August 14, 2024 • 23 mins
Dr. Ellen Langer has been called the “mother of mindfulness” for her extensive research in the field of mindfulness – which she defines as the process of simply noticing new things. Through decades of research, Harvard psychology professor Dr. Langer has proved again and again that we have more control over our health and well-being than we ever realized, and it all begins with our thoughts. On this week’s Wellness Wednesday, Dr. Langer reminds us that we already have a potent tool for improving our health and we may not even know it.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey fam, Hello Sunshine. Today on the bright Side, it's
Wellness Wednesday. We're talking mindfulness and mindlessness with Harvard professor
doctor Ellen Langer. Her studies on decision making, healing, and
aging have taken over the internet. Let me ask you this,
what if age was just a mindset? We'll find out
if it is.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Today.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
It's Wednesday, August fourteenth. I'm Danielle Robe.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
And I'm Simon Boyce. And this is the bright Side
from Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together
to share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten your day.
Today's Wellness Wednesday is presented by Coliguard Danielle. Today's show
is all about mindfulness and this topic reminds me of
one of my most mindful periods of life. It's when
(00:49):
I was at that retreat a few months ago in Nashville.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Oh my god, the life changing retreat.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'll never forget it, the life changing retreats. I mean,
I'll be honest, it's really easy to be mindful when
you're on this beautiful campus in the middle of the
countryside with no access to phones or screens. Was it verdant?
It was very verdant. It was lush, it was verdant,
not bucolic though.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So what kind of mindful practices did you learn there? Like,
what'd you do well?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
We spent most of our time in therapy, so you
have no choice but to be dialed in and present
when you're in therapy. But there were some other mindfulness
hacks that I picked up. Just checking in with yourself,
so acknowledging what is the time the place that I'm
in right now, it's a great way to sent to yourself.
I also learned how to practice meditation in a way
(01:35):
that looks easier for me. I'm never going to be
that girl that wakes up every morning and is able
to just meditate and complete silence. However, for me, I
can do it through an instrumental track, through an orchestral track.
I can do it through walking or even an ice bath.
I don't know how regularly I'll do that, but that
was fun.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
How did that mindfulness shift things for you?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I've found that when I'm more mindful, I'm more open
to my intuition. I'm more open to community, to conversation,
to truth, and to serendipity, which is the most fun.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I really like that I do a heart meditation in
the morning. It's ten minutes. I just do it in
my bed. And when you breathe light out from your heart,
it makes you more open and does breathe into serendipity.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, that sounded very woo woo, but it's true.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
It does.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And our guest today has done a ton of research
on mindfulness. She's way less woo wu than we sounded
because she is an American professor of psychology at Harvard
and according to her research, mindfulness has shown to be
literally and figuratively enlivening. I'm talking improve relationships, health, well being,
even aging. It affects our aging process. I know, right,
(02:47):
that's the crazy part.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Doctor Langer has written over two hundred research articles and
thirteen books, including her most recent book called The Mindful Body,
Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, and through all her research,
doctor Langer always does demonstrates the power of our thoughts.
So let's bring her in, Doctor Ellen Langer, Welcome to
the bright Side.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Doctor Langer. You are a leading expert in mindfulness. You've
conducted more than ninety studies in this field. So my
first question is, how would you define mindfulness?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
It's so simple it almost defies belief. What many people
think of as mindfulness as meditation. And meditation is nice,
but it has nothing to do with mindfulness as I
study it. Mindfulness as we study it is immedia. All
you need to do is notice. So there are two
ways of becoming mindful. One is bottom up, which means
(03:40):
the things you think you know, just notice new things
about them, and you'll see you didn't know it as
well as you thought you did, and your attention naturally
goes there. When I started to paint, for instance, I
thought leaves would green, but then I went outside and
I started looking at the leaves, and they're hundreds and
hundreds of different shades of grain, and each of these
(04:01):
change depending on where the sun is in the sky.
So my mindless notion of green became a multitude of sensations.
