said, I don’t need any more. I don’t give a crap about the, you know, I’m just gonna go enjoy my life, right. And took off with his new wife and is out, you know, traveling the world with all his wonderful toys. But that’s to me a such an interesting idea that I, I’m writing it down. I wrote it. I’m gonna have a book by the time.
Bert Martinez:
It’s on all the things I’ve learned from Dr. Ellen. But it, it is a great way of thinking about that, that all this self respect or not, I’m sorry, All the respect that we want from others is to have our own self respect.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Right? Yeah. I’m going to give you another one, one liner. Okay. And I describe this. I, I make it very clear, I think in the mindful body. I’ll try to do it briefly here, which is that most of our stress comes from worrying about the decisions we have to make. And that the bottom line is rather than waste your time trying to make the right decision, make the decision right now. There is no way to evaluate A decision in advance of making it.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
You know that. And once you’ve made, you make a decision to take action. Once you take the action, you can’t evaluate the other alternative. Right? Because you’re not the same person. I mean, should I eat this or this? I eat this, I’m no longer as hungry. If I eat the other, I can’t see what it would have tasted like before any of that, you know? And so we were taught, and I think typically more implicitly, but to do cost benefit analyses when you’re making a decision, it’s ridiculous. With great respect for my colleagues who study cost benefit analysis, I think that it’s mindless because if every cost is a benefit and every benefit is a cost, depending on how you frame it, then if you add it up, it’s not going to tell you what to do. And that when you’re gathering information, which is fun in its own right, it’s not going to lead to a better decision, but it’s going to tell you more about the world and may be useful in the future.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
But as you’re gathering the information, at some point, you have to stop. Now, when do you stop? Okay, so something tells you you have enough information, but then you find out, you know, okay, should I go to Paris or should I go to Florence? And I think that, you know, first of all, if you can’t decide, that means that the options are psychologically the same for you. They’re the same. That’s why you can’t decide now. You start gathering information, and the information might pull them apart. So let’s say if I asked you, we’ll change it. Did you want A or B? Who knows? Okay, so you don’t know. You gather information, and then you find out, A is $100 and B is $10,000.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
What’s the decision? Right, right. So once you articulate the difference, the decision follows mechanically. All right? Now, as you’re gathering the information and you think you have enough, so you decide, you know. So back and forth between, let’s say, what was I going to Florence or Paris, and I go back and forth, and I found this. Okay, Yeah, I really. I’d prefer going to Paris. And then I find out, my new best friend, you just bought a ticket to go to Florence. That would be more fun to go to Florence.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
All right? But damn, I already bought my ticket. So the point is, there’s no natural endpoint to the information we could take in. And any new piece could change the decision that we’re making. And, you know, the bottom line for all of this is that you. Oh, yes. You know, I have, I’ll tell you, I have. I checked to see everything hooked up. Right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
So I have an extension cord. So I made sure that the computer plug was tight in the extension cord. Right. But I never saw that the cord itself wasn’t plugged in. All right, so where were we?
Bert Martinez:
Oh, my goodness. That’s funny.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Where were we? Good.
Bert Martinez:
That’s a good question.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
I was talking about decision about past. Yeah, yeah.
Bert Martinez:
So, okay, so you know what? I. I think that, that this idea, first of all, going back to the beginning of the conversation where mindfulness is not meditation. And I think unfortunately, that is the biggest myth or misperception that people think.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Well, yeah, you know, it’s very interesting because by the one hand, if you ask somebody to describe mindfulness, they’ll come up with something like meditation. But you can’t open a magazine. Or listen to somebody on tele. That clearly has nothing to do with meditation and it’s dream. The other. A few years ago, I was giving a lecture in Chicago and I went around the corner from where I had been giving this talk and I saw a sign, the Mindful Burger. You know, so the. It’s hard to imagine how that burger was meditating or what have you.
Bert Martinez:
The Mindful Burger.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
It’s important that people recognize the difference because this is so easy. You know, it’s something that everybody thinks they’re already doing, but they’re not. You know that when you’re not there because you’re mindless, you’re not there to know you’re not there. And so people obvious to. To their mindlessness and it’s killing them literally and figuratively.
