The Mindful Body: Harvard’s Dr. Ellen Langer On The Power Of Mindfulness, How Thoughts Can Control Health, & Using Perspective To Lower Stress

27:40Now, people have a hard time understanding that they can't predict because I think in general people confuse predicting for the group with predicting for the individual. You can't predict the individual case. So an example I used the other day. So let's say we're going to go to a Mercedes shop. All right. You get to start, pick any Mercedes there, and you're going to turn the key. And if it starts, I'm going to give you a million dollars. If it doesn't start, you're going to give me your life savings so far. That's a pretty good bet. but nobody's going to take it because everybody knows there are lemons.

28:28Everybody knows that none of us are perfect, no matter how good we are, nothing we've produced is perfect. So while in general, those Mercedes are likely to start, certainly more likely than if you go to a used car lot, any particular one, no. So people on some level are aware of this. Now, for all of us, what we're trying to predict is for ourselves, right? It's wonderful you tell me, I'm trying to see, should I have this operation? And you say, 80 % of the people who have this operation do just fine. I'm happy for them. But am I gonna be part of the 20 % or part of the 80 %? And there's no way of knowing.

29:09And if there's no way of knowing, then how do you make the decision? And more broadly, how do we make peace with uncertainty in general? Well, again, the way I make peace with uncertainty is that whatever happens, I find the advantage to it. And so it's fine. If we paid more attention to why we're doing what we're doing, I think we'd be a lot easier on ourselves. So let's say I decide, you know, all I want to do today is stay home and maybe watch some movies on television. Just take it easy, right? And the reason I need this is because of whatever. I've been traveling. I've been doing podcasts after.

29:49And I really just want to be by myself. Okay. And then I find out that if I had only gone to whatever this event was, it could have been life changing. Now, as long as I know why I chose what I chose, I'm not likely to regret not having chosen something else. But if I'm not aware of why I'm doing what I'm doing, I'm just sort of mindlessly being, and then somebody says, oh, you missed this great thing, you know, yeah, then I will feel regret. But it makes it easier to say no when you have clarity on those things. Yes, oh, sure, exactly. Because you're not captured by this fear of missing out. Exactly, exactly.

30:28Exactly, but too often we don't know why we're doing what we're doing. We just end up in one place or the other sort of mindlessly. Yeah, well, maybe provide, once again, you did it last time, but your definition of mindfulness. Okay, so when I'm talking about mindfulness, it has nothing to do with meditation. And meditation is fine, it's just very different process. Meditation is a practice you engage in to result in post-meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness, as we studied, is more immediate. It's a simple process of actively noticing things. When you're actively noticing, the neurons are firing.

31:07Decades of data show that it's literally and figuratively enlivening. There are two ways to become mindful. One, as we've been talking now, is top-down. Once you recognize that you don't know, you pay attention. you know um if you were to come to visit me in cambridge you wouldn't have to practice anything you'd walk in you'd say you've never been there before everything would be new you'd look at the paintings you wanted did she do that painting what is she reading what is that strange thing over there and it would be fun that's what we do when we travel you know for example um the other way rather than top down is bottom up which is walk out your front door and notice three new things.

31:50Notice three, five new things about the person that you live with, if you live with anybody, or three new things about what's happening at work today. Each time you notice new things about the things you thought you knew, you come to realize, gee, you didn't know it as well as you thought you did. It's a practice of disabusing us of our certainty. And that gets to the predictability piece also. Exactly. Yeah. And so, do you have a formal practice of meditation to to inhabit this mindfulness state of mind, or are you just, yeah, like you sort of short circuit right to the purpose of meditation, right?

32:25Well, once I had that horse experience and my whole life changed. The hot dog eating horse. Where the horse is going to eat the hot dog. And I've said this so many times, I don't even remember if it's true or not. This is your spiritual experience. But it feels true that, that it just made me question everything. And I have one of the titles that I was playing with before I came up with The Mindful Body was Who Says So? What you can do with almost everything. That every fact that we're given is contextualized and we lose the context and act as if it's absolute. So the example I gave you last time, I asked you how much is one plus one?

33:12So this is the fact everybody thinks they know, but it can be many things. It can be two if you're using a base 10 number system. It can be 10 if you're using a base 2 number system. It can be one if you're adding things that are hard to describe. You take one puddle and you add one puddle. You have one puddle. Somebody sent me this, that if you take one pizza and you add one pizza, you have two pizzas. But you take one lasagna and you add one lasagna. One plus one is one. It's just larger. One cloud plus one cloud is one cloud. And so in the real world, it doesn't equal two as or more often as it does.

33:56The point of the whole thing, though, has nothing to do how much is one plus one. As soon as you realize you don't know, you have choices. And life becomes interesting again. You know, somebody now asks you how much is one plus one. Well, you say, gee, I can give them the answer that, I can say two and pass the test. I can say one and be a smart ass. I can say 10 to show that I have some mathematical knowledge. I think there's a deeper philosophical inquiry here, which is, and this relates to mind-body unity, like the end point on some level of mindfulness is to realize the oneness of everything, right?

34:41That the self and our notion of identity is this illusion and we're all entirely connected. And at its like end point, the equation of one plus one isn't even a question that you would ask. It wouldn't make sense because there is only one. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, if you say, you know, we look at science and you do experiments and then they lead to more experiments and more, or you're never gonna get the final answer because things are always changing. Or you could just say, if you were religious, God did it. The answer is God and then the game is over. And so there's always some attempt to find that middle path that gives us an opportunity to think about things.

35:29But to think we've gotten the final answer, as soon as you have that answer, you no longer pay any attention. and then, you know, if you're, in my view, if you're going to do something, you should show up for it and you're not going to show up for it if you think it's uninteresting and nothing. I have this, some talk I was giving and I have this slide that I show, which is something Mark Twain said and he's described, I don't remember it well enough to make it fully interesting, but it's beautiful where he's just talking about water and the point is, the point I make with it is anything can be made interesting.

36:09Anything can be made uninteresting and when we think we need to know, we don't look closely and it's not interesting. Sure, anything is interesting if you're paying close enough attention to it. Yeah, you can decide, wouldn't it be fun to collect teacups? Not particularly interesting to me, But once I start it and I notice these subtle differences and you get into it and, you know, and it becomes fun. But as soon as you think you've captured whatever, the game is over.

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42:04One of the things that I practice, particularly when I'm feeling stressed, it's like a stress reliever, is to close my eyes. and you think, well, it's just black, you don't see anything. But if you're in a dark room and you close your eyes and you really pay attention, there's a lot going on. Things are happening that appear, without any willfulness whatsoever. And it becomes this kaleidoscopic like odyssey of weirdness, right? And the closer you pay attention, the more kind of mysterious and magical it becomes, which disabuses you of the certainty that like everything is dark when you close your eyes.

42:40And like, what does that actually mean? That's interesting. It's in a different way. You come to know more and more about less and less until you realize you know all about nothing. But then there's the opportunity to learn all of that. But it's this seeking, this final answer that I think gets people crazy, leads people to be unnecessarily competitive, leads to a world that too many people are unhappy. Right now, I think how much are people paying for antidepressants and therapy and books like mine to help them? And I don't know. It might sound naive, but it's all easier than people are acting as if it is.

43:29You want all these people who are competing, I've got to make more billions than you've made and get higher grades and run faster. and so on. What is the point of that? And I believe the point of that eventually is so that I'll think well of myself and respect myself. So I'll be happy. And, you know, there are easier ways to get to that place, which takes me to something that I mentioned last time. But it's so important to me, Rich. I feel like I have to keep saying it as if every time I say it, I'm going to influence somebody. I don't know if anybody is ever influenced by this, but that everything we do makes sense or else we wouldn't do it.

44:13And when you recognize that, that gets rid of all of the personal dislike, the way, you know, one of the things that people do is some people blame themselves, you know, and they take themselves to task because they're not very good at or they've done something. And then you get a group of people, well-meaning, and say, no, no, forgive yourself for that. And I think that it's much better to forgive yourself if you're blaming yourself, but it's better still to understand why you did what you did. Yeah, with understanding, there's no need for forgiveness. Exactly, exactly. And so then we end up in a different world where we go back to that little song I wrote for my grandkids.

45:05Everybody doesn't know something. Everybody knows something else. Everybody can't do something. Everyone can do something else. Rather than the presumption that life is a normal distribution, there are some of us all the way over on the tail end and most people in the middle and some on the other end. We say, which is the better end? Some people can do it really well. Most can do it moderate. And then you have those who just no good at it without questioning who decided the criteria. And so lots of people walk around feeling bad about themselves. And that's sad to me. Yeah, trying to measure up to some standard.

45:50Without even knowing that the standard was artificial. Poorly calibrated. Yeah, that when I wrote the On Becoming an Artist book, So I started painting when I was about 50 and great fun. So many things came to my mind then. The first was what mark could I have put on a page as a young kid where a teacher would lead me to believe I have no creative ability. When you think of Mondrian versus Rembrandt, I mean, the art that we all appreciate is so different, one painter from the next. and so then I think that I can't do it. Then the art, I don't know if you know this, that the impressionists that people pay millions of dollars for was rejected in its day.