The other way to be there, which is top down,
is to appreciate that everything is always changing. Everything looks
different from different perspectives. So when you realize you don't know,
(04:22):
then you naturally pay attention. So if the two of
you are going to come visit me in Massachusetts, you
wouldn't have to practice anything. You'd walk in everything would
be new to you, and you'd say, oh, did she
do that painting books? What is that over there? And
you'd notice because it's new and it feels good. It's
(04:42):
the essence of what we're doing when we're happening. So
you actively notice the neurons are firing, and the research
shows that it's literally and figuratively enliven it.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
In your most recent book, you write that quote, we
all already have a potent tool for improving our health
and we may not even know it.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
That is so powerful. What do you mean by that?
So the title of the book is The Mindful Body.
The subtitle is Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, And
so a lot of the book is about what I
call mind body unity. Now, people have a notion you
have a mind, you have a body. The problem with
that is how do you get a thought, something immaterial,
(05:22):
to affect the body something material. This is wrong. Let's
just put the mind and body back together. If it's
one thing. Wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting
the body. Wherever you're putting the body, you're necessarily putting
the mind. The studies that I report in there, the
examples I give from my own life other people's lives
(05:45):
makes clear that we have enormous control over our health
and well being. We've barely even tapped the surface of
what we're able to do. So we have lots and
lots of studies where we put the mind in strange
places and take the measurements from the body. So the
first study in that series was the counterclockwise study. Now
(06:09):
here we retrofitted a retreat to twenty years earlier, had
old men live there as if they were their younger selves.
So they spoke about past events as if they were
just unfolding, and in a period of just a week,
their vision improved, the hearing improved, their strength, their memory,
and they look noticeably younger, all by changing their minds.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I have so many questions, what do you mean by
changing their mind.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Let's take the second study in the series. We took
chambermaids and we asked these chamber maids how much exercise
do you get? Well, they believe that they're not getting
any exercise because the Surgeon General says exercise is what
you do after work, and they're just too tired. So
all we did was change their minds and teach them
that their work was exercise. Making a bed is like
(06:57):
working at this machine at the gym. Dusting the wind
is like working at this other machine. So on and
so forth. So now we have two groups, one group
whose mind has been changed, who believes their work is exercise.
The other group who doesn't realize this. They're not eating
any differently, they're not working any harder. All that's changed
is that mindset. As a result, the group that now
(07:20):
sees their work is exercise lost weight. There was a
change in waste to hip ratio, body mass index, and
their blood pressure came down just by changing their minds.
Let's take the last study in the series. We inflict
a wound. It was a minor wound, but still a wound.
And so people are in front, individually, are in front
(07:41):
of a clock. Unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged.
So for a third of the people, the clock is
going twice as fast as real time. For a third
of the people, it's going half as fast as real time.
For a third of the people it's real time. Now
most people would assume that stupid, I'm just going to
heal when that wound heals, What difference does it make
(08:03):
what the clock says but the clock is controlling our
perceptions of time, and it turns out the wound heals
based on clock time perceived time. You sort of imagine,
now you know that you can control your healing, you
can control your memory, your vision. I mean, we have,
you know, so many different studies.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
We have to take a quick break. Stick with us,
and we're back with doctor Ellen Langer. So mindfulness is
the act of noticing. And you say mindlessness is actually
(08:48):
very costly. What is the cost of mindlessness?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Well, first of all, you're not there. Every time you're
in a situation where there are new opportunities available to
you're going to be blind to them because the past
is dictating your present, your rule and routine bound you're
oblivious to alternative perspectives. In fact, in general, when we're
learning anything, we should learn it in a conditional way,
(09:14):
sort of kind of this way. Maybe this way not absolute,
because when you're learning something absolutely, then you don't vary
it by context. You don't vary it as a function
of your age, your ability at the time and so on,
or your difference from the person who wrote the rule
in the first place. And the very important point that's
(09:37):
hidden in here that I may clear in the mindful body,
which is everything. Everything that is was at one point
a decision. It wasn't handed down from the heavens that
there should be nine innings in a baseball game, cabinet
should be of this height. All of these things were decisions, right,
(09:59):
And so what that means is that everything is mutable.
Everything can be changed, but it doesn't occur to us
to change it. We just sort of accept what is
as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
It's clear, doctor Langer, that you question absolutely everything thure,
and what I'm hearing you talk about is perspective and
flexible thinking. And I learned through therapy that rigidity is
actually protection in many ways. So my question for you
is how did you become so flexible? Was it your upbringing?
Was it your parents? Where does this mindset come from?