Bert Martinez:
Right, right. And what’s so interesting, I’m trying to remember growing up and you hear so many variations of what you think is what you become, but it’s never really taught. It’s never really something that people really. When I say people, there’s no school, at least elementary or junior or high school or even most college classes aren’t really doing a deep dive.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Yeah, I’m trying to change all of that. I’ve had plans. You know, funding is an issue. But to have mindful schools, I have in the process of working on mindful hospital. You know, everything can be changed. And I mean, hospitals are the, the oddest in some sense. If I’m right, which clearly I believe without certainty, but strongly that I’m right, that’s. Everybody knows stress is not good for you.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Right. So even if I’m Wrong about it being the worst thing for you. Everybody will agree it’s not good for you. Yet who, you know, who’s ever gone to the hospital where you walk in and your stress isn’t increased immediately. Bizarre. You know, the, the first thing that happens is you feel worse rather than better to go help yourself. So we want to, want to change all of that, create the mindful hospital. In mindful schools, it’s really very easy to teach people to be more mindful.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
All you need to do, you know, we can do this in very fancy ways, and I have lots of designs for such. But the simplest is just teach conditionally.
Bert Martinez:
It could be when you say teach conditionally, explain.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
That’s right. How much is one in one? Okay, so right now when you say two, let’s say. No, you don’t say two, let’s say you say one. The teacher is going to make you feel stupid. And in subtly communicating non verbally what she thinks of you for not knowing the simplest of answers, everybody in the class is going to look down on you. If the teacher were mindful, she’d say, oh, how did you come to that? And then you’d explain, one watt of chewing gum plus one watt of chewing gum equals one wat, and everybody would have learned. So, but all the information that’s presented is presented conditionally. It would seem that it could be perhaps one way of looking at it.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
When we ask people for answers to questions, you don’t ask for a single answer. What else might it be? What else might it be? And so on. And you know that. And you encourage people to enjoy the process of finding out where they don’t have to be scared of not getting the right answer because there is no one single right answer.
Bert Martinez:
Right. And I could definitely see that happening maybe as early as high school.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Oh, well, before.
Bert Martinez:
No, But I’m just saying with today’s teaching environment, I, I think, and this is my opinion, I know I’m going to offend some, some teachers out there, but it seems like to me that a lot of teachers are setting their ways. They’re not really wanting to change. I really thought that one of the benefits from COVID is that, is that our teaching environment would have been shaken up enough to maybe try new, different, to try different things other than just learning online. But most teachers are so set in their ways, and then the teachers association is set in their ways, and it seems very difficult.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Well, as you’re describing it, it’s all steeped in mindlessness, which is not good for anybody. So when the teacher knows that the teacher can’t be certain, and that’s good rather than bad. The teacher is more willing to change, you know, because they don’t have to be afraid of failure. And so the teacher becomes more mindful by learning. Oh, maybe one on one isn’t always two, and the learning experience becomes more collaborative. You know, it’s. I did this study that’s going to seem far afield, but I think it’s relevant. And it also speaks to leadership.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Although when I did the study, I didn’t know that until I started to write it up. Okay, so we were take. We took orchestras, and we were going to have half of them perform mindfully and half of them perform mindlessly. When they were mindless, the orchestras were told, remember a time you played this piece of music where you were very happy with it and just play it that way again. When they were mindful, they were told, make it new in very subtle ways that only you would know. We do this sort of thing across lots of experiments, always same old, same old versus make it new. We record the piece, we play it for people who know nothing about the study, and they overwhelmingly prefer the mindfully played piece of. All right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And the musicians prefer playing it that way. Now. So I start writing this up and I realized, well, isn’t that interesting? Essentially everybody doing it their own way resulted in superior coordinated experience. No, no, they’re not playing jazz, they’re playing classical music. And that led me to think that the major job of the leader should be to encourage other people’s mindfulness. So leader in industry in front of a classroom or somebody in the health field doesn’t matter. Everybody prospers. And we have some wild data that you’ll have to read the book to learn about.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
But as mindfulness is contagious, so if you want to change an organization, you don’t have to change each and every stubborn person that you change a few. And in and of itself, it will change more people. Find people who are mindful much more appealing because you, you have a sense, although you don’t articulate it yourself. But they’re not going to be evaluative, they’re going to be supportive. And who wouldn’t prefer that kind of an interaction?
Bert Martinez:
You know what’s interesting about what you just said about a leader should encourage people to be mindful and. And again, this idea of trying it again your way. I think of all the different businesses that were started, one of them being IBM, who at that point, the gentleman who started IBM was working for The National Cash Register Company, I think, whatever it was called. But why people, why most people leave a company and start a business that ends up competing with the company they left is because they weren’t allowed to do it their way way. They weren’t allowed to try something different and that causes that split. So it’s like, wow.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Yeah. And how, and how can you, you know, what does it mean to do it the same way over and over? Things change. And what was good before is less good now. Or even if it’s still good now, there are circumstances in which it’s probably not going to be good. You know, everything about business, well, about any institution tends to be mindless. That what we do. When you’re hiring, let’s say a CEO, you’re hiring for yesterday because as soon as the, you know, something new comes about, you need a whole different set of skills. Yes.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
This person may or may not have, you know, we’re hell bent on trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions and it’s exhausting.
