April 5, 2024 • 25 mins
In this Lesson On Mindfulness, Dr. Ellen Langer, known as the "mother of mindfulness," shares her profound insights on mindfulness, its impact on our lives, and how it enhances leadership, especially for women.
Dr. Ellen J. Langer is the author of more than two hundred research articles, and thirteen books including the international bestseller Mindfulness; The Power of Mindful Learning; On Becoming An Artist, and Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility; The Art of Noticing; and most recently, The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health. Among other numerous awards and honors, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, three Distinguished Scientist Awards, the Staats Award for Unifying Psychology, and the Liberty Science Genius Award.
She is. Widely known as the "mother of mindfulness" and the "mother of positive psychology," she has reached millions around the world with her inspirational talks, that explain with humor and clarity the deep impact of her nearly half century of research and how anyone can easily put her method of mindfulness into practice immediately.
A member of the psychology department at Harvard University and a gallery exhibiting painter, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her websites is www.ellenlanger.me
VOICE LESSONS SHOWNOTES: https://voicelessonspodcast.com/2024/03/22/a-lesson-on-doing-what-you-love-with-allison-eden/
VOICE LESSONS ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/voicelessonspodcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kim (00:03):
All it takes to become an artist is to start doing art mindfully.
That's just one of the things Ilearned when I spoke with Ellen
Langer, the mother of mindfulness,a recipient of multiple awards,
including a Guggenheim fellowshipand the Liberty Science Genius Award.
(00:24):
Ellen Langer is also the first woman.
to be tenured in Harvard'spsychology department.
Over nearly half a century, she'sauthored more than 200 research
papers and 13 books studying not onlymindfulness theory, but the illusion
of control, decision making and aging.
(00:45):
I spoke with her about hermost recent The Mindful Body.
And how mindfulness not onlyimproves the way that women
live, but also the way we lead.
Ellen (01:02):
I'm Ellen Langer, and this is a lesson on mindfulness.
First
Kim (01:19):
memory of being creative is
Ellen (01:23):
This is actually interesting.
I was working as an undergraduateas a research assistant for one of
my professors, and I came up withsomething that she didn't know.
And for her to explain that, shesaid, Ellen, you're so creative.
Now I had never considered myselfcreative because to me as a child,
(01:43):
that meant those people who could drawor who played a musical instrument.
Now, the same semester, I hadanother professor who gave us some
assignment for a paper, ratherthan writing a paper, I decided
to write a program textbook.
And so I got back the textbooksays, you've got so much chutzpah.
(02:05):
And so, in the same basic period oftime, to be told I had chutzpah and I
was creative, gave me permission to justdo whatever I wanted to do, essentially.
Kim (02:16):
I love that.
Ellen (02:18):
So I changed my view of myself, and then I, with that
change, I paid attention to howsilly so many of the rules that
people were blindly following were.
Kim (02:29):
Yeah, so you started painting.
Paint.
One summer, just randomly, whatmade you decide I'm going to paint?
Ellen (02:36):
Okay, I was in Provincetown and it just rained and rained.
I had never had a summer like that.
And I went to the hardware store andI ran into a friend who was an artist.
And I ran out of things to say to her.
So I said, I'm thinkingof taking a painting.
I have no idea why I said that.
She then dragged me to herstudio, gave me two tiny canvases.
(02:58):
And she said, just do it.
Okay.
A day later, I had to deliversomething to a very, very,
very, established artists.
Kim (03:08):
And
Ellen (03:08):
again, I wasn't sure after a sentence or two what to say.
So I said, I was thinkingof taking a painting.
She said, get yourself anenormous canvas and just
let yourself go and do it.
And so there were no rules.
Then I went back, it was still raining.
So there was no tennis or longwalks on the beach or whatever.
(03:29):
And I found a shingle and Ijust painted on this shingle.
Now, what was interesting to me asa psychologist was that I painted
a woman, girl who knows, on ahorse riding through the woods.