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah? I was very, very fortunate. My parents were extremely
supportive and loving, and that gave me license to explore
new things without having to worry about breaking the toy
or showing up ten minutes later or whatever else. And
so even as a little girl, I remember people would
(10:57):
be complaining about one thing and I'd say, oh, look
at it. This other way. And so I have a
long life of doing this, and everything that I've written
basically has been trying to share that with other people.
I think people don't realize that events don't cause us stress,
they don't cause us unhappiness, they don't cause anything. It's
(11:20):
our views of the events that lead us to our feelings,
and our views or a function of our thoughts, we
have control over them. So if you look at this
in this awful way, of course you're not going to
feel good. If you look at it as an advantage,
then you are going to feel good. People often ask
me how do you change from seeing negatively to seeing
(11:41):
it positively? And you know, I don't change. I just
see it positively in the first place. But it is
neither positive nor negative. It just is.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
You do a lot of work on decision making, and
one of the things that you actually named is the
illusion of control. I'm fascinated by this. HM is the
illusion of control positive or negative for human beings.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I'll give people the bottom likes rather than waste your
time trying to make the right decision. I think people
would be better off making the decision right.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Does that include spouses?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Wait, my friend says this. She says, choose your choice.
She says, make a choice, and then your behavior and
actions are in validation of that choice. Choose your choice.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah. Now, what's interesting is that when you make a decision,
you're making a decision to take action. As soon as
you take that action, you can't make a comparison anymore.
If you say, should I have this pie or that pie?
So you take the first pie and you eat it.
Now you want to see, oh, maybe I should have
(12:53):
had the other pie. Well, your stomach is now full.
The other pie is not going to taste the way
it would have tasted if it were the first you,
so we can never really compare. So you can't hit
them up to know what to do. Not only that,
how much information should you gather? I have some friends
who are so ambivalent because they think they should know,
(13:14):
so they come up with this, yeah, but then I
can go there, and they go back and forth and
back and forth, very very creatively. And the mistake is
thinking there's a right answer.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I love this thinking, and I particularly like not judging
the decision as right or wrong, or good or bad.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Let me throw something at you that I think is
probably it's funny because I've done so many studies as
you mentioned earlier, and have many many studies where we're
able to make people live longer and they're happier and
everything is glorious. The one thing that I came to
and all of this time, over forty five years of
(13:51):
thinking about these issues, that means more to me than
anything else, is the following behavior makes sense from the
actors perspect or, else he or she wouldn't have done it.
And it's the same thing for yourself. If you did
it at the time there was a reason to do it,
or else you wouldn't have done it. Now, the problem
is if we're not aware of why we did what
(14:12):
we did, and we look back on it, we can
see it from a different perspective, and then we take
ourselves to task. So, for instance, I am extraordinarily gullible,
very gullible. Now I keep trying to change, I'm never
going to be able to change. Why is that because
going forward, I'm not intending to be gullible. I'm trusting.
(14:36):
And as soon as I realize that the reason I
did what I did was because I was trusting, I
wouldn't change for a moment. Every single negative description of
our own behavior or the behavior of others has an
equally strong but oppositely valenced alternative. You don't like me
because I'm impulsive. That's because I value being Spontaneou I
(15:00):
can't stand you because you're so inconsistent. That's because you
value being flexible and so on.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
We need to go to a quick break, but we'll
be right back. Don't go anywhere. We're back with doctor
Ellen Langer. Doctor Langer. We are coming to you from
Los Angeles. We are in the land of crystals and
(15:29):
sunshine and sand and manifestation. Manifestation is I think, something
that comes to mind whenever we are trying to close
the gap using our mind between where we are and
where we aspire to be. Is mindfulness related to manifestation
at all? And can you share how?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Yes? And no. If I want to speak Greek and
I don't speak Greek, and I think about wouldn't it
be nice speaking Greek and I get myself dressed as
a Greek, I'm not going to be able to speak,
you know. So it depends on the what we're talking about,
the particular content. I think that if you say to
(16:07):
yourself you have cancer, but if you keep saying to yourself,
I don't have cancer, I don't have cancer, you will
still have cancer because the fact of saying that to
yourself means that you believe you have cancer and you're
trying to change it. All right, So there are clearly similarities,
but it's very different. And the work that I talk about,
(16:31):
especially the work I report in The Mindful Body, is
all research s based. There's a a great deal of
science behind it.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Doctor Langer, I want to better understand what you mean
by mindfulness when it comes to your work with healing,
because what you just said to Simon was really interesting.