Bert Martinez:
Well, yeah, what’s that quote by Albert Einstein that that yesterday’s problems or today’s problems will not be solved by today’s thinking. Something along those lines that we have to get out of that. That stuck mindset. And, and, and again, what’s so interesting, how many people are afraid to put forth an idea because they don’t want to be made fun of or.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
I used to do this consulting for a major electricity company and they had a zero accident policy. And I told them that by having that, you’re going to have a maximum lying events. Right. I mean, things happen, but when those things happen, they should be immediately seized for how that’s actually an advantage. You know, the, the old study of very big company is producing a glue and the glue fails to adhere. And oh my God, the CEO suffered what a terrible failure. All that money wasted until somebody in that company thought to use the very property. Failure to heal.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
To stick.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, Adhere, adhere, adhere. Yeah.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Failure, failure to heal. Failure to adhere. But if you make that positive adhering for a short amount of time, then created the post it note.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
I’m sure 3M made a lot more money with the post IT note than it would have made with just another glue.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
So there’s a hint there, which I also talk about in the mindful body about ways of becoming more innovative so that you, if they had said to themselves, you know, the glue didn’t work, some people would just end. And that’s the end of the business. Some people would say, who are a little better would say, how can we use this glue that doesn’t adhere? A failed glue. But the word failure and glue are calling to mind the wrong things. So what you have to do is bring it down to the level of property. And so you say, as I said a moment before, what could you do with a substance that adheres or heals, adheres for a short amount of time? And then many people would come up with things like post it notes.
Bert Martinez:
Yes. And again, the, the thing that I’m taking away from our conversation today is this, this first, this new interpretation, this new definition of mindfulness, and also the definition of mindlessness. I love that. And also that if you’re really, truly mindfulness in business or at home, you’re, you’re going to be open to allowing other people to see things from different points of view, to, to do it their way. And, and just asking these questions of, of what can we do with this situation or with these properties or whatever is so different. And really, as a parent is going to cause you less stress as opposed to, you know, as a parent, we want our kids to be, hey, clean your room this way, or whatever.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Yeah. Also if we, if we say once you realize stress, regret, burnout, any kind of unhappiness are all because of our mindlessness, there’s motivation alone to change it. But, you know, I believe that virtually. This is a very big statement I’m going to make, and I say virtually only because I’m saying it, but I, you know, I really believe all. Okay, so let me be straight about this, that all of our ills, whether personal, interpersonal, professional or global, are the direct or indirect consequence of our mindlessness, which to me is very exciting. Right. It’s very exciting because it, it speaks to enormous possibilities.
Bert Martinez:
Yes.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
We haven’t, you know, acknowledged we’re not aware of yet.
Bert Martinez:
Well, one of the, one of the, one of the things that I like to study, for lack of better terms, is this judgment that we make upon others, especially from, let’s say the, the Christian point of view. You know, Christ talks a lot about not judging others, but as most Christians are very judgy and, and I include myself in that. It’s one of the things that I’ve tried to work on. But then you look at some of these extreme cultures or these extreme religions, like let’s say isis, where they have judged us here in, in, in the Western world as unworthy to live.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Right.
Bert Martinez:
That we should be completely eradicated. And I’m thinking to Make. To make that judgment is just so crazy to me. And then not to only make that judgment, but to follow violence, to act on it, right? It’s like, oh, we got to get rid of these guys. They’re. They’re. They’re making the world worse. It is crazy.
Bert Martinez:
But to your point, it’s that mindlessness that is creating this, and they feed on it. I want to ask you about this. I want to drill down a little bit on. On mindlessness. Regrets is. Is mindlessness. And I want to expand that. Give me some more thought on how we are being mindless when you regret.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Okay, so the first thing is. So you have a decision, you have different alternatives. You choose one it doesn’t work, to experience. For the first of all, that’s mindless right there. Because it doesn’t work or not work. It depends on how you work it. You know that if you’re in a hospital and you find out your surgery is going to be delayed, you know, for me, that would be great. It’d be more time where I’m being fed and I don’t have, you know, certain responsibilities and loving people are coming to visit me, you know, or you can say, damn it, I don’t have the time, you know, to give these extra three days before the surgery, and I’m missing this project, so on.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
So events, again, aren’t causing us stress. But. So now you have this thing that didn’t work out. To assume the other alternative would have been better, it could have been worse, it could have been the same. There’s no way of knowing. So as I was saying, that you make a decision to take an action. Once you take the action, you can’t evaluate the quality of the decision. But you see, it also, it doesn’t matter what you decide, because.