And the fact that the content wasabout wood and I was painting on
wood seemed to be interesting to me.
Kim (03:49):
But wait, a, a horse, a woman on a horse, you just know how to do that.
How do you know how to do that?
Having paint?
Never been.
Well,
Ellen (03:56):
you have a sense of No.
You have a sense ofwhat a woman looks like.
What a horse looks like.
Wow.
I'm not suggesting.
That anybody else who looked at itwould have seen a woman on a horse.
That was my intention, but I loved it.
And then I went to the art supplystore to see if it was any good.
And it was interesting to me because Iknew just because of who I was, whatever
(04:17):
that means, there are some people whowould say it was good no matter what.
There were just as many people whowould say it's bad no matter what.
So I wanted an unbiased view andI asked this person who sells
canvases, should I paint over this?
And, um, actually that wouldmake sense that he would want
me to buy a canvas instead ofhe expressed some liking for it.
(04:38):
And then I was off and runningand it was very exciting
because I would paint something.
I would look at it, notice, andAnd then see if what I did was true
just for me or a general truth.
So I then do a study and I went back andforth between these two evolving lives.
Myself as a researcher and as apainter, and since I don't follow rules.
(05:01):
And partly because I don't,didn't know any of the rules,
so I couldn't follow them.
It was a very expressive journey for meand also very different kind of artwork.
So I called it intuitive art.
Now I had a friend who'salso an art collector who
saw one of these paintings.
Ellen, there's something there.
(05:22):
Now don't go thinking you're Rembrandt.
But then I thought to myself, no, I'mnot Rembrandt, but Rembrandt isn't me.
And I thought that if I'mtrue to myself, no one can do
a better Ellen Langer than Ican, and it was just great fun.
Kim (05:39):
So you painted horses for a long time and then you moved to people.
Ellen (05:43):
Actually, I'm more dogs than horses, and always
people there somewhere.
Kim (05:47):
And always people.
Okay, so when you move to people,because I've been looking, I
looked at some of your workonline, which is beautiful.
And again, this, I still, becauseI'm so caught in the talent I
don't have for painting, right?
Or the definition of talentI don't have for painting.
Just
Ellen (06:03):
be the best Kim you can be.
You have a career, so you don'tneed to sell the paintings.
So just do it and have fun.
And I found that the fun comesoddly, as soon as you make a mistake.
If you make a mistakeand then go forward.
Rather than try to correct the mistake,you're necessarily going to be mindful
(06:26):
since you aren't planning on a mistake.
And the research that we've doneshows that anything we do mindfully
versus mindlessly, so our mindfulnessleaves its imprint on these products.
Kim (06:39):
So let's talk about your definition of mindfulness.
Yes.
Ellen (06:42):
Okay, so I've been studying mindfulness for 45 years,
Kim (06:47):
and
Ellen (06:47):
people seem to think that mindfulness means meditation.
First of all, meditation is not mindful,
Kim (06:54):
it's not mindfulness.
Ellen (06:56):
Meditation is a practice you undergo, presumably to lead
to post meditative mindfulness.
What I'm talking about isdifferent, not better works.
It's just different.
And it's immediate.
You don't, it's not a practice.
It's just a way of beingthat comes about once you
recognize that you don't know.
(07:18):
Now in schools, our parents and thework we do, we're often told this is
how and so on, as if those absolutesare real across all contexts.
Kim (07:30):
You talk about the mind and body being one.
Ellen (07:33):
Yeah, so in the new book, this is a large piece of it, but by no means the
only piece, the new book is the mindfulbody thinking our way to chronic health.
And essentially, there's beena problem of philosophers had
and psychologists forever.
You have a mind and a body.
How do they speak to each other?
How do you get from this fuzzything called a thought to
(07:55):
something material called the body?
And when I think about that, Isay, wait a second, this is silly.
These are just words.
So even if it's just for heuristicpurposes to be helpful and not
literally true, although I thinkit's literally true, let's put
the mind and body back together.
