Harvard Psychology Prof: “STRESS Is The #1 Cause of DISEASE - Do THIS To HEAL!” | Dr. Ellen Langer EP 537

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11You know, what people don't realize is that every thought, if I lift my arm, my whole body is different. Different in tiny ways that we haven't been able to measure. But it's all connected, which in some sense lends more credence to this whole idea of mind-body unity. And the first study we did was a study where we took old men to a retreat that we had retrofitted to 20 years earlier. We called it the counterclockwise study. Yes. So they were going to live for a week as if they were their younger selves. And they were in their late 70s, 80s? Yeah, even older. 80s, 90s. Now remember, that was quite a while ago.

0:50Okay. That was when 70 was in the new 90. Uh-huh. Or even 100 or whatever. I mean, they were really old. They're in walkers. They're in canes. They're immobile. They're very slow. Well, actually, you know that when I was interviewing people to do the study, so their adult daughter would typically bring them to the lab, and I see them tottering down the hall. And at one point I said to myself, why am I doing this? I don't know if they're going to live through the day, no less be able to live for the week. I took on something that only the younger of me would have considered taking on. You know, I was in charge of their entire lives.

1:30These seven men, old men, have every aspect of their lives for a week. You looked at them and it didn't matter what number you attached to them. They were old. Now they were going to live for a week as if they're their younger self. So they'll be talking about current events, things from the past, as if they're just unfolding. And other things as well. Like they would have newspapers from 30 years prior. And they were making their own meals and they would correct each other. So if you would say was, somebody would tell you is because the past was now the present for them. Wow. And they were listening to older music and watching older movies and everything.

2:09You want me to give more detail? Just tell me. But let me tell you the results. Sure. Those were amazing. So they lived as their younger selves for a week. Without any medical intervention, their vision improved. their hearing improved, their memory, their strength, and they look noticeably younger. And I must tell you that almost from the beginning, the changes were palpable. Most people accepted the findings. There were a couple of people who said, you can't make people younger. And I'm not saying that chronologically we're changing your age, but it is the case that we associate certain ways of being with certain times in our lives.

2:49and that these men were living their lives now very dependent on their adult daughter, presuming that they can't do many of the things that they used to do, and they were wrong. And so that set the stage for a host of studies, most of which, well, all of them actually today, are in the mindful body. You know, that study was a while ago, right? Yeah, we designed it in 1979. 79. So what would you say in the last 44 years, I guess, what are the new studies or research that you've done to show how to either reverse aging or to create longer aging in the biological sense? Remember, it's all one, mind and body.

3:32So we don't have a psychological as opposed to a biological sense. So it's both. It's the mind and the body. But I thought you were asking me, so I'm going to answer the question I thought you were going to ask, not the one that you did, right? Which was, how has the world changed? That's a lot of years. And way back at the beginning, the medical model believed that psychology was more or less irrelevant. All right. Now, I'm sure everybody thought it was nice to be happy, but that wasn't going to affect your physical health. Now that's changed. And now what most people believe is a biosocial model.

4:06So these things like stress and so on matter. but they don't go nearly as far. And I'm saying down the road, psychology will be the most important aspect of your wellbeing. So that's a change that's come about slowly. Now, for me personally, once we had those data, I did several studies where we simply make elderly people more mindful and they live longer. So it's important for you to know that mindfulness, as I study it, has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is fine. It's just different, okay? When you meditate, you take yourself out of the world and you say your mantra to yourself over.

4:51Mindfulness, as I study it, couldn't be more in the world. That what you're doing is not a practice. It's a way of being. You actively notice new things about the things you thought you knew. You come to see you didn't know them at all. and then your mind naturally goes to them. If we start off with the realization that everything is changing, everything looks different from different perspectives, the idea of being certain of anything becomes silly because you can't know. It's not what it was the last time you looked. And if you could adopt just one mindset, and it's the only one I believe that is good for you, that uncertainty is the rule, not the exception, then you don't know.

5:36So then you tune in. The problem is our parents, our schools, the media, virtually everything is trying to teach us absolutes. And when you think you know something, you don't pay any attention. So I'll do what I do probably too frequently. Let me ask you a simple question. This is the one that everybody knows. How much is one plus one? Two. Okay, and that's what everybody says. I feel like this is a trick question. Well, it is, though, because one plus one isn't always two. that if you are adding one watt of chewing gum plus one watt of chewing gum, one plus one is one. If you add one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry, one plus one is one.

6:16You add one cloud plus one cloud, one plus one is one. In the real world, one plus one probably doesn't equal two as or more often as it does. So now look at the difference. Somebody, it's unlikely, but after we finish, somebody comes over to you and says, how much is one plus one? You're not going to mindlessly say two. You're going to pay some attention to the context. And then you're going to answer more mindfully and say, it could be. And then you can say, it could be one, it could be two. Interesting. It's all context. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Everything changes. And our minds tend to hold things still.

6:52We think we know. We want to know because we think that gives us control. But since things are changing, you don't want your mind to hold it still. Well, in fact, it's changing because then you're giving up control that you otherwise would have.

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