46:43And you start seeing, you come to the point of, yeah, who's deciding this? Who's deciding what's good or bad? And you change the actors, you change the criteria. an example so remote from this but it comes to mind people have to decide whether a drug is going to you know you have some medication whether you're going to be reimbursed by insurance now it's not as if something comes down from the heavens and say these disorders should be reimbursed and not these there it's just people making these decisions and when people make decisions, remember the fact of a decision means there's uncertainty.

47:24If there's no uncertainty, there's no decision, which means it could have been other. So the example I use, imagine that you have a group of 50-year-old lusty men versus a group of nuns making the decision. And the decision is whether Viagra should be reimbursed. You're going to get a whole different answer, Right, right. And so it is with virtually everything. And when you think about this long enough and enough different contexts, you recognize that everything is mutable. Everything can be different from what it is. And so if it doesn't work, change it. But people take what is as if it's supposed to be that way.

48:06And very simple things. You know, when I gave a talk when I was young, I walk into this room and the stage is very far back from the audience. And I knew that would make me nervous. Too much distance. And so first thing I did is I'm moving all the furniture. I'm moving all of the chairs, which is also interesting because I guess I could have left the chairs and just stood closer to people. But I move all the chairs. If you asked anyone, any speaker, could you move the chairs? Everyone's going to say yes, but it doesn't occur to us. We take what is as if it's supposed to be that way without realizing that what is was somebody's decision.

48:48They lived at a different time. They had different biases, different needs. And also, the more different you are, I believe, from the person who made the decision, the person who wrote the directions, who came up with the instructions, the more important it is for you not to mindlessly blindly follow them. Right, well, these rules, whoever dictated them, at least with respect to issues related to social order are generally created and enforced by those who hold power and have an investment in the status quo. Right, exactly. And so, with some of these things, it may be fine to leave the rule as it is, but not to feel bad when enacting that rule doesn't put you at the head of the class.

49:40You know, so I play tennis. If I design the game, you'd have three serves. First one, I'd kill it. It wouldn't go in. Right. And the second one, I learned from the first and then I have my follow-up was third serve and I wouldn't fault. It's two serves. Okay, so if you're gonna play with me, we're probably gonna play three serves. But if I'm playing in normal circumstances, it's gonna be two serves. And so if I'm evaluating my tennis ability, I have to recognize that it's determined by somebody who meets that goal more efficiently than I myself do. Not that I can't do this. I can't do it the way it's best for you to do it.

50:28And if you're in charge, so be it. You see what I'm saying? So there are two things there. One is you can change the damn rule, which I do all the time. The older I get, the more I do it. Or I can follow the rule and recognize that it's not going to work as well for me as if I created whatever the rules of the game are. What is the difference in your mind between a rule breaker or somebody who is contrarian versus being open-minded and wide-eyed and curious? Well, it depends. If the rule breaker is breaking the rules just to be a rule breaker, you're not gonna end up with much respect for them.

51:13The person who is open-minded, wide-eyed and whatever else you said is somebody who will be following rules when it makes sense to follow them and change the rules subtly or not so subtly when that's to everybody's advantage. And not afraid to question them. Yeah, yeah. And you know, that we have, people don't recognize the difference even between legality and morality. They're very different things. And so you follow the law, oftentimes because you're afraid of the consequences of breaking the law. But there are times that you don't want to. You know, if the law is, you're not allowed to marry somebody of another race.

52:00You're not allowed to be gay. For some people, you know, in the past, when during Prohibition, you can't have a drink, even if, you know, these sorts of things, you see that they don't make a whole lot of sense. And then breaking it is whether you're willing to pay the price. You know, I mean, so I put money in the meter and now I'm having lunch with you and it's so exciting and the meter's gonna run out and I make a choice. Do I want to end the meeting with you, go put the quarter in the meter or run the risk of getting a ticket? It's not a moral issue. Yeah, there's not a morality judgment. But there are with plenty of other laws.

52:46Although, when I say that, or you say that my mind always goes to the other place, In some sense, every decision has a moral component. Even a decision, should I have M &Ms or, I don't know, a baby Ruth. Do they still make baby Ruths? I think so. Okay, good. I know they make M &Ms. That seems to be a decision that has nothing to do with morality. On the other hand, if I were a leader in this world and I'm choosing the M &Ms, so I'm influencing everybody to choose the M &Ms, I am helping to put the baby Ruth people out of business. That means people will be out of jobs and so on. You can add a moral element or eliminate it from anything you're talking about.

53:34Well, this notion of being a rule follower is ingrained into our educational system. Yeah, and let me say something. This is important to me because I seem like such a free spirit. I can't tell you that, you know, basically growing up, I was very conservative. I mean, the only time I would, the way I would break the rule was to get the highest grade, for instance, so that then I could deviate. Yeah, I mean, I asked the question of contrarianism versus open-mindedness because I suspect that perhaps you're accused occasionally of being this rule-breaking contrarian when everything that I, when I experience you, I just think of somebody who's really curious and has the audacity to kind of, well, what if we looked at it from a different perspective or a what if kind of question as opposed to - No, but I think that very often with my seeming to be breaking rules is because I don't know the rule.

54:32So I'm oblivious to the fact that I'm breaking it, which reminds me of this funny thing as a little kid. It's so interesting. I'm 77 years old. To think about which things I remember from my past and which I'm totally oblivious to It was of some interest. But I met this dentist, a little kid. And my mother comes in and the dentist tells my mother what a good patient I was. And all I'm thinking is what were the other kids doing? You see what I'm saying? So it wasn't that I was being good because I thought morally that's how you should be. Or I was being good because I was too scared not to be. I was being with an oblivious, mindless to alternative ways of being.

55:20And lots of the time I'm seeming to break the rules is because I don't know them. Naivete. Naivete, stupidity, whatever you wanna call it. You talk a lot about this idea of embodied cognition. and it has me thinking about enhanced cognition and different definitions of cognition or intelligence, I guess. And I've been listening to this podcast that's blowing my mind called The Telepathy Tapes. Have you heard of this? It's a docu-series, like, I don't know, eight or nine episodes that are about 45 minutes each in which this documentary filmmaker spends time with neurodivergent individuals, autistic, nonverbal individuals, and goes on this exploration of their telepathic powers, their ability to communicate with their moms and with each other.

56:19And it's one of the most fascinating, mind blowing thing. And like, I'm not a scientist, is this real? I don't know, but I can't stop listening to it. And just to ask the question, is this possible? Like, is it possible that by some reason that we can't quite fathom right now, that there is a different form of communication. Yeah. Like just brought it, like if you really think about what that means and what that says about the nature of reality itself. Yeah, no, I think that we only know a very small bit of what's possible. And I had this experience. First, when I was writing The Mindful Body, I had a chapter in it that I called the woo-woo chapter.

57:02The publishers asked me to get rid of a lot of it. But it was really interesting to me. All of these things, everybody's had these strange experiences. And then we're supposed to call them coincidences or whatever, which doesn't really explain anything. But I had one where I had just come back from a trip. And we're discussing, and I say, let's go to, and I couldn't remember the name of the place. But then we both realized I was talking about Kuala Lumpur. I had never been there. It sounded exotic. and then we said, well, we just spent all this money, which I don't understand how I would even say that since most of these trips are paid for by other people.

57:42But then I said, I don't know why, Rich, I said, maybe I could get the Harvard Club to pay for it. This was so bizarre. I had absolutely no interaction with any Harvard Club. I didn't even know what the Harvard Club was except it was something related to Harvard. Okay. Okay. Now, the next day, the next day, I get a letter from the Harvard Club of Kuala Lumpur inviting me to get a lecture. And, you know, how did this happen? Now, I didn't know, was I picking up information out there on the ether? Did I control it, make it happen? I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with very sophisticated statisticians where we start talking, they walk away from me.

58:36And somebody would say, well, you probably saw the piece of mail and forgot that you saw it. No, because I'm very efficient in certain ways and I never open a piece of mail twice. I open it, I do it, and if I can't take care of something out of the time, I don't open it until a later time. So I knew that that wasn't true. How it happened and to say coincidence, what does that mean? So what do you make of it? I don't know. I know that the things that we have a very small world that we look at ignoring everything else and we call everything else noise. And I think probably most of the interesting things that we'll find out in the future are part of that noise.

59:24I had this other, this thing, maybe I'll reveal too much about me, but I went to see the psychic. Friends had gone to the psychic. Okay, this is fun. Why not? And the psychic said to me that my book, this is before the mindfulness book was written, was going to be a great success. and she also said that beware of somebody who wears three-piece suits and that I have a crack in the foundation in my house. Oh, and that I have a gas leak, a slow gas leak. That's very specific for a psychic. Now, in today's world, this was before the internet, in today's world, you look me up, you can get maybe even this information.

1:00:11But that was a time when that didn't exist. and so I'm thinking about it and the first thing I do when I get home is I call the gas company to come to check for a gas leak and they say why do you think there's a gas leak I said never mind I get off the phone because I'm in Paris okay so then I go to my house in the cape and I'm in the garage and the cement is cracked I go out and there's a construction worker I bring him in Does that count as a crack in the foundation? He said, yes, my book's gonna be it. Wow. Gas leak though? Well, the gas leak, I never found out because I was too embarrassed.