I'm not going to just visualize that. I'm i can
speak Greek. But when your mother was fifty six years old,
she was diagnosed with cancer, and her breast cancer had
(17:00):
mestasticized and was in her pancreas, which oftentimes means it's terminal.
But then something strange happened.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
I'm glad you pointed that up. So her cancer had
metastasized to that pancreas and then magically it was gone,
and the medical world couldn't explain it. The mind by
the unity idea does explain it. So when you're feeling
you know the game is over, and now you tune
yourself out. The amount of mindlessness is increasing. You're not
(17:31):
doing anything to support better health. You're helping to bring
about your own demise. And a lot of that is
what I object to. When doctors tell you things like
you have three months to live, there's no way for
them to know anything like that. And this is not
magical thinking. This is research based. Views that are based
(17:51):
on are understanding that the medical world only gives us probabilities,
and there's probabilities, then often became self fulfilling when they
don't need to. I am not suggesting me be positive.
I'm not suggesting me being negative. What I'm suggesting is
we remain uncertain. It's not a problem, it's not a solution.
(18:13):
It's not positive or negative. It just is, and then
we act on it to form our own experience of it.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
We want to end on a positive practical takeaway for
our right side besties. It's no secret that stress is
a huge problem in this country. Some studies show that
nearly half of Americans say that stress negatively impacts their
behavior or their lives. Can you share one mindfulness practice
that we can start using today to minimize our stress
(18:44):
and establish that mind body unity.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Yes, I write a lot about stress and mindfulness as
I study. It isn't a practice, it's a way of
being that naturally results when we recognize we don't know,
so then you naturally to all right, Now, stress is
not a function of events. It's a function of the
view you take of events. If you take a single
(19:08):
minded negative view, you're going to experience stress. If you
open up that view to see the many different things
that might be good, bad, and different, you're going to
feel differently. What people need to realize is that most
of the things we worry about never end up happening,
you know, So that seems the total waste of time.
One liner for people that some of my friends that
(19:28):
put on their refrigerators is ask yourself, is it a
tragedy or and inconvenience? It's almost always just an inconvenience.
I bang the car, I missed the appointment, I rip
the dress, I mean whatever it is, and then take
a deep breash. Right now, stress is purely psychological, and
(19:50):
my own view is that stress is the major culprit
in causing disease. All right, So that means if we
took people who were dietnose with dread diseases and we
measured their stress. I personally believe that level of stress
would determine the course of the disease over and above genetics, nutrition,
(20:14):
and even treatment. That's how important the stress is. But
since stress is psychological, that means we can control it.
And what we need to do is recognize that events
are only what we make of them. You know that
if my internet goes out, now, oh my god, No,
it wouldn't be Oh my god, I'd go and I
(20:36):
visit with a friend who's waiting for me inside. We
tend not to realize that most of the things that
happen are just not important. The older you get, the
more you realize this. You know, you're two years old
and you bang your knee and you're screaming bloody murder.
You're seven years old and Johnny or Janey doesn't send
you a Valentine, and oh my god, your world's going
(20:57):
to end. Then at some point you start to realize
this is all kind of selling. Now you two are young,
and what I try to teach my students is why
wait until you're four day? This is something available to
all of us right now to recognize the control we
have over our health and our well being, and it's
(21:19):
our thoughts that we can control that determine how we're
going to experience the life that we lead right now.
Too many people are sealed and unlived lives, and I've
taken it as my mission essentially to try to break
that seal.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Doctor Langer. Your advice about having an internal locus of
control and being really in tune with that, I think
that's everything. That's the key to happiness.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Well said doctor Langer. Thank you for joining us today
on the bright side.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Thank you so much, doctor Langer.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
This was fun. Be well.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Doctor Ellen Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University.
She's written more than two hundred research articles and thirteen books,
including The Mindful Body Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, Emma Gred and Ashley
Graham join us to talk about the season two premiere
of Side Hustlers, which is out next week. Thank you
to our partners at Coligard. The one of a kind
way to screen for colon cancer in the privacy and
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(22:34):
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Speaker 1 (22:48):
Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I'm Simone Boye. You can find me at Simone Voice
on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok. That's r O
b A Y.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
See you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.