Bert Martinez:
The fact.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
That you can’t decide means the options you’re considering are the same to you. If they weren’t the same, then you could decide, right? You know, if you ask me, do I want lima beans or, oh, I don’t know, give me another vegetable or collage, maybe beans. Okay. I. I’m. You know, I don’t have to think about it. I. I don’t like lima beans.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
I’m a lion. This is very funny. You know, I have nothing against lima beans. When I was young and people would invite me to dinner, which they still do, and they’d say, is there anything you don’t eat? And I thought if I say no, I eat everything, they’re not going to believe me. So I decided that I, I didn’t eat lima beans, so I would have something to say now. And I, I apologize now to all those who love lima beans. But at any rate, so if you can’t decide, it’s because the options are psychologically the same.
Bert Martinez:
I love that.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
So you might as well just flip a coin. I did the thing with my students. I said, okay, I want you to spend the week not making a decision, all right? What I want you to do is as soon as you’re faced with a decision, flip a coin, you know, have some. Heuristically, the first thing that occurred, the first alternative is the one you’re going to choose. But. But don’t spend time making this. And they came back the next week, you know, happy as clams. Clams, really happy.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And they came back the next week stress free. It was a lovely week. You know that. Because whenever you’re making decisions, the only way you can make the decision is to make a prediction. Now, we said, I told you already, and argue it in the book, that prediction is an illusion. You can predict for the group, but not the individual. So should I get the surgery or not? It’s a very hard decision to make. But if you get the surgery, there’s no guarantee that the fact that it worked for 70% of the people who’ve had it means it’s going to work for you, because it also didn’t work for some proportion.
Bert Martinez:
And doctors will tell you that all the time that, hey, this is fairly safe. I’ve done a thousand of them, but it’s not 100% safe.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Exactly. And, you know, before he does your surgery, he might have a fight with his wife, he might have indigestion, he might be eager to go play golf. I mean, there’s just no way of knowing. So our past success, you know, the past is in some sense the best prediction of the future. But I think that’s a mistake because I think that people rely on. You do an experiment, and if the results are significant, that means if you were to do the exact same experiment, which you can never do, you’re likely to get the same results. So those probabilities are given to us in terms of evidence. So the something I’ve said a million times recently as I keep doing all of these podcasts, but it was mind blowing to me.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
I’m at this horse event many years ago, and this man asked me, can I watch his horse for him, because he’s going to get his horse a hot dog. I’m Harvard, Yale, all the way through I’m the A plus student you hate. He’s crazy. Horses don’t eat meat. He came back with the hot dog and the horse ate it.
Bert Martinez:
Wow.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And that’s when I realized everything I think I know can be wrong. But to me, you know, that might bother some people. To me, it was very exciting because it opened up a world of possibilities that meant what? All those things that people say can’t be. They can’t know that.
Bert Martinez:
Right, Right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
All the things you think you can do, you can’t know that. And it’s, again, as we’ve said before, it’s the doing that’s fun. So even if you don’t end up getting to that final outcome, it doesn’t matter. Because if you get to the final outcome where you say, now I know it, which is of course always a mistake, then it becomes mindless. So the people who do what they do best stay learners for a lifetime. Stay.
Bert Martinez:
It’s so funny because I’m. I. I am reminded of. Of another saying about unconscious competence. Right. You’re so good. You’ve mastered this so well that you don’t have to even think about it. But based on your definition, if you’re unconscious.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Yeah. And I think you know, so we do this with everything we teach. I mean, sports, for instance. You’re supposed to keep doing it, whatever the it is, until it becomes second nature. No, that means until it’s mindless and you don’t need to think about it. Now, we should never be mindless. Right? To be mind. We should only be mindless if two conditions are there.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
One, you found the very best way of doing something. And two, nothing changes so clearly by that definition, it’s not good. And my feeling, in a simpler way is if you’re going to do it, be there, why bother doing it? Otherwise, show up for it.