When we do that, wherever we're puttingthe mind, we're necessarily putting
(08:19):
the body and that gives a small ideato people of how much control we
have over our health and well being.
So the first study wedid was many years ago.
We retrofitted a retreat to 20 yearsearlier and had elderly men live there
as if they were their younger selves.
So they would be discussing pastevents as if they were just unfold.
(08:43):
for example.
So in as many ways as we could thinkof, they were now who they were.
As a result, in a period of timeas short as one week, their vision
improved, The hearing improved.
Now, these are elderly men.
You tell me when you've ever heardof an elderly man's hearing improving
strength improve their memoryand they look noticeably younger.
(09:04):
That was very exciting in the beginningof a host of studies I think if your
audience is largely women they'lllove this next one that we did.
We did this with chambermaids.
Now, interesting.
Chambermaids areexercising all day long.
That's what their work is.
But they don't recognizethat their work is exercise.
Because according to the SurgeonGeneral, who sits at a desk all day,
(09:28):
exercise is what you do after work.
And after work, they're too tired.
So we have all these chambermaidsexercising all day long, but not
seeing themselves as exercising.
If exercise itself is good foryou, regardless of what they're
thinking, they should be healthierthan similar others who aren't
exercising, but they're not.
(09:48):
All right, now what we do is we randomlytake half of them and we just teach
them that their work is exercise.
Making a bed is like working atthis machine at the gym and so on.
We take many measures.
At the end of this, we find thetwo groups, the one that sees their
work as exercise, and the workgroup that doesn't realize this.
They're not eating any differently,they're not working any harder
(10:10):
or less hard, what have you.
Nevertheless, once they changetheir mindset, they're and recognize
that their work is exercise.
They lost weight.
There was a change in waist tohip ratio, body mass index, and
their blood pressure came downsimply from the change of mind.
Kim (10:28):
With the mind body, because we often put spirit attached to it too.
So I'm wondering, is there any contactText for spirit in the research at
all, or does it contribute to mind?
No.
Okay,
Ellen (10:40):
you know, it's not again, they're all just words, right?
And when one is mindful, right?
One can describe you as spiritual.
You're just going to be your best self.
Kim (10:52):
So is that the same with intuition then?
Because intuition for me is alsolooking at is what is different or
dissimilar from a series of situations.
So how does intuitionplay into mindfulness?
At all.
If at all for
Ellen (11:05):
you.
Yeah.
Well, it's, it's interesting.
We don't really know verymuch about intuition,
Kim (11:10):
but
Ellen (11:10):
when you're mindful, you're picking up cues to
which you're otherwise blind.
If you don't have a name for thosecues, you don't know where you're
getting, you know, I don't like you.
I don't know why I don't likeyou, but I don't like you.
That's the deal.
It's not because nothing is happening.
It's because I don't know how to.
Kim (11:27):
Articulate it.
Yeah,
Ellen (11:29):
but we shouldn't think that if you feel something is intuitively
correct that it's necessarily correctbecause consider this example, you
hear a song played, and then youhear it again and again and again.
Now, imagine somebody elsesings it, and it's a different
rendition of the same song.
(11:50):
It will feel wrong.
Right.
So, our mindlessness can leadto a feeling of intuition.
I don't
Kim (11:59):
think,
Ellen (11:59):
I think we need to trust ourselves, you know, not to the
point where we ignore other waysthese feelings could come about.
Rather than waste your time.
trying to make the right decision.
You can randomly decide andmake the decision right.
You make a decision to take an action.
(12:20):
Once you take the action, It's time tochange, you know, so I can't say, should
I go to Harvard or should I go to Yale.
So if I randomly go let'ssay to Harvard, and let's
say I'm not happy there.
That doesn't mean I made the wrongdecision because I could have been
more unhappy, had I gone to Yale.
(12:40):
But I can't now go to Yale becauseI'm no longer a first year student,
Kim (12:45):
right?
Ellen (12:46):
So you can never find out.
Now what's most important for allof this is for people to recognize
that outcomes are in our heads.