Hey fam, Hello Sunshine. Today on the bright Side, it's
Wellness Wednesday. We're talking mindfulness and mindlessness with Harvard professor
doctor Ellen Langer. Her studies on decision making, healing, and
aging have taken over the internet. Let me ask you this,
what if age was just a mindset? We'll find out
if it is.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Today.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
It's Wednesday, August fourteenth. I'm Danielle Robe.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
And I'm Simon Boyce. And this is the bright Side
from Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together
to share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten your day.
Today's Wellness Wednesday is presented by Coliguard Danielle. Today's show
is all about mindfulness and this topic reminds me of
one of my most mindful periods of life. It's when
(00:49):
I was at that retreat a few months ago in Nashville.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Oh my god, the life changing retreat.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'll never forget it, the life changing retreats. I mean,
I'll be honest, it's really easy to be mindful when
you're on this beautiful campus in the middle of the
countryside with no access to phones or screens. Was it verdant?
It was very verdant. It was lush, it was verdant,
not bucolic though.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So what kind of mindful practices did you learn there? Like,
what'd you do well?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
We spent most of our time in therapy, so you
have no choice but to be dialed in and present
when you're in therapy. But there were some other mindfulness
hacks that I picked up. Just checking in with yourself,
so acknowledging what is the time the place that I'm
in right now, it's a great way to sent to yourself.
I also learned how to practice meditation in a way
(01:35):
that looks easier for me. I'm never going to be
that girl that wakes up every morning and is able
to just meditate and complete silence. However, for me, I
can do it through an instrumental track, through an orchestral track.
I can do it through walking or even an ice bath.
I don't know how regularly I'll do that, but that
was fun.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
How did that mindfulness shift things for you?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I've found that when I'm more mindful, I'm more open
to my intuition. I'm more open to community, to conversation,
to truth, and to serendipity, which is the most fun.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I really like that I do a heart meditation in
the morning. It's ten minutes. I just do it in
my bed. And when you breathe light out from your heart,
it makes you more open and does breathe into serendipity.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, that sounded very woo woo, but it's true.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
It does.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And our guest today has done a ton of research
on mindfulness. She's way less woo wu than we sounded
because she is an American professor of psychology at Harvard
and according to her research, mindfulness has shown to be
literally and figuratively enlivening. I'm talking improve relationships, health, well being,
even aging. It affects our aging process. I know, right,
(02:47):
that's the crazy part.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Doctor Langer has written over two hundred research articles and
thirteen books, including her most recent book called The Mindful Body,
Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, and through all her research,
doctor Langer always does demonstrates the power of our thoughts.
So let's bring her in, Doctor Ellen Langer, Welcome to
the bright Side.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Doctor Langer. You are a leading expert in mindfulness. You've
conducted more than ninety studies in this field. So my
first question is, how would you define mindfulness?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
It's so simple it almost defies belief. What many people
think of as mindfulness as meditation. And meditation is nice,
but it has nothing to do with mindfulness as I
study it. Mindfulness as we study it is immedia. All
you need to do is notice. So there are two
ways of becoming mindful. One is bottom up, which means
(03:40):
the things you think you know, just notice new things
about them, and you'll see you didn't know it as
well as you thought you did, and your attention naturally
goes there. When I started to paint, for instance, I
thought leaves would green, but then I went outside and
I started looking at the leaves, and they're hundreds and
hundreds of different shades of grain, and each of these
(04:01):
change depending on where the sun is in the sky.
So my mindless notion of green became a multitude of sensations.
The other way to be there, which is top down,
is to appreciate that everything is always changing. Everything looks
different from different perspectives. So when you realize you don't know,
(04:22):
then you naturally pay attention. So if the two of
you are going to come visit me in Massachusetts, you
wouldn't have to practice anything. You'd walk in everything would
be new to you, and you'd say, oh, did she
do that painting books? What is that over there? And
you'd notice because it's new and it feels good. It's
(04:42):
the essence of what we're doing when we're happening. So
you actively notice the neurons are firing, and the research
shows that it's literally and figuratively enliven it.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
In your most recent book, you write that quote, we
all already have a potent tool for improving our health
and we may not even know it.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
That is so powerful. What do you mean by that?
So the title of the book is The Mindful Body.