1:00:55And the person with the three-piece suit, that's an easy one to explain psychologically. I mean, if you know anybody with a three-piece suit, then you start thinking about them in such a way where you become - I mean, true or not, I think the greater point is just to appreciate or have humility around the limitations of our senses. Exactly, exactly. And to understand that, you know, that not only is it possible that there's other things going on, you know, like I know you don't like probabilities, but like the probabilities are that there's quite a bit going on, that we're just not, you know, we're not developed enough to notice or fathom.

1:01:35Yeah, you know, that when you think of how many universes there are, and that how little we know about different galaxies and so on. Perhaps there's life out there. You know, that I become, I remain agnostic with almost all of these things. And knowing that some people would then peg me in a way I wouldn't like to be pegged, you know, rather than open-minded, but, you know, somewhat weird or whatever. But, I mean, just don't know. I pay a lot of attention to the things that I don't know, not in order to learn them, but, you know, to remain open. One of your ideas that I think, you know, may fall into the contrarian category has to do with delayed gratification.

1:02:22Yeah, yeah, all right. So state your thesis on this. Okay, well, I'm not sure how I stated it and where you've read it, but essentially there's a belief that there are good things, there are bad things. that what people should do is, you know, you work hard so you get the pleasure afterwards. And we go back to what I've said now several times, things in and of themselves are not good or bad. I think it's crazy to delay gratification. Delaying gratification suggests that there's no way to enjoy whatever you're doing. And I think that's the way we keep certain people in miserable jobs, you know, that they should do these things because of something after that will result.

1:03:12Well, I think there's different context for that. And perhaps the premise is a little bit flawed because there's different types of gratification. There's a sort of immediate pleasure gratification and the greater gratification of having like delayed like sort of short-term pleasures for meaning and purpose that comes with working towards difficult goals? One can take any idea and break it up into, we can talk about 20 different kinds of mindlessness or whatever, but in general, the idea is that there are certain things that are unpleasant, right? And so you should do those things that are unpleasant for some loftier goal or some reinforcement in the future.

1:03:55And what I'm suggesting is that the way we do what we do is more important than the what we're doing. Anything can be done mindlessly or mindfully. And when we do it mindfully, it's exciting and fun. So in other words, It's about the perspective that you have about the thing that we're calling difficult or uncomfortable or a delayed gratification act. So in the context of maybe running a marathon, oh, you're gonna have to do all this training. It's gonna be really hard. You're gonna suffer. But the choice to label it as suffering or to perceive it as hard is a choice. Exactly, exactly. And also we said before, when we were talking about fatigue, that the way you're going to do this marathon will determine in part the enjoyment of it.

1:04:52You know, that if you see yourself, oh, yeah, I can't make it. are, you know, I make everything a game. But how would you put that into practice without kind of labeling it as Pollyanna? Like, okay, I do wanna do this. It is hard. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What's wrong with Pollyanna? No, I've been called Pollyanna many times. And what I would do is immediately. Just be positive about this or why can't you just enjoy what you're doing? Like I'm trying to, the brass tacks of actually like putting that into practice when the alarm goes off at 4.30 in the morning tomorrow. And your instinct is to groan because you're tired, but Ellen says, like, just, you know, how can you, like, be grateful and be excited that you get to wake up so early in the morning.

1:05:35I never say be grateful. Okay, what do you say? It's probably too early for me to say anything, but nothing is dictating how we feel. Our understanding of events, you know, that if I say, oh my God, I'm gonna miss the plane, you know, then I'm gonna be all nervous and, you know, and jump out of bed and not be happy. or I can get up and look forward to a cup of coffee or something. I don't know. It's hard for me to think about 4.30 in the morning. But in general, that any event can be done so that it's tedious or it's enjoyable. So we did this simple little study. We have people doing things that they don't like.

1:06:20So we have women watching football who hate football. People listening to classical music who don't like classical music or hard rock, whatever, who don't like hard rock. People looking at paintings who know nothing about art and care less. So we have many different. We have people doing things that they don't like. One group just does it. Another group notices one new thing about it. Another group notices three new things about it. Another group notices six new things. The more you notice, the more you like it. That's the way you get into an activity. So if you're thinking of something as tedious, you're sort of looking at it as this whole rather than looking at individual parts to it, getting engaged in it.

1:07:11We're brought up to wait for something to excite us, whether it's a person, an activity. And all of that, I think, is wrong. that anything can be made exciting. You take a prisoner. So we have the Birdman of Alcatraz in California now. And all of a sudden there are pigeons in that little window that he has in the cell. And he gets into pigeons. This is somebody who the last person you would expect would be a bird lover. But starting to notice the different things about him and makes friends with the pigeons and all of a sudden he's a happy camper. So mindfulness, paying attention is always the practice.

1:07:57Exactly, exactly. The more you notice, the more you like what you notice. We did this, one of my students did the study with Godiva chocolates versus an inexpensive chocolate. And the chocolates are wrapped in Godiva wrapper or inexpensive wrapper. Okay, so you have, you're eating expensive chocolate, but you think it's inexpensive, cheap. You're eating cheap chocolate, but you think it's expensive or you're eating the correct label. And what happens is that when people, it's not surprising, people enjoy the Godiva more for halo effect for nothing other reason. But what was interesting was when they were eating what they thought with the expensive chocolates, they spent more time eating it, enjoying it.

1:08:42You go to a museum, you have a painting in a museum. If you had that same painting in your friend's house, You know, and in a friend's house and you don't think they know anything about art, you don't pay any attention to the painting. Now this painting is in the museum. It must be wonderful. You start to pay attention to it. You go into a gallery. You have a painting that's$500. And you have a painting in the next room that's$50 ,000. So somebody is telling you this thing is good. Now you engage it. But these are all stories. To every experience, we bring a story. that we've constructed based upon our past experience that we then use as a predictor of how we're gonna experience some present or future event.

1:09:28And mindfulness is the - But it's not, but these are all stories. It's these are all stories. These are all stories. It's different because the but sounds like, what is the alternative? The reason I use the word, but is to underscore the fact that they're fantasies or illusion. All of these stories are untrue. No. They're only true to the extent that we have decided that they are. Well, they're neither true nor untrue. I mean, you know, whatever the experience you're having can be understood in multiple ways. I can see you now as charming and drawing out of me interesting things to say. I could see you as hostile.

1:10:10I could see you as interested in me or only interested in the podcast. But there's nothing objectively true about any of that. Exactly, exactly. That's my point is that it's a story. Yeah, so what is the point about it being a story? Well, the point is that - The butt said that there was something wrong with it being a story. Well, it's just to illustrate that we use these stories to make sense of the world around us. And when we enter into an experience, we rely upon that story as a sense-making kind of affair that then becomes a predictor of how we're going to experience it. I see. And mindfulness is a means to disabuse us of this.

1:10:52Yeah. Because when you're fully present, you're not living in the past. In other words, you're not marinating in a story. And you're not, you know, thinking about what it means to you in the future or what it's gonna do for you. Yeah, that's perfect. You're just in experience. Right. And, you know, that it doesn't have to be a new experience. You can be adding to the experience, but it's not being so sure of how it's going to unfold so that you're actually in the present and creating the story. It's not just that you're experiencing the story, you're making that story. And when you realize that you can add whatever ending you want to it, it becomes a very different kind of living.

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1:13:21Well, let's talk about relationships because I think stories play a big part in how we think about and participate in our various relationships. I know you're hosting a couples retreat in March. So I'm curious, you know, because this is a little bit, this is outside of what was in the Mindful Body book. Yeah. How do you think about relationships? What is your kind of thesis on this? Well, there's so much to say, you know, that there are some people who believe, you know, we've been together for 20 years. It's, you know, sort of almost boring or you've been working at a job for 20 years, pick whatever number, and it's boring.

1:13:59and so before Thanksgiving, I say to my students, because they're going to go home, and are their parents going to say to them that they're boring because they've known them for 20 years? Or you don't even do that with a favorite plant. And the difference between the marriage or the relationship and the relationship to a child or a plant is you expect the child to grow. You expect the plant to be changing. And that's what keeps it lively. And so in a relationship, once you think you've captured this other person, they become less and less interesting. And they're changing and you're changing. And by this awareness and this presence in the relationship, God keeps it lively.

1:14:52way um and then you know so we go back to what you're saying before about how uh we want to hold things still so that we feel we have some control over and we do that in relationships you know you are so damn selfish you know so you know whatever we call each other and no relationship in every relationship there's something about the other person that's not exactly as you yourself would want it to be. So if I think you're selfish, I'm going to notice when you're selfish. And it's going to irritate me more and more. And I'm not going to notice all the times you're not selfish. We have this with everything, a tendency to confirm our hypotheses.

1:15:37And so you have to be careful what you ask yourself, because no matter what you ask yourself, you're going to find evidence for it. And so if you're looking for the person's faults, you're going to find them. Now, I think that another aspect of relationships that's probably important is recognizing what we talked about in the past and brought it up again here. Behavior makes sense or else the person wouldn't do it. So rather than casting aspersions, if we ask why is the person doing this thing that's driving us crazy, how is it actually an advantage for them? and then we'd understand them rather than get ourselves to try to forgive them for whatever it is.