They're just things that happen.
They're not good or bad.
So stress is not afunction of what happens.
Stress is a function of theview you take of what happens.
(13:08):
If you see it as, Oh myGod, Yeah, you're going to
experience it negatively.
But there's always a way thatthat, oh my God, might be the
best thing in the world for you.
Kim (13:23):
So what's the impact of mindfulness in the context of leadership?
Ellen (13:28):
What's interesting is that women, I believe, tend to be more
mindful because women have been takento task for using conditional language.
Take a position rather than seem on thefence with it could be possibly maybe
often, but those words all indicatethat you're mindful that you know
(13:49):
that there are circumstances wherewhat you're saying may be true other
circumstances where it may not be true.
And, and this is very importantbecause when you're mindful,
so you're actively noticing newthings, rather than thinking,
right, that puts you in the present.
makes you sensitive to context andperspective, and while you're actively
(14:11):
noticing the neurons are firing and 45years of our research shows that it's
literally and figuratively enlightened.
It feels good.
It's good for you.
Not only that, but when you're beingmindful, people find you more authentic.
attractive, trustworthy.
Not only that, so it's good for yourhealth, people like you more, as I
(14:34):
said a moment before, it also leavesits imprint on what you're doing.
So we have orchestras, for example,performing mindlessly or mindfully, We
have audiences oblivious to the factthat it's a study evaluating the music
and more often than not people findthe mindfully played piece better.
Kim (14:54):
I think it's interesting though what you just said about women being
taken to task for not being specificenough in their language and that once
Once you've named something, it isnamed, the allowance for the possibility
that not all things are as we see them.
I think we're living rightnow in a moment when some
(15:15):
people are seeing things verydifferent than what is normal.
perceived.
Yeah.
Our perceptions are at odds witheach other and we're living two
different kinds of realities.
And
Ellen (15:27):
the problem is that both sides think what they're saying is real.
Right.
And the more mindful you are,you're the more aware you are of
In some sense, multiple realities.
Right.
Let me just go back for a moment.
So the way to be mindfulis this active noticing.
Kim (15:43):
Right.
But
Ellen (15:44):
you don't actively notice when you think you know.
Kim (15:47):
So there
Ellen (15:48):
are two ways to become more mindful generally.
One is you notice new things aboutthe things you thought you knew.
So when I started painting, to goback to that, if you had asked me
what color are leaves, not in thefall, I would have said green.
Then I start painting, and I go, my god,there are hundreds of different shades
of green, and it changes dependingon where the sun is, and so on.
(16:10):
So, this one thing became Anything.
Which gave me many more choices.
Now, the other way to be mindful,and this is better but harder,
is to just accept you don't know.
So I know I don't know.
I'm not afraid of not knowing.
Everybody knows they don't know,but they think they should know.
(16:32):
So they pretend, or they stand back.
But I know I don't know, you don't know.
You know that, and I know that this guywho's trying to make me uncomfortable
with his knowing that I can, you don'twant to do this, but I could emasculate
him in seconds through a series ofquestions to make clear he doesn't know.
Kim (16:53):
Right.
Ellen (16:54):
So the best way to be, I believe, is to be uncertain and
confident because it's okay not to know.
And when you don't know thateverything is new and exciting.
Now the interesting thing is that thisactive noticing is energy beginning.
(17:14):
So it feels good and you becomeenergized rather than depleted.
Kim (17:20):
But in a leadership context, being uncertain.
Can be perceived as beingweak, knowledgeable.
So no,
Ellen (17:26):
because right now when people are uncertainly they look, they look
Kim (17:31):
uncertain
Ellen (17:32):
when you're standing tall.
I don't know if I say it likethat, believe me, you're not
going to think I'm uncertain.
In fact, you're going to take astep back and be scared of me.
If you're strong and you'rea woman and you're seen as.
Can I say a bitch?
Yes, please.
Go
Kim (17:50):
ahead.
We know it.
We all know
Ellen (17:52):
it.