Bert Martinez:
I’m just thinking of all the things that I do where I’m being mindlessness about it or mindless about it, and I’m not really fully being there. And, and, and then this idea of. Of no matter what decision you make, don’t get too uptight about it because you’re never really sure of the outcome anyway. This idea that a decision. Yeah. It’s just trying to predict the future.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
It’s more. It’s not just that. Look, it’s not just that you can’t know. It’s that you can create your experience to whatever happens, and that’s all ultimately you care about. Yes. Right.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Things are neither good nor bad, independent of how we understand Them. The more mindful we are, the more ways we can understand how whatever just happened, you know, is an advantage. Yes. The people may mistakenly see that as, as rationalizing, you know, so the fox wants those grapes and can’t reach the grapes and then says, oh, they’re probably sour anyway. Rationalizing is what you do afterwards. What I’m talking about is a strategy of life going forward is to know that those grapes, that could be good, they could be bad. Trying to get them should be fun. If you begin on a path, doesn’t mean you have to complete it.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
You know, say, all right, you know, I’m sure I could get those grapes eventually, but now I’d rather go play softball. Right.
Bert Martinez:
All right, so I want to switch and talk about positive psychology. Talk about maybe the difference between positive psychology and positive thinking, and also get your thoughts on, on maybe how you see positive psychology evolving in the future. As far as mental health.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
We were supposed to talk for 45 minutes, right. An hour and a half later. Okay, I’ll answer your question. All right. Positive psychology is not so much about being positive, but it’s looking for positive outcomes. You know, in years past, we, we studied how people were depressed, and we studied how people were conforming, and we studied how people were helpless. You know, and. But while all that was going on, I was giving choices to people in nursing homes to find how that made them feel in more control and living longer.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
So it’s really a function of the dependent measures you choose. As an experimenter, you’re just looking for how it’s bad or you turn it around, how it’s going to change. I haven’t decided yet. I’m joking. If I control the change, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know how it’s going to change. I think that hopefully, I mean, the reason that I keep writing these books and talking to people is because this mindfulness is so powerful and so easy that the more people become mindful, the whole society will change. And in ways it’s hard to predict.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
I think it’s hard to predict in 10 years where AI is going to take us. Right. I think that one of the things people need to understand, you know, when I say we should be mindful all the time, that scares people because, oh, gosh, that’s exhausting. Not exhausting. Turns out mindfulness is energy begetting.
Bert Martinez:
It’s mindfulness, energy begetting.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Yes, that’s right. Because it’s the essence of engagement. You know, when you see some loves, what they’re doing. It’s just that they’re totally there, noticing new things, enjoying themselves without evaluating, without judging. And so, you know, say, could you be enjoying yourself all day long or is that too exhausting? Clearly we see that it’s not. It’s interesting if somebody once said to me, well, okay, you have a little kid in a park and let’s say a three year old, and the three year old walks into the street, busy traffic, isn’t it best just to mindlessly grab the child? No. First of all, if you were mindful, the child wouldn’t have ended up in the street on the first day. Second, when you’re pulling the child out of the street, you have to figure out which way that car is going.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Right. Should you pull her out to the right or to the left? Well, it depends on the way the driver is organized in that car and what people think. Is that, doesn’t it take longer to be mindful? No. I mean, if so milliseconds. And when in life does milliseconds really matter? Right. So when you’re enjoying yourself, you’re mindful. You can’t be enjoying yourself if you’re mindless. And if you want a life that’s relaxed where you’re enjoying yourself, this is the only way to be there.
Bert Martinez:
So you have several books. One of them is the Mind. Is it Mindful Body?
Dr. Ellen Langer:
That’s the most recent.
Bert Martinez:
Yes, the most recent one, Mindful Body.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
And Making Their Way to Chronic Health.
Bert Martinez:
Okay, and the other one is Mindfulness.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
There are. The first one I wrote in the Mindfulness series was Mindfulness. The next one was the Power of Mindful Learning and all different experiments, different ideas and it was called Mindful Learning just because I couldn’t call it mindfulness and say I called the first one mindfulness.
Then I had on Becoming an Artist, Reinventing yourself through Mindful Creativity. That’s really about interpersonal mindfulness. Then there was Counterclockwise, where it was the beginning of, you know, started with that counterclockwise study and all about health to finally the Mindful Body, which started as a memoir, so there are lots of sexy stories in there. And then it became, you know what it is.
Bert Martinez:
So I love it. I love it. Okay, so first of all, thank you for stopping by today and I’ve, I’ve enjoyed the conversation. I’ve really truly learned a lot. I’ve written tons of notes and I would love to bring you back at another time and, and be able to talk some more about mindfulness and, and, and, and how mindfulness affects our health. And. And I’m going to check out some of your other books, so I would love to have you back.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Sure. I’m happy to come back.
Bert Martinez:
Thank you so much for stopping by today.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
Stay well.
Bert Martinez:
You, too. All right, we’re out.
Dr. Ellen Langer:
That was good.