1:16:22So, you know, why is a new relationship exciting? A new relationship is exciting because it's new. But an old relationship should also be new because today is different. Today, you're different people than you were in the past and you have all these potential adventures to explore. Long-term relationships, it's curious what you just said. Like I've been with my wife for 25 years and it's work to keep it, it's a dynamic living thing. And it can only thrive when you're continuing to nourish it. In long-term relationships though, there is that thing like, well, this is who we are. You're you and I'm me and this is how we do things.

1:17:09and we, no matter how well we know the person, we're still projecting some notion of who we think they are onto them and vice versa. My wife said to me the other day, she's like, I don't know who you think you're married to in the sense, not in like a, like whatever is in your mind, like, you know, that's not who I am. It's just a construct, right? Not in like a pejorative sense, just an observation. but then when they divert from that or they do something different or they grow and they evolve because that's what we do, it's like you've changed or like you're not the same person. It's like, of course we're not, right?

1:17:46So it's like, we don't want it to stay the same and be stale, but then when we grow and evolve, like the tendency is then what you often see is like resenting that person because they're different than they were when you first met them. Yeah, no, so when I first met you, not in reality but you know in our relationship if we were together that I love just love the fact that you're so stable it gives me an anchor and then eventually I can't stand it that you're so boring it's the same thing right I love that you're so spontaneous at the other end of the relationship, you're so impulsive. I love that you're so trusting of everybody.

1:18:32I can't stand that you're so gullible. And so we take, you're going to find whatever you want to find. And the idea is to recognize that whatever way you're characterizing it has an equally potent, but oppositely valenced alternative. That that negative thing that's driving you crazy was the very same thing that perhaps was exciting. There's something else that happens in relationships, you know, that it's very unlikely, I think, although I don't have data for this, but it seems to be true, that if you're a neatnik, you know, you really like things neat, that you're going to be involved with somebody who's an ultra slob.

1:19:12It just doesn't happen, right? So we choose people from the outset that are similar to us in whatever ways that we value. But over time, no two people are going to be the same. So we're not going to be equally neat. We're not going to be equally able to deal with money. We're not going to be, you know. And so the difference starts to become apparent. So I'm with you, oblivious to the fact that part of the reason we're together is because we both value a certain kind of order. but you're a little more ordered. So now I decide you're neurotic or you decide that I'm sloppy. Making in other words, the wrong comparison.

1:19:56Or there's a deeper shared value that's more important than the fact that like, I'm neat and she's messy. So we give space for each other or we kind of allow that transgression that works in both ways. But over time, those little things start to feel more meaningful and they feel more egregious, right? And then there's the risk of developing like resentment and frustration, but fundamentally like what's beneath the resentment? Like what is really going, like you're not, are you really mad that this person is messy? You know, they've always been this way. So, you know, what is your own kind of internal sense of impotence or what is the fear that is motivating you giving voice to this otherwise meaningless thing?

1:20:44Yeah, you know, interesting that if, so the little argument starts, I might say to you, are you saying I don't love you? Which puts an answer right away. No, you're not saying that. You know, somehow we're into some minutiae and without an awareness that the world impinges on us. And sometimes we bring that into the relationship. you know um i think that if we just take a deep breath and we need to treat ourselves the same way you know to recognize that um what we're doing makes sense or else we wouldn't do it and uh you know i think that we have so many in the book remember i talk about um that there's a better than better way and um i think that we need to appeal to that almost all the time people think they should forgive themselves for their faults.

1:21:39I don't think you should forgive yourself for your faults. I don't think you should see them as faults. You should understand why you're doing what you're doing, that there's always some sense to it. And then you maintain respect for yourself. And then it's easier when you feel good about yourself to feel good about your partner. I live with somebody who leaves the cabinets open. This at first drove me crazy. You know, Because cabinets deserve to be closed. And then I thought about, well, this is ridiculous. To get crazy, it takes me three seconds to close the cabinet, you know, rather than let it irritate me.

1:22:17But the alternative is also to say, why is the cabinet open? You know, if you're cooking, you know, and the cabinet is, you know, where everything is. I open it and close it. You know, and then I thought, you know, I mentioned before that I'm an anti-cracinator. I do everything early. And I'm involved with somebody, living for many, many years, with somebody who waits till the last minute. And I noticed that there really is no advantage to one way versus the other. You know, I will never not get the seat on the plane because I'm getting the ticket so early. but I'm also not getting the best price for them.

1:23:03There are times I'll be doing something early and then the event will be changed. Maybe not the best examples but it's interesting because the world says the procrastinator is wrong. This whole thing about procrastination is crazy also. Every time I hear somebody putting somebody down, themselves or somebody else, I stop and say, wait a second, what's going on there? You know, that no matter what you're doing, no matter what it is you're doing, there are all these other things you're not doing. And you can see yourself as procrastinating because you're not doing them, or you can pay attention to what you are doing.

1:23:43Adam Grant talks a lot about that. Yeah, he got, Adam was my student. Oh, he was? Yes, he was. Yeah, he's been speaking a lot about the, like the important, there's a value in procrastinating. There's something going on in your unconscious mind that is doing some problem solving for you. and you need that, like the attention away from the problem at hand in order to best solve it. And so there is a productivity aspect to it. Yeah, but there are lots of ways of understanding it. The one I just said, which is that if you know why you're doing what you're doing, then you don't take yourself to task for not doing these other things.

1:24:18As long as it's not an excuse to keep doing the thing that is not serving. I mean, there's a reason why the alcoholic drinks, it's serving a need, right? And it doesn't mean that you don't redress the problem, but you also need to address the underlying need that is driving the errand's behavior. Well, yes, but if you do that with respect, then you have the strength to make the change. So in one book I had asked people, so you're anxious and you do X and that relieves your anxiety. Is it a good thing to do X? Yes, everybody would say. But then when you put in what you're doing is having that drink or that third drink, then all of a sudden it seems bad.

1:25:06And so then you take yourself to task for it, but you shouldn't because it serves the purpose that you needed. Then with that strength, you now can look and say, is there some other way I can meet that need without having the negative effects of the first chosen alternative. So in the context of you being an anti-procrastinator and needing to get to the airport three hours early, on some level, I suppose, there's a stress reduction aspect to that. Like there's some, yeah, like I need to get there early because I don't wanna freak out or have to deal with long lines or be stressed out about not, you know, getting through security on time, right?

1:25:48Yeah. but to the extent that your way of travel is at odds with your partner, and it's creating relationship problems, then is there a different way for you to mitigate your stress so that you don't have to be there three hours early? I think that if we each describe why we're doing what we're doing, so it made sense to the other person, and it's not that I'm doing this, my doing this is not because I wanna irritate you, which is the way in relationships we often think of these things. I think that the problem tends to go away. But my mind is consumed now with a story just to make clear how crazy I am with respect to this anti-crastination.

1:26:33Many years ago, if you were going to Canada, you needed to have just a driver's license. I don't remember when this was. So I'm going to give a talk in Toronto. I get to the airport and they say, no, you need a passport. Nobody told me we used to be able to go just for the driver's license. I had enough time to go home, get my passport. But this is ammunition for your argument. Exactly. This is why you're right. Well, no, I'm right for me. Do you wanna be right or do you wanna be happy? Yeah, oh no, no. Sadly, people think that that's the choice. Yeah, you know, the alternative is I could go to the airport early and you come when it's good for you.

1:27:17But these, this is a story. Okay, remember that time when I, you know, I got there early and I had to go back and I, you know, get my passport and I was able to do it. And this is why I'm correct. And this is why it's a good idea to always be early, right? It can be weaponized in a relationship. Exactly, and that's a mistake. Again, it comes back to people believing there's only a single right answer, a single way of doing things. And we taught that, and with respect to everything, you're in school, you're asked a question, you're expected to give one answer. And life would be so different if in fact you were asked for three reasons for this, five reasons, and why these reasons are good, why they're bad, and so on, rather than now we understand it.

1:28:03It goes all the way back full circle to our attachment to certainty. Yeah, yeah. No, exactly. Or it can't be exactly, almost exactly. In some cases. Yeah. So when you do these couples retreats and people show up and air out their malfunctions and resentments, et cetera, like what is the counsel? Like how do you, is that how it works? Yeah, well, this is gonna be the first, so I can't tell you how it has worked, but it's a matter of giving people a very different way of appreciating each other and activities that, you know, we get to the point where almost everything we do is for show. And the older you get, I think that changes where finally you realize none of this stuff matters.

1:28:54And if you can do that earlier in a relationship, the relationship is going to unfold and be more fun. Let me give an example. This is not an example that we'll use, but not so different from it. Did I tell you last time about what I tell my students about shoes? Okay. I can't remember. Maybe. Yeah. Well, then you can't remember. We talked about this. I never remember. Okay. That's fine. Indulge me. But I tell them, so the class meets Tuesday and Thursday. And on Tuesday, I tell them they can't come to class on Thursday unless they're wearing two different shoes. Now, this is very hard for a lot of people.

1:29:32So some are just not going to come, very few. Most of them wear two different shoes where the shoes look almost exactly the same, the two black shoes. Then you have the people who really get into it, and they're wearing a red shoe and a black shoe or whatever where it's very clear. The point of it is once they get there, nobody noticed, and if they notice, nobody cares. Yet we're so hung up with it. and I said this wonderful thing happened this one of my students comes in Professor Lang you won't believe what happened I said what? She said I'm in the elevator this man looks at my shoes looks at my face looks at my shoes looks at my face points to my shoes and says is that intentional?