The subtitle is Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, And
so a lot of the book is about what I
call mind body unity. Now, people have a notion you
have a mind, you have a body. The problem with
that is how do you get a thought, something immaterial,
(05:22):
to affect the body something material. This is wrong. Let's
just put the mind and body back together. If it's
one thing. Wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting
the body. Wherever you're putting the body, you're necessarily putting
the mind. The studies that I report in there, the
examples I give from my own life other people's lives
(05:45):
makes clear that we have enormous control over our health
and well being. We've barely even tapped the surface of
what we're able to do. So we have lots and
lots of studies where we put the mind in strange
places and take the measurements from the body. So the
first study in that series was the counterclockwise study. Now
(06:09):
here we retrofitted a retreat to twenty years earlier, had
old men live there as if they were their younger selves.
So they spoke about past events as if they were
just unfolding, and in a period of just a week,
their vision improved, the hearing improved, their strength, their memory,
and they look noticeably younger, all by changing their minds.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I have so many questions, what do you mean by
changing their mind.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Let's take the second study in the series. We took
chambermaids and we asked these chamber maids how much exercise
do you get? Well, they believe that they're not getting
any exercise because the Surgeon General says exercise is what
you do after work, and they're just too tired. So
all we did was change their minds and teach them
that their work was exercise. Making a bed is like
(06:57):
working at this machine at the gym. Dusting the wind
is like working at this other machine. So on and
so forth. So now we have two groups, one group
whose mind has been changed, who believes their work is exercise.
The other group who doesn't realize this. They're not eating
any differently, they're not working any harder. All that's changed
is that mindset. As a result, the group that now
(07:20):
sees their work is exercise lost weight. There was a
change in waste to hip ratio, body mass index, and
their blood pressure came down just by changing their minds.
Let's take the last study in the series. We inflict
a wound. It was a minor wound, but still a wound.
And so people are in front, individually, are in front
(07:41):
of a clock. Unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged.
So for a third of the people, the clock is
going twice as fast as real time. For a third
of the people, it's going half as fast as real time.
For a third of the people it's real time. Now
most people would assume that stupid, I'm just going to
heal when that wound heals, What difference does it make
(08:03):
what the clock says but the clock is controlling our
perceptions of time, and it turns out the wound heals
based on clock time perceived time. You sort of imagine,
now you know that you can control your healing, you
can control your memory, your vision. I mean, we have,
you know, so many different studies.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
We have to take a quick break. Stick with us,
and we're back with doctor Ellen Langer. So mindfulness is
the act of noticing. And you say mindlessness is actually
(08:48):
very costly. What is the cost of mindlessness?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Well, first of all, you're not there. Every time you're
in a situation where there are new opportunities available to
you're going to be blind to them because the past
is dictating your present, your rule and routine bound you're
oblivious to alternative perspectives. In fact, in general, when we're
learning anything, we should learn it in a conditional way,
(09:14):
sort of kind of this way. Maybe this way not absolute,
because when you're learning something absolutely, then you don't vary
it by context. You don't vary it as a function
of your age, your ability at the time and so on,
or your difference from the person who wrote the rule
in the first place. And the very important point that's
(09:37):
hidden in here that I may clear in the mindful body,
which is everything. Everything that is was at one point
a decision. It wasn't handed down from the heavens that
there should be nine innings in a baseball game, cabinet
should be of this height. All of these things were decisions, right,
(09:59):
And so what that means is that everything is mutable.
Everything can be changed, but it doesn't occur to us
to change it. We just sort of accept what is
as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
It's clear, doctor Langer, that you question absolutely everything thure,
and what I'm hearing you talk about is perspective and
flexible thinking. And I learned through therapy that rigidity is
actually protection in many ways. So my question for you
is how did you become so flexible? Was it your upbringing?
Was it your parents? Where does this mindset come from?
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah? I was very, very fortunate. My parents were extremely
supportive and loving, and that gave me license to explore
new things without having to worry about breaking the toy
or showing up ten minutes later or whatever else. And
so even as a little girl, I remember people would
(10:57):
be complaining about one thing and I'd say, oh, look
at it. This other way. And so I have a
long life of doing this, and everything that I've written
basically has been trying to share that with other people.