And if you're weak, thenyou're not a good leader.
So what's a woman to do?
Let me tell you firsta little study we did.
So we took women and we were goingto have them being male, like
forceful female, like sweet andloving and mindful or mindless.
And it turned out.
that when she was mindful,it didn't matter whether
(18:16):
she was male like or female.
And so another, several thingsabout leadership is that the smart
leader knows she doesn't know.
And so she's open.
To getting information from otherpeople, but if that creates in
your mind, the image of, Oh,I don't know, can you help me?
(18:36):
Of course, you're not going toseem strong, but if you're standing
tall and this can be many differentthings, Kim, what do you think?
The whole game changes.
In this study that I did withsymphony orchestras, as I said, we
gave, this is about leadership, butit'll take a moment to get there.
So one group is told, makeit new in very subtle ways
(18:58):
that only you would know.
That's the mindful group.
The mindless group is told,remember a time you played this
well and just try to replicate it.
So, mindful is always somethingnew, mindless, same old.
We record it, and people preferthe mindfully played piece.
Now, when I was writing thisup, all of a sudden I realized,
this is interesting, when wehad people where everybody was
(19:23):
essentially doing their own thing.
You had superior coordinated experience.
All right.
And so it led me to think that themajor role of the leader is to provoke
the mindfulness in those being led.
And you want to do that becausegeez, sometimes this thing
isn't what I think it is.
(19:44):
And people bring with themall sorts of information
that we ourselves don't have.
So you want to be open to it.
Women actually should be the bestleaders because they're most likely
to encourage other people's successes.
They're most likely tocarry themselves to the top.
(20:05):
Confidently, but with that degreeof uncertainty, if I'm uncertain
and you know that you will shareinformation with me, it's all
in the way we carry ourselves.
And so it's wonderful not to know,again, everything becomes new.
Kim (20:21):
And that this mindfulness for all women.
I think as women become moremindful, we tip the equilibrium.
What is the rule?
Who made the rule?
Who gets to make the rules and why?
Ellen (20:32):
Yeah.
And then you change it.
So some things you can change, but inthe not changing, knowing how it came
about in the first place is useful.
So we take what is, we find good reasonto make us think it had to be that way.
It has to be that way.
It's always been that way.
Another example that I use,you know, you have insurance.
(20:53):
Yeah.
Is the insurance companygoing to pay for the drug?
Now, what rules are they using?
So I use Viagra as an example.
Kim (21:03):
Now
Ellen (21:03):
imagine the people on the committee in the insurance making
this decision are a group of lusty50 year old men versus the committee
consists of a group of nuns.
The first group is this.
Yes, we should pay for it.
The second group.
No.
So what does that mean?
(21:24):
That means when something thatis doesn't meet our needs,
don't back off when you push it.
And then it's clear that it's notsitting based on irrefutable data.
Because all the data again, whenwe ever talk data or probability,
if you follow what, what I writeabout fully, you come to see that
(21:48):
everything is mutable, everything.
And that's not the way we're brought up.
When I was a kid, the first timeI gave a lecture, I walk into
this room and the stages hereand the chairs start back here.
Too far away and I'm nervous.
What did I do?
I moved the chairs.
But most people wouldn't, wouldn'tthink to do that, you know,
(22:10):
that everything can be changed.
Now for women, this is evenmore important than for men.
When I'm giving some lectures, I'llsee somebody very tall in the audience.
Oh, he's a six foot five guy.
I don't know why.
I'll ask him to come to the stage.
So there he is at six, five,and here I am at five, three.
(22:30):
We look funny.
I'll ask him to put hishand up and put his hand up.
His hand is threeinches larger than mine.
And then I just raised the question,should we do anything the same way?
Anything.
No.
Now, if he created the how to do,it's not going to serve me well
to mindlessly do it the way hesaid, because we're two different.
(22:54):
All right.
And so
Kim (22:56):
the culture we live
Ellen (22:57):
in though, right?