1:30:17She said you know what I did? No, what did you do? She says I looked at his shoes I looked at his face I looked at his shoes I looked at his face I pointed at his shoes and said was that? and because everybody knows in some sense that you can't be sure. The problem people have is that they think other people do know. So you know you don't know. They're pretending that they do know and that makes all of us uncomfortable. Who decided we should wear the same shoes? You know, socks, more important than shoes because shoes you can make an argument that if the heels are not exactly the same, maybe it's unsafe or whatever.

1:30:51but most people's washing machines are built to eat the socks. I don't know. You put five pair in and somehow you come out with three pairs on the other end. But if you wanted to wear two different socks, most people would be afraid to. There's something sort of socially transgressive for no reason whatsoever. Exactly, but who decided? Right, who decided, and I think you did share this, but the other point, maybe this is what we kind of fleshed out previously, is it disabuses you of this notion that everyone is thinking about you and judging. Exactly. You're glaringly wearing two different shoes.

1:31:36And for the most part, no one even notices. Nobody cares. Maybe the guy in the elevator will say something. But for the most part, we believe that - And we control our behavior and keep ourselves - And they're not, they're thinking about themselves. Exactly, exactly. In fact, so many different stories come to mind. I was doing therapy when I was at Yale, just briefly. And it was wonderful for me because I realized how everybody is so worried about what everybody else thinks that I never worried again. Because I'm not worried about what you're thinking of me because I know you're worried about what I'm thinking of you.

1:32:11But, you know, so we're doing this research on mindful contagion. And we're using, these monks are helping us. and so I'm in conversation with the head monk whatever he's called and what we need are these monks to be dressed like undergraduates because we want to see if their mindfulness will have the effect without people knowing that they're not right and he said he doesn't know if they'll be willing to give up their robes and I thought oh my goodness this is sad you know that even people who are supposed to be reasonably evolved are trapped in... By their own attachments. Yeah, yeah. And so part of the, you know, at the retreat would be to free these are gonna be wealthy people.

1:33:05And, you know, can these wealthy women, for example, who spend a lot of time on their clothes allow themselves to wear something that is inexpensive, that doesn't look particularly good. You know, there's a lot of news now about how social media is bad for people. And there is a way. And the data are such that undergraduates, for instance, who spend a lot of time on social media end up with lower self-esteem. But it's not social media. It's never the technology. It's always the way we're using the technology. And so I say to these people, why, you're Harvard students, for goodness sakes, you've got such a head up over most other people.

1:33:54Why only post the picture where you look wonderful? Why not change the norm? And you wouldn't believe how bad I looked last night. You wouldn't believe how I spent the night worrying about this or that, rather than just your successes. or for people to realize that the successes that people are posting are in fact unusual for them or else they wouldn't post them. You know, it's a funny thing with reinforcement that people think, you know, say you're playing tennis or whatever your sport is, and I hit a fabulous serve, and then you say, wow, and the crowds are never true, but the crowds are roaring for me.

1:34:40And then I screw up the next shot. And the assumption people mistakenly make, it was because of the praise that now I'm too self-conscious. But what happens is you get the praise for the unusual event. If every time I serve that way, people would not be applauding. Well, I would not be applauding myself, right? It's because it's better than usual. and so there's always a regression to the mean. If I do something extraordinary, the next time it's going to be less extraordinary without anybody saying anything. And if it's not less extraordinary, then that becomes the new mean, so there'll be something even better that will move towards that spot.

1:35:28And so people could assume that the posts that people are making are in fact unusual, in which case, you'd already feel better. Do you see that? Yeah, I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. I guess when I think of social media, there's something uniquely pernicious about it in the sense that A, to your example or experiment about wearing two different shoes to show that like, people aren't really thinking about you. when you post on social media, you're opening up yourself to all manner of crazy opinions. And people are very quick to judge and say mean things. And if you're sensitive or you're already somebody who spends too much time, you know, kind of captured by what other people think of you, this is not gonna be good for your mental health.

1:36:24Because you're gonna be, no matter what you post, you're gonna be on the receiving end of all kinds of stuff. And these platforms, you know, by dint of their algorithms and business models, amplify content that is intended to outrage and divide. And those voices tend to be ones that are very certain, right? They're locked into an ideology and they wanna tell you why they're right and you're wrong. And it's pitting people against each other and dividing us apart and creating a tremendous amount of loneliness and unhappiness. Sure, if you're afraid of that, then you're not going to post. I'm talking about the person who's looking at other people's posts and feeling bad by comparison.

1:37:11And if they were aware that that other person wouldn't post it if it were the norm for them, they would appreciate it differently. But they're still in St. Barts and you're not. There's always that. Yeah, it's interesting because - Or you're missing out. No, no, I understand. You see your friends doing things, you weren't invited. For sure, for sure. But that raises the issue of if you're making the moment matter, you can't do more than that. And it doesn't matter if you're in St. Bart's or you're in Malibu doing a podcast. If it's good, it's good. And so you don't need to envy anybody else. It doesn't, you know, I was on this panel in Australia a lot of heavy lifters and we each give our talks and they bring us out.

1:38:05And the person in charge, I didn't know this was happening, it was going to happen, asked everybody about their bucket list. So I'm the last one there. So the first one goes on and now comes to me. And so I've had some time to think about it. And I'm thinking, what's the matter with me? I don't have a bucket list. But of course, knowing who I am and how I'm going to be, I'm going to say, that's a good thing. So how is it a good thing that if you're enjoying what you're doing, you don't need to be doing something else? And that I thought, you know, if you only had one question to ask people to see how mindful they are, I haven't tested this, but it might be about work.

1:38:44How much do you need a vacation? Needing a vacation means that you're working mindlessly. Enjoying a vacation is a different story. And so again, a bucket list suggests, I'm not so happy now, I just wish I could be doing these other things. And so if I'm a happy camper and I'm looking at other people in all other parts of the world, that's great. I don't have that same feeling. Well, need is the real pivot here, right? Because it's fine to have things on a list that you aspire to experience. it's the idea that you need to have those experiences in order to feel like a fully developed human or whatever, or you can't be happy until.

1:39:33Right, right. And so, it goes back to the point of why do we need all of these awards, money, and so on. Because we all wanna, we want love and approval. Exactly. And we want some sense of immortality, I guess, that we attach to that. Oh, that's interesting. I don't know about the immortality part, but the love and approval from others mainly so that we'll feel it about ourselves. And then I go back again to if you know why you're doing what you're doing, you'll feel fine about yourself. If you do it mindlessly, then you're potentially vulnerable to other people's understanding of why you're doing what you're doing.

1:40:16So that you go to the airport early, that's because you're neurotic. you know and maybe so um but uh that's not the reason we do what we do um and you know and i think that people have taught us sort of accept your shortcomings and again i think this is a big mistake certainly better to accept your shortcomings than to you know regret your shortcomings but better than better is to understand how they're not shortcomings, we call them long-goings. They're not deficits. Well, you can't change anything until you first accept it, but acceptance is like the first piece. But accepting still sounds like, you know, here's this negative.

1:41:05There's a guilt or a shame. Yeah, there's something negative about it that I'm gonna just accept rather than, well, this is actually a good thing. Now, how is this thing that seems bad to everybody actually good. And, you know, it depends on what the thing is, but certainly with all of the behavior descriptions that we've talked about, you know, you're impulsive, you hate yourself for being impulsive, that's because you value being spontaneous. You're inconsistent, what's the matter with you, you're so inconsistent, and that's because you value being flexible and so on. And to get to the point where you let other people tell you why you did what you did and ignore the other alternative, it's very sad to me.

1:41:52But that's the way most of us are. And then we have some people who pretend to know. Then how do you think about the role of suffering in growth and evolution? So first, let me just set it up with an example. Okay. Okay, you know. No, I'm super curious because this is personal. So I'm in recovery, I've been in recovery for a long time. And when you're talking about like acceptance, I think of, you know, I think of alcoholism. I think of it in that context and it brings me right back to the, you know, the hitting bottom and making that decision. Okay, I can't live this way anymore. I need to find a new way to live.

1:42:29And I'll fully admit a tremendous amount of guilt and shame, you know, accompanying that. and a lot of suffering. And I could have made the choice in that moment to be excited, oh my God, I'm finally accepting that I'm an alcoholic and this gives me this incredible opportunity to like grow and change my life. How exciting, that was not my experience. But I will say that the suffering, the pain of that experience created a willingness that didn't exist prior that motivated a series of actions that changed my life. And so I look at suffering as positive. I don't think of it as a negative attribute.

1:43:09It was something that motivated and instilled energy in me to like make this change. Yeah, okay. So I said succinctly, no pain, no gain. And I don't agree with that. I think if you're in pain, surely it's to your advantage to find a way to gain from it. But one can gain without the pain. why is it so much more difficult to gain without the pain? So for example, you can't stop eating cake. You know it's not good for you. You take pleasure in it, but now you have type two diabetes. And so once you get ill enough or your body feels poorly enough, maybe you're motivated to make a change and invest in your wellbeing.