I think people don't realize that events don't cause us stress,
they don't cause us unhappiness, they don't cause anything. It's
(11:20):
our views of the events that lead us to our feelings,
and our views or a function of our thoughts, we
have control over them. So if you look at this
in this awful way, of course you're not going to
feel good. If you look at it as an advantage,
then you are going to feel good. People often ask
me how do you change from seeing negatively to seeing
(11:41):
it positively? And you know, I don't change. I just
see it positively in the first place. But it is
neither positive nor negative. It just is.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
You do a lot of work on decision making, and
one of the things that you actually named is the
illusion of control. I'm fascinated by this. HM is the
illusion of control positive or negative for human beings.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I'll give people the bottom likes rather than waste your
time trying to make the right decision. I think people
would be better off making the decision right.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Does that include spouses?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Wait, my friend says this. She says, choose your choice.
She says, make a choice, and then your behavior and
actions are in validation of that choice. Choose your choice.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah. Now, what's interesting is that when you make a decision,
you're making a decision to take action. As soon as
you take that action, you can't make a comparison anymore.
If you say, should I have this pie or that pie?
So you take the first pie and you eat it.
Now you want to see, oh, maybe I should have
(12:53):
had the other pie. Well, your stomach is now full.
The other pie is not going to taste the way
it would have tasted if it were the first you,
so we can never really compare. So you can't hit
them up to know what to do. Not only that,
how much information should you gather? I have some friends
who are so ambivalent because they think they should know,
(13:14):
so they come up with this, yeah, but then I
can go there, and they go back and forth and
back and forth, very very creatively. And the mistake is
thinking there's a right answer.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I love this thinking, and I particularly like not judging
the decision as right or wrong, or good or bad.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Let me throw something at you that I think is
probably it's funny because I've done so many studies as
you mentioned earlier, and have many many studies where we're
able to make people live longer and they're happier and
everything is glorious. The one thing that I came to
and all of this time, over forty five years of
(13:51):
thinking about these issues, that means more to me than
anything else, is the following behavior makes sense from the
actors perspect or, else he or she wouldn't have done it.
And it's the same thing for yourself. If you did
it at the time there was a reason to do it,
or else you wouldn't have done it. Now, the problem
is if we're not aware of why we did what
(14:12):
we did, and we look back on it, we can
see it from a different perspective, and then we take
ourselves to task. So, for instance, I am extraordinarily gullible,
very gullible. Now I keep trying to change, I'm never
going to be able to change. Why is that because
going forward, I'm not intending to be gullible. I'm trusting.
(14:36):
And as soon as I realize that the reason I
did what I did was because I was trusting, I
wouldn't change for a moment. Every single negative description of
our own behavior or the behavior of others has an
equally strong but oppositely valenced alternative. You don't like me
because I'm impulsive. That's because I value being Spontaneou I
(15:00):
can't stand you because you're so inconsistent. That's because you
value being flexible and so on.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
We need to go to a quick break, but we'll
be right back. Don't go anywhere. We're back with doctor
Ellen Langer. Doctor Langer. We are coming to you from
Los Angeles. We are in the land of crystals and
(15:29):
sunshine and sand and manifestation. Manifestation is I think, something
that comes to mind whenever we are trying to close
the gap using our mind between where we are and
where we aspire to be. Is mindfulness related to manifestation
at all? And can you share how?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Yes? And no. If I want to speak Greek and
I don't speak Greek, and I think about wouldn't it
be nice speaking Greek and I get myself dressed as
a Greek, I'm not going to be able to speak,
you know. So it depends on the what we're talking about,
the particular content. I think that if you say to
(16:07):
yourself you have cancer, but if you keep saying to yourself,
I don't have cancer, I don't have cancer, you will
still have cancer because the fact of saying that to
yourself means that you believe you have cancer and you're
trying to change it. All right, So there are clearly similarities,
but it's very different. And the work that I talk about,
(16:31):
especially the work I report in The Mindful Body, is
all research s based. There's a a great deal of
science behind it.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Doctor Langer, I want to better understand what you mean
by mindfulness when it comes to your work with healing,
because what you just said to Simon was really interesting.
I'm not going to just visualize that. I'm i can
speak Greek. But when your mother was fifty six years old,
she was diagnosed with cancer, and her breast cancer had
(17:00):
mestasticized and was in her pancreas, which oftentimes means it's terminal.