Yeah, yeah, no, and always have.
And I think that part of the reasonis that it sustains the status quo.
It's as if He, or whoever on top,deserves to be there, as if they know
things now we, we know they don't know.
So as a rule, I think the more differentyou are from the person who wrote the
(23:18):
rule, the more important it is foryou to change how you're doing it.
We walk into a room and virtuallyeverything that is there seems to
be there for some stable reason.
And it's, everything is.
Was once a decision and meansthere was uncertainty and means
(23:40):
there were people who made thisdecision that met their needs that
may not meet the needs anymore.
I have a mindfulness scale.
How moronic would it be forme to do poorly on this scale?
So the more similar you're going to beto me, the better you're going to do.
And that's the case witheverything, everything.
People don't understandeverything is mutable.
(24:03):
Sometimes you're going to win andsometimes not, but the game is fun.
Recognizing that everythingthat's put in front of you
was to please some people.
And if it doesn't please you, change it.
Kim (24:25):
So we asked this question, what is your wish for every other woman?
Ellen (24:29):
When you're mindful, you get to see advantages to
which other people are blind.
You avoid the pit holes, again,that other people are oblivious to.
You have all sorts of choices andyou don't need to make those choices
because whatever you're experiencing,you recognize will feel good.
(24:51):
You can fight the fightand still enjoy the day.
Kim (24:55):
Be visible.
Voice
(25:16):
Lessons is co produced, written,and spoken by me, Kim Cutable.
It's also co produced andedited by Sergio Miranda.
You can find past episodes, shownotes, and the cool stuff our guests
recommend at VoiceLessonsPodcast.
com.
All it takes to become an artist is to start doing art mindfully.
That's just one of the things Ilearned when I spoke with Ellen
Langer, the mother of mindfulness,a recipient of multiple awards,
including a Guggenheim fellowshipand the Liberty Science Genius Award.
(00:24):
Ellen Langer is also the first woman.
to be tenured in Harvard'spsychology department.
Over nearly half a century, she'sauthored more than 200 research
papers and 13 books studying not onlymindfulness theory, but the illusion
of control, decision making and aging.
(00:45):
I spoke with her about hermost recent The Mindful Body.
And how mindfulness not onlyimproves the way that women
live, but also the way we lead.
Ellen (01:02):
I'm Ellen Langer, and this is a lesson on mindfulness.
First
Kim (01:19):
memory of being creative is
Ellen (01:23):
This is actually interesting.
I was working as an undergraduateas a research assistant for one of
my professors, and I came up withsomething that she didn't know.
And for her to explain that, shesaid, Ellen, you're so creative.
Now I had never considered myselfcreative because to me as a child,
(01:43):
that meant those people who could drawor who played a musical instrument.
Now, the same semester, I hadanother professor who gave us some
assignment for a paper, ratherthan writing a paper, I decided
to write a program textbook.
And so I got back the textbooksays, you've got so much chutzpah.
(02:05):
And so, in the same basic period oftime, to be told I had chutzpah and I
was creative, gave me permission to justdo whatever I wanted to do, essentially.
Kim (02:16):
I love that.
Ellen (02:18):
So I changed my view of myself, and then I, with that
change, I paid attention to howsilly so many of the rules that
people were blindly following were.
Kim (02:29):
Yeah, so you started painting.
Paint.
One summer, just randomly, whatmade you decide I'm going to paint?
Ellen (02:36):
Okay, I was in Provincetown and it just rained and rained.
I had never had a summer like that.
And I went to the hardware store andI ran into a friend who was an artist.
And I ran out of things to say to her.
So I said, I'm thinkingof taking a painting.
I have no idea why I said that.
She then dragged me to herstudio, gave me two tiny canvases.
(02:58):
And she said, just do it.
Okay.
A day later, I had to deliversomething to a very, very,
very, established artists.
Kim (03:08):
And
Ellen (03:08):
again, I wasn't sure after a sentence or two what to say.
So I said, I was thinkingof taking a painting.