1:43:59But the choice remains well in advance of that when you took that first piece of cake to say, I'm not gonna do that anymore. It's not good for me. It's just more difficult to make that choice at that stage. I think that by saying that you shouldn't do it makes it more appealing to do it. Then you think less of yourself for having done it, which makes it even harder to change the behavior. I think that, again, what you're doing makes sense or else you wouldn't do it. and let yourself have a stupid piece of cake. But if you have the cake and you think you shouldn't have the cake, now you're the type of person who's not strong enough to resist the cake, which makes you want the cake even more and thinking less of yourself.

1:44:44And so it's like, you know, New Year's resolutions or we're not so far from everybody's making these resolutions. People make the resolutions and then almost never do you follow up with it. And the reason for that is the thing that you're doing makes sense to you. you know, that, oh, I should go to the gym. Why should you go to the gym? Who decided you should go to the gym? You know, so somebody gives you this idea that this is the only way you're going to be healthy. You really don't want to go to the gym. You sabotage yourself and you don't go to the gym. And I think that you should question the commitment in the first place.

1:45:25You know,

1:45:30you Years ago, when I was your age, what people should be doing is having cottage cheese and carrots and celery. And if you go on this kind of diet, it's not going to last. And so deprive yourself. So for me, why should I admit this? But I do. If I have a big plate and you give me a, it's full, I'm going to eat everything that's on it. If you give me a small plate, I'm going to eat everything that's on it and I'm going to be just as satisfied. You know, that it's by not depriving myself, I find that I just eat less. But again, who says you should or shouldn't have this or that? You know, if you pay attention to the science, it keeps changing.

1:46:24All of it. It doesn't matter whether you're supposed to breastfeed, bottle feed, have coffee, don't have coffee. Wine is good for you. Wine is bad for you. And that all of that misses the point that in some sense, a certain amount of it is going to be good or bad for some people, not for other people. And you have to decide that for yourself. I'm not, you know, I'm a scientist. So I am not putting down science. I just think we have to appreciate it for what it is and not go beyond what it is. And that we need to learn from it, take advice from it, but not let it dictate. You know, so that piece of cake, why not have the piece of cake?

1:47:07Really? I mean, is your life going to change so terribly if you have a piece of cake? No. What happens, though, is that because you thought you shouldn't have the piece of cake, Like now, you know, your so-called willpower, which doesn't exist either, you know, is diminished. And, you know, you go on a diet, you break the diet, then you do the kitchen sink, eat everything. Well, I think there's a couple of pieces there. I mean, there is a neurochemical thing when you indulge in a certain habit and then you become sort of, you know, more powerless to its wiles in the future. And then there's the mental piece, which is like, well, I already broke it.

1:47:49So who gives a fuck and like, here you go, like down the thing. And then there's the emotional piece, which is I'm a piece of shit. I can't do anything right. And you go down the shame spiral, which reinforces the loop. And then you have to have it to feel better, right? Like this is the nature of addiction. And there's a lot of science on how mindfulness can help us with these patterns and loops, because the more we're paying attention, the less we're in this context, like prone to overeating or indulging, et cetera. Mindfulness is a means to which you can break a bad habit and form a new one, I suppose.

1:48:30But you're saying like, well, let's just go up to 10 ,000 feet and say, who cares, right? Like you're asking the bigger question about like, why is it that it is important to you to break this habit or form a new one in the first place? Well, the forming the new one, I take issue with it. I'm back then working on that in a new book. Habits are, so a good habit is better than a bad habit, but there's a better than better way. You know, as soon as you're doing something habitually, you're not there anymore. You're not taking charge of it. You're not enjoying it. You're not modulating whether it should be a little more, a little less of, you know, whatever.

1:49:09and people want to have good habits because they're afraid to let themselves just be. If I don't go to the gym every day, then I'm not going to go to the gym at all. Why? If you have multiple reasons for doing things and if you go to the gym, why should you go to the gym if it's aversive? I don't get it. But it shouldn't be aversive. You make it fun while you're there Unless you have a tiny person who believes, unless it's a verse of, I'm not gaining anything from it. That's back to your no pain, no gain. I don't know. I think that we just make things very complicated for ourselves. And, you know, then you get older and it all becomes easier again.

1:49:58All the things you worried about seem so silly. You know, I wrote this thing a while ago. You're two years old and you fall and you scrape your leg and you're screaming bloody murders if the world's going to end. You're seven years old. Johnny or Janie doesn't send you a valentine. And oh, my God, the world's going to end. You're 13. You have a pimple. Oh, my God, I'm never going to look good. You're 18. And it just goes on. At some point, you look back on all of it and say how stupid it all was. and the culture allows it in some sense, almost promotes it. I'm not sure why, but at the end of it, there's always somebody who's profiting.

1:50:44Meanwhile, yeah, you look back on it and say how silly, but at the same time, the fact that you like didn't get that Valentine when you were in seventh grade or whatever, you know, create some neural pathway in your brain that, you know, 30 years later, you're still acting out on as a result because it's some form of trauma that remained unhealed. Yeah, but to recognize that other people's responses to us are a function of their needs. They say nothing about us. Every compliment you give me is not really about me. It's more about you. Yeah, my need for you to like me. Yeah, every insult and so on.

1:51:29And if we were brought up to understand those things, even a seven-year-old can understand them if they're spoken in kiddies, then Johnny doesn't give you the valentine. So Johnny didn't give you a valentine. It doesn't have to, you know, you go from that, you didn't get the valentine, therefore nobody likes you, therefore your life is going to be a failure. It's silly, right? I mean, how do we communicate these things to the children? Somebody says, how many Valentines did you get, Mary? And you got more than Susie, so therefore you're a better person. Whereas Susie would say, yeah, but I've got the Valentines from the most important people.

1:52:11It's all crazy. It's crazy, yeah. It's all crazy. You know, I talked to you about how that pancreas story, you know, that I still can't, this was a story where I'm not gonna eat the pancreas, but I feel I have to eat it because now I'm a married woman at this very young age. And I still can't figure out why I thought that. There's so many things that are communicated to us. If you're sophisticated, these are all the things that you'll do. And we go back and people, I don't know, it's become my new mantra, who says so? And when you recognize the three levels that I talk about, where level one and three look the same, but they're very different.

1:53:00Level one, two, three thinking. Maybe explain that. Yeah, well, the easiest example, I keep using The New Yorker. It's a wonderful magazine and this example doesn't shine, but so be it. Level one, we have people who don't read The New Yorker. Level two, people who read The New Yorker. Level three, people who don't read The New Yorker anymore. Level one and three look the same, but they're very different people. You can have them read it again, but that makes the story too complicated. You know, you have a young kid is uninhibited. The rest of the world is inhibited. And then you get to a certain point, we say, who gives a damn?

1:53:37You know, and you become disinhibited. But when they accuse the older person of being like a child, they're not. They're very different. The child doesn't know the rule. The older person knows the rule and thinks it's silly. you know uh and i remember on the you know again this is so silly but if i had gotten um spilled something on my shirt you know i'd be walking around like this you know so nobody would see it without realizing how ridiculous this itself looks um as if every moment is this is going to describe who we are for a lifetime that people won't realize yes you can have dirt on yourself one minute doesn't mean that's the way you wear your clothes.

1:54:23You're wearing two different shoes. Doesn't mean you don't know that there'll be a different response to wearing the same shoe. Everybody worrying so about what other people think and everybody knows they themselves don't know. And the joke is thinking that other people do know. And so you're always guessing that what's the right thing to do. And I'm here to inform people nobody knows and nobody can know because everything is changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives. And it's okay not to know because there are other things you do know. And so if we stop evaluating, you know, here are the great people, here are the miserable people, and you're always trying to make sure you're more on the top than on the bottom.

1:55:16I think, you know, that we need to take this vertical line and make it horizontal. And it almost happened briefly during COVID when the person who was delivering the toilet paper was all of a sudden more important than the architect, you know, and so it just didn't last. This level one, two, three thinking, you know, naivete to certainty and back to like kind of awe and wonder, right? And it's earned through life experience, et cetera. You finally arrive at this point where, you know, you can call it like the, you know, I don't care anymore phase, but it's really like, it's more a function of like, I know who I am.

1:55:59I know who my friends are. I know what I care about. I invest my energy in the things that are important to me and everything else really doesn't matter. But it's also, no, that's perfect, but it's also knowing that all of those things change. That, yeah, you know, my person, my friend felt this way then, but the day before felt this other way. Because you've lived enough to see the ups and the downs and how everything doesn't matter. Right, the pendulum's always swinging. So, as I'm trying to do, so when I lecture to these kids, you know, these undergraduates, there's no reason for them to have to wait.

1:56:32This is the question I was getting at. Like how do you expedite, you know, getting from two to three with a young person who doesn't have that life experience, who's still trying to figure out who they are, what they stand for and what's important to them and are easily captured by the opinions of other people and influenced by that. And it creates this insecurity where you really do think the stain on your shirt is important, et cetera. Well, I think that if people were aware of multiple ways of understanding any situation, they were aware of how any outcome that's bad is also good in some other context, that everything becomes more fluid.