But then something strange happened.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
I'm glad you pointed that up. So her cancer had
metastasized to that pancreas and then magically it was gone,
and the medical world couldn't explain it. The mind by
the unity idea does explain it. So when you're feeling
you know the game is over, and now you tune
yourself out. The amount of mindlessness is increasing. You're not
(17:31):
doing anything to support better health. You're helping to bring
about your own demise. And a lot of that is
what I object to. When doctors tell you things like
you have three months to live, there's no way for
them to know anything like that. And this is not
magical thinking. This is research based. Views that are based
(17:51):
on are understanding that the medical world only gives us probabilities,
and there's probabilities, then often became self fulfilling when they
don't need to. I am not suggesting me be positive.
I'm not suggesting me being negative. What I'm suggesting is
we remain uncertain. It's not a problem, it's not a solution.
(18:13):
It's not positive or negative. It just is, and then
we act on it to form our own experience of it.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
We want to end on a positive practical takeaway for
our right side besties. It's no secret that stress is
a huge problem in this country. Some studies show that
nearly half of Americans say that stress negatively impacts their
behavior or their lives. Can you share one mindfulness practice
that we can start using today to minimize our stress
(18:44):
and establish that mind body unity.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Yes, I write a lot about stress and mindfulness as
I study. It isn't a practice, it's a way of
being that naturally results when we recognize we don't know,
so then you naturally to all right, Now, stress is
not a function of events. It's a function of the
view you take of events. If you take a single
(19:08):
minded negative view, you're going to experience stress. If you
open up that view to see the many different things
that might be good, bad, and different, you're going to
feel differently. What people need to realize is that most
of the things we worry about never end up happening,
you know, So that seems the total waste of time.
One liner for people that some of my friends that
(19:28):
put on their refrigerators is ask yourself, is it a
tragedy or and inconvenience? It's almost always just an inconvenience.
I bang the car, I missed the appointment, I rip
the dress, I mean whatever it is, and then take
a deep breash. Right now, stress is purely psychological, and
(19:50):
my own view is that stress is the major culprit
in causing disease. All right, So that means if we
took people who were dietnose with dread diseases and we
measured their stress. I personally believe that level of stress
would determine the course of the disease over and above genetics, nutrition,
(20:14):
and even treatment. That's how important the stress is. But
since stress is psychological, that means we can control it.
And what we need to do is recognize that events
are only what we make of them. You know that
if my internet goes out, now, oh my god, No,
it wouldn't be Oh my god, I'd go and I
(20:36):
visit with a friend who's waiting for me inside. We
tend not to realize that most of the things that
happen are just not important. The older you get, the
more you realize this. You know, you're two years old
and you bang your knee and you're screaming bloody murder.
You're seven years old and Johnny or Janey doesn't send
you a Valentine, and oh my god, your world's going
(20:57):
to end. Then at some point you start to realize
this is all kind of selling. Now you two are young,
and what I try to teach my students is why
wait until you're four day? This is something available to
all of us right now to recognize the control we
have over our health and our well being, and it's
(21:19):
our thoughts that we can control that determine how we're
going to experience the life that we lead right now.
Too many people are sealed and unlived lives, and I've
taken it as my mission essentially to try to break
that seal.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Doctor Langer. Your advice about having an internal locus of
control and being really in tune with that, I think
that's everything. That's the key to happiness.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Well said doctor Langer. Thank you for joining us today
on the bright side.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Thank you so much, doctor Langer.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
This was fun. Be well.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Doctor Ellen Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University.
She's written more than two hundred research articles and thirteen books,
including The Mindful Body Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, Emma Gred and Ashley
Graham join us to talk about the season two premiere
of Side Hustlers, which is out next week. Thank you
to our partners at Coligard. The one of a kind
way to screen for colon cancer in the privacy and
comfort of your own home. Talk to your doctor or
healthcare provider, or go to coliguard dot com slash podcast
(22:34):
to see if you're eligible to order online. If you're
forty five or older and at average risk, ask your
healthcare provider about screening for colon cancer with Coligard. You
can also request a Coliguard prescription today at coligard dot
com slash podcast.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I'm Simone Boye. You can find me at Simone Voice
on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok. That's r O
b A Y.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
See you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.
Hosts And Creators
Simone Boyce
Danielle Robay
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