1:57:12The kind of growth we're talking about would happen naturally. You know, that if you, I don't know, so somebody asks you to do something and you say yes because you're afraid of not doing it, right? Then you get a little older and you've had experiences where you're freed from that and you can say no nicely. But if you ask yourself in the original context, what are the advantages of doing it? What are the disadvantages of doing it? When would it matter? When would it not matter? Why should it matter? or why should I, you know, just make this thing that's made so simple broader in its potential meaning is very freeing.

1:57:53And when I know that if I do it, if I think if I do it, good things will happen. If I don't do it, bad things. If on the other hand, I think here are the good things that could happen from my not doing it, good things that could happen from my doing it, then doing it, not doing it just becomes simpler. I'm curious around how this is received by your students because on some level, if you're at Harvard and end up in your class, it's a self-selecting population to the extent that you get to Harvard by being very good at following rules. You learn how to take the SAT test, you know how to get good grades, you know how to study and perform on tests.

1:58:32And that's about like high performance in a very narrow kind of construct that is all about like rule following. Yeah, I have very often won the Best Teacher Award. So there's something that they appreciate. You know, I don't know. And sometimes, you know, you tell people things and you think they're understanding what you're telling them. Years ago, I'm in Manhattan. I'm walking down the street and this woman comes up, burning up to me. She's so excited because I had apparently given her therapy at an earlier time. It was very important to me because I asked her, what did I tell her that was so important to her?

1:59:11And she told me, and I know there was no way that I actually said those words, you know, so that, again, it goes back to the way we're talking about relationships. You know, people can understand what's being said in so many different ways. I think the, well, I think that they get from this that a little bit of being an iconoclast and just questioning what they hadn't questioned before. Because it happens over and over again, with whatever we're talking about, but here are the five other ways we might look at that. And so some of that must rub off. What are your thoughts on romantic love? Because we talked about long-term relationships, but your students are, they're the beginning stages of trying to be in relationships.

2:00:01like in that same story around, you know, having a story, projecting an idea onto another individual and, you know, kind of embarking on a relationship when you're both just trying to impress each other and you're in that kind of honeymoon period. Yeah, and they ask when there are problems and then it's always coming up with another way of looking at the, you know, at the issue. I think that... Um, People come to see who they are from other people. The way I am in your eyes tells me who I am. And so then I become very vulnerable. And at the beginning, you wanna really care about me or leave me to believe you really care about me.

2:00:45So that makes me feel good about myself and so on. Part of that is what is exciting. I'm not sure, I feel like there's something behind your question that I'm not saying. I guess I'm just curious, because you're with young people all the time, if you had a perspective on kind of dating and relationships in those early stages that might be iconoclastic or a different lens on what you usually hear about, you know, about how to navigate these. Yeah, the assumption is every belief I have is counter to whatever the world believes. It's not a bad guess, but I remember my stepson was in college. So he's like 43 now.

2:01:31So it was a few decades ago. And I saw that the kids were doing, were very different from when I was in college, that they did everything as a group, which was very nice, not pairing off. And I don't know what the case is for the students today. You know, so when I was young, if you didn't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you felt very bad about it and so on. and I don't know if that's still the case. I think it's changed significantly. Yeah, I'm sure it has. I think the problem is that when I'm with these students, I'm doing all the talking. So you're leading me to believe I should do more listening, but if they're not talking about their relationships, I'm not going to know the ins and outs of it.

2:02:20I don't think the problems change very much, sadly, from when you're 15, 20, 30. You know, at some point, hopefully by the time you're 50, most of it has come together and you realize that a lot of the things you worried about were not worth worrying about. Much of a relationship is, all of the relationship really is in your head, right? You know, they don't really know what your smiles mean, whether they're meant to fool me, to impress me, or you're just really pleased. So many understandings of any behavior that you're really in control of the relationship in ways you're not aware of. And a simple thing, I talked about this forever ago.

2:03:17Let's say you're at a party and there's somebody there who's ignoring you. You feel ignored. You could feel that the person is a snob looking down on you, in which case you might feel bad about yourself, dislike them, and so on. You might assume the person is shy. The shy person and the snob are going to behave pretty much the same way, a level one and three in some sense. If you assume that they're shy, then you might go over and befriend them. And then even if they were a snob, they may now become a friend of yours. So the ways we understand people, we create our own relationships more than people assume.

2:04:04They assume it's two separate people come together and then they either hit it off or they don't. And I think that two people come together and you either make it work by the different thoughts that you have or not. based on whatever your individual needs are. Yeah. I wonder whether our tethering to our devices, especially with the younger generation, is impacting that ability to read social cues in complex contexts, right? Like if you've spent most of your formative years engaging with people through a device and text, are you as kind of skilled at like reading those cues that you're getting in person from people that are subtle.

2:04:52But it might be that whether you are as good or not, you don't believe you're as good, which then makes you pay more attention. Oh, that's interesting. You know, because if I think I'm so good at reading, you know, I need very little information and then I'm off on my own thoughts and Rich is this kind of person and so on. again I think that it depends less on what we're doing than the way we're doing it and if we do it mindfully you know there's a lot of information to you know looking at your phone there's nothing about the phone that's an advantage or a disadvantage I know that people are accused of being on their phone too much by people who want them to pay more attention to them.

2:05:41And I have this hypothesis, maybe you can test this eventually, which is, let me go back. I was giving this talk in South Africa on this news show. I'm not sure why I was there. But before we started, the person said to me, Professor Langer, can I ask you something separate from whatever we're going to talk? I said, sure. I said, ask me, but I'll answer honestly, which may or not be good for you. He said, should kids be spending all this time, you know, on their cell phones? And, you know, and I said, you're not going to like my answer. But that parents want kids to get off their phones. The only way they're going to get off their phones is if they're presented with a meaningful, nurturing, fun alternative.

2:06:31You know, that if you're great fun, I'm gonna rather speak to, I don't wanna be on my phone right now because I'm having fun with you. But if it wasn't fun, you know, I'll play words with friends. Or to chastise a child and say, you need to be off your phone. And then, well, what am I gonna do now? Well, you need to be bored right now. Right, exactly, exactly. It's not very appealing. So the idea is not to tell kids to get off their phones, but for parents to up their games. Same thing in relationships. One person is spending too much time doing whatever they're doing. The alternative, it's not to yell at them, look, you're ignoring me, setting code, but rather to make it more interesting to be with you.

2:07:17You said that meaning is extrinsic. In other words, like imagine the person who says, I'm trying to find meaning in my life or I'm on the search for meaning or I don't know what my purpose is. Okay, but this is like a common thing. Like they feel, they put that pressure on themselves, that guilt and that, why don't I know what my purpose is? Yeah, you know, the meaning of life, it's the hokey pokey. Isn't it? That's what it's all about. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. saying, you know, not everybody asks those questions. And so if you look at who's asking them and who's not asking them, the not askers probably are level one and level three.

2:08:01You know, level one where it wouldn't occur to them to even know that there's supposed to be some meaning. And level three where the meaning is whatever you're deriving from the interaction. You know, There's no larger meaning. What is the counsel to the person who says, I would like my life to have purpose. I don't feel purposeful. I don't feel like there's meaning in what I'm doing. So bring it to a much smaller level and just actively notice. So for those people who are women who are watching football and by noticing new things end up liking the football game, it doesn't matter whether they're noticing the rear ends of the football players, the crowd size, as long as you're actively noticing that makes you engage.

2:08:49And when you're engaged, you're not asking those questions that are all suggestive of you not being involved. Getting involved is not something people, too many people are led to believe, you know, some, I have a calling for this, you know, and so they're waiting to be called rather than you can engage anything, like the Birdman of Alcatraz, to use that example. You notice new things about something, you become engaged. That becomes a passion. That becomes the reason you're doing what you're doing. And I don't think if you're actively engaged in one thing that it's any less important than an active engagement in anything else.

2:09:37So remarkably, what I'm saying, to give you something to disagree with, that if you're mindfully cleaning toilets, it's as meaningful as if you're deriving some new theory of relativity. The only advantage to the theory of relativity is that it doesn't have a presumed false, but presumed end to how many things we can notice about it and how grand we can make the theory. The toilet, you know, you're led to believe now it's clean, that's the end. But it can always be cleaner change. There's always more to do or not. But in either case, the meaning is a product of - Of noticing. Of noticing, but also taking action, right?

2:10:27Like the idea that you're waiting around until you get struck with some epiphany about like what your purpose is, it doesn't work that way. Like the purpose is revealed in the - In the doing. In the doing and the exploration and the trying of things. Right, exactly. What is your most controversial take on things? Or the one that people give you grief about? I don't know if I scare them away so they don't give me grief or they give me grief and I'm oblivious to it. I don't experience a lot of grief giving. I don't know. It depends on the audience. You know that if I'm speaking to medical people, the idea that we can control these chronic illnesses probably doesn't sit well with a lot of them.

2:11:16I don't know, Rich. I think my manner in stating all of these outrageous ideas is so soft that it's easy for people to accept. Well, you're very endearing. Yeah, thank you. But most of the time I find myself, I'm not selling, I'm sharing. And so it leads me to behave differently and probably for the information to be received differently. If I'm saying, this is the fact, then it's going to get you crazed and showing me how it's not the case. Whereas I'm saying one way of looking at it might be - There's a perspective. But I'm sure that there are people who think - It might be possible. I mean, we know there are people who think I'm outrageous.

2:12:00I'm sure there are people who think that I'm totally wrong. I remember way back when, I mean, this is what, 40 years ago, maybe more. I was speaking to some people about the first nursing home study that we did. and this was the beginning of mind-body medicine in some sense where we take people in nursing home, we give them choices to make, a plan to take care of, encouragement to be making these choices and then we go back and find out that the group given these choices which eventually became mindfulness, live longer and I was speaking as a Nobel Prize winner who just dismissed it. I mean, it wasn't nice.

2:12:45you know uh it would have been a nice conversation if he told me why it can't be true um but you know then more and more people in the culture believe it or if he said i disagree but tell me more some anything you know rather than just dismiss but that that was the only time i remember you know having that experience um i'm sure there are people who disagree in the same way he did but they're not face-to-face. And now I'm older and I care less about some of these things. And, you know, it's fine. We'll see. We'll see. If you believe that your thoughts don't matter and, you know, this negativity is the rule rather than the exception for you, somebody out there can evaluate our lives down the road and make some judgment.

2:13:41I think that our thoughts determine most of our physical, psychological health. And that, as I said before, everything is mutable. So that I'm happy with the world I live in because as soon as it doesn't work, I change it. So I don't walk around bitching about this or that, all of these complaints. and say, it wouldn't occur to me because I'm enjoying the thing that you're complaining about. If I'm not enjoying it, I change it. And I do tell my students that. I said, you know, when I was younger and people spent a lot of time going to movies, which now you watch the big movie, you know, on the big TV at home often enough, that they would sit there for two hours and then they'd leave complaining about what an awful movie it was.

2:14:31and to me either find a way to enjoy it or leave. Life is short. It's like implied contract that you have to stay at the end. Or there's a funny line, it was Henny Youngman goes into this restaurant and he says, the food was awful and the portion's so small. And it's supposed to be funny because if the food is awful, why would you want a lot of it? But I understood that. Yeah, give me a lot, doesn't matter how good. So I could imagine staying. I think that people are led to believe by criticizing that they're discerning. And, you know, that I don't think people appreciate how hard it is in some sense to make things sound simple.

2:15:17You know, we have a level one and level three again. And so it seems, my goodness, how silly she is with these views. Either you believe that your thoughts have an impact on your well-being and your behavior and the world around you, or you don't. And if you do, what are the implications of that? Yeah, the implications are that you don't have to be miserable. The implications are that whatever exists can be improved. and whatever has happened can be understood in multiple ways where the other individual is just saddled with this is a terrible thing. You know, there are people who believe, I'm sure you're not one of them, but that, you know, stress is all around.

2:16:06It's a normal thing. You have to be stressed. Work has to be hard. There are terrible things out there. Like it's a dimension of the universe or something. Yeah, yeah. I think it's terrible that people are taught to accept stress. The baseline should be being at ease. Then when you're just at ease or diseased, you notice it very early on, you know, and take care of it. I mean, we just don't pay attention. You know, it's sort of somebody might gain a pound, three pounds, and they don't notice it because they're oblivious to everything. and you don't notice it until you've gained 10 pounds or need a larger size.

2:16:51It's much harder to lose the 10 pounds than the one or two pounds. And we do that with most things. We don't notice the small things. The relationship is falling apart, but you're oblivious to it until the damage is very big. It's like the garage mechanic, I'm making this up, I would assume, that if he or she were in the car with you, they would notice that the engine doesn't sound quite right, where most of us would be oblivious until there's some big problem. And what is it? Prevention, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I think it's probably an ounce of prevention is worth 10 pounds of cure.

2:17:37I think that mindlessness or that disconnection where you're not even aware of the stress you carry or how your behaviors are impacting your own life in a negative way, we're also detached from or unaware of the extent to which they impact the people around us. And you did this study with monks and this notion of mindfulness being contagious, mindfulness in a room, the monks leave and there's a residue of mindfulness that other people can feel and it impacts them. But conversely, the same would apply for mindlessness, right? If you're, if, if a room full of stressed out people, you know, like it's going to impact you if you're there, you're going to feel that stress.

2:18:20And what is that doing to you when it wasn't even you that, you know, kind of created the stress in the first place? Yeah, no, I think negativity spreads as quickly as positivity. And when people talk, you know, people have to understand things are not positive, things are not negative, things are things. and our understanding of them creates our experience. You don't understand. You don't understand how bad it is and how hard my life is. Have you been watching the news, Ellen? You know, you need to be concerned and like, what are you doing about this? Yeah. I mean, that's sort of our pervasive kind of like - Oh, no, for sure, for sure.

2:18:58You know, I live with somebody like that and I'd say, look, this is crazy that either go do something or stop thinking, Think about something else that the chicken little, the world is going to explode, everything is awful. There's no evidence for that. There's a lot of agitation at the moment. There's a lot of people celebrating. There's a lot of people very upset. There's a lot of polarization, division, acrimony, fear, uncertainty, right? Like what is gonna happen? Yeah, but I think a lot of that stemmed from the naive realism that I talked about before. There's one view, and so if I have this view, and you believe other, you must be wrong.

2:19:47Rather than recognizing and asking the other side how they come to the views that they have. To see that, you know, it's reasonable. It's hard to imagine now with some of these alternative views as having some sense behind them. I mean, you take an anti-vaxxer. Okay, well, you know, my God, how can you not get a vaccine? It's so simple. You get the stupid injection and then you're saying, you know, whatever. And so you conceive of this person as less than on so many dimensions. And you just ask them why they believe that. And, you know, there was a time I have another friend who we agree on everything almost, except when she said that she wasn't going to get the vaccine, the COVID shot.

2:20:40And it was because, what was the, polio, yes. And there were people who were given the polio vaccine who actually got polio. And you could imagine, of course, that's going to be the case. And so for that reason, she doesn't want the vaccine. Now, at no time do you know whether this vaccine is going to give you the disease or protect you from the disease. And you can't be sure. But it's not irrational to... Right, it affirms this point that like, you know, everyone's making a decision for their own reasons. Exactly. And we're better to investigate understanding than to, you know, judge and dismiss.

2:21:24Yeah, you know, I mean, yes, To assume that we know negates all the evidence. There's no evidence. We go back to the one and one is not always two. That we have smoking causes cancer. You can't test that. It's only correlational. We can't take people who don't smoke, randomly assign them to the smoking condition or the non-smoking condition, and then see what ends up happening. and for how many people is this true? I mean, we have everything we believe, I think needs to be, and this is heresy, you want me to say these things where I'm at odds with the whole world. No, I don't want you to speak your truth.

2:22:10I'm not trying to push you towards like - No, of course not. You're trying to reveal what's really there. No, I understand that. But you take, let's take people in nursing homes. When I started studying people in nursing homes, they'd be sitting there like this, sort of not fully alive, even though they were very much alive. And have them smoke, have them gamble, because these things are stimulants. What does it mean that something is good for you or bad for you? For whom, when, under what circumstances? and as soon as we have these rigid rules, then we come down hard on the people who seem to violate them.

2:22:56You know, rather than, I have a dearest person to me who if given dexedrine puts her to sleep. Right. Wow. You know, but you see this up close and you say, wait a second, you just can't be sure and when you're not sure, then you pay a different kind of attention. And which we should all be doing with any medication, anything we're doing to see what is our individual response to it. That doesn't mean we have to, you know, argue against everything that the world is offering, but I don't think we should just be mindlessly accepting it. I think that's a good place to end it. You thought, huh? That's why I said it.

2:23:43Yeah. Is there anything else? What did we leave on the table? Any like burning desire to share anything else before we wrap it up here? There's always more. Remember, I told you the more I talk, the more I want to continue. I know, and I told you, let's leave the audience wanting more. All right. And then I'll come back. Will you come back? Of course. Great. That was wonderful. I adore you. I appreciate you coming today. That was really fun to talk to you. And you have this couples retreat coming up in March. In March, right, in Mexico. In Mexico. Where can people learn about that? Just contact me.

2:24:18Yeah. Okay, awesome. Well, thanks a lot. I also have a new, I have a children's book that's gonna come out. Oh, you do? But I'll come back and we'll talk about that. All right, what's that called? The name keeps changing. The current name might be Where's Happy. Is this inspired by the song, the lyrics to the song that you wrote? It's in it, it's in it. And the message is, this is my key to happiness. and I end every class with a slideshow, the paintings, the one-liners, that ends with glado. It's all about glado. What is glado? Okay, be generous, loving, authentic, direct, and open. Each of these comes about by our being mindful.

2:25:04Each of these leads to our being mindful. Each leads to the other and that's the way to be happy. Be generous, loving, authentic, direct, and open. So the new book is a children's version of this. Glatto. Glatto. Easy to remember. We'll come back and talk to me some more about that. I'd be happy to have you too. Peace.

2:25:36That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change and the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

2:26:21Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake.

2:26:58Portraits by Davy Greenberg Graphic and social media assets Courtesy of Daniel Solis Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting And website management And of course our theme music was created By Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt And Harry Mathis Appreciate the love, love the support See you back here soon Peace Plants Namaste

2:27:31Thank you.