She said, get yourself anenormous canvas and just
let yourself go and do it.
And so there were no rules.
Then I went back, it was still raining.
So there was no tennis or longwalks on the beach or whatever.
(03:29):
And I found a shingle and Ijust painted on this shingle.
Now, what was interesting to me asa psychologist was that I painted
a woman, girl who knows, on ahorse riding through the woods.
And the fact that the content wasabout wood and I was painting on
wood seemed to be interesting to me.
Kim (03:49):
But wait, a, a horse, a woman on a horse, you just know how to do that.
How do you know how to do that?
Having paint?
Never been.
Well,
Ellen (03:56):
you have a sense of No.
You have a sense ofwhat a woman looks like.
What a horse looks like.
Wow.
I'm not suggesting.
That anybody else who looked at itwould have seen a woman on a horse.
That was my intention, but I loved it.
And then I went to the art supplystore to see if it was any good.
And it was interesting to me because Iknew just because of who I was, whatever
(04:17):
that means, there are some people whowould say it was good no matter what.
There were just as many people whowould say it's bad no matter what.
So I wanted an unbiased view andI asked this person who sells
canvases, should I paint over this?
And, um, actually that wouldmake sense that he would want
me to buy a canvas instead ofhe expressed some liking for it.
(04:38):
And then I was off and runningand it was very exciting
because I would paint something.
I would look at it, notice, andAnd then see if what I did was true
just for me or a general truth.
So I then do a study and I went back andforth between these two evolving lives.
Myself as a researcher and as apainter, and since I don't follow rules.
(05:01):
And partly because I don't,didn't know any of the rules,
so I couldn't follow them.
It was a very expressive journey for meand also very different kind of artwork.
So I called it intuitive art.
Now I had a friend who'salso an art collector who
saw one of these paintings.
Ellen, there's something there.
(05:22):
Now don't go thinking you're Rembrandt.
But then I thought to myself, no, I'mnot Rembrandt, but Rembrandt isn't me.
And I thought that if I'mtrue to myself, no one can do
a better Ellen Langer than Ican, and it was just great fun.
Kim (05:39):
So you painted horses for a long time and then you moved to people.
Ellen (05:43):
Actually, I'm more dogs than horses, and always
people there somewhere.
Kim (05:47):
And always people.
Okay, so when you move to people,because I've been looking, I
looked at some of your workonline, which is beautiful.
And again, this, I still, becauseI'm so caught in the talent I
don't have for painting, right?
Or the definition of talentI don't have for painting.
Just
Ellen (06:03):
be the best Kim you can be.
You have a career, so you don'tneed to sell the paintings.
So just do it and have fun.
And I found that the fun comesoddly, as soon as you make a mistake.
If you make a mistakeand then go forward.
Rather than try to correct the mistake,you're necessarily going to be mindful
(06:26):
since you aren't planning on a mistake.
And the research that we've doneshows that anything we do mindfully
versus mindlessly, so our mindfulnessleaves its imprint on these products.
Kim (06:39):
So let's talk about your definition of mindfulness.
Yes.
Ellen (06:42):
Okay, so I've been studying mindfulness for 45 years,
Kim (06:47):
and
Ellen (06:47):
people seem to think that mindfulness means meditation.
First of all, meditation is not mindful,
Kim (06:54):
it's not mindfulness.
Ellen (06:56):
Meditation is a practice you undergo, presumably to lead
to post meditative mindfulness.
What I'm talking about isdifferent, not better works.
It's just different.
And it's immediate.
You don't, it's not a practice.
It's just a way of beingthat comes about once you
recognize that you don't know.
(07:18):
Now in schools, our parents and thework we do, we're often told this is
how and so on, as if those absolutesare real across all contexts.
Kim (07:30):
You talk about the mind and body being one.
Ellen (07:33):
Yeah, so in the new book, this is a large piece of it, but by no means the
only piece, the new book is the mindfulbody thinking our way to chronic health.
And essentially, there's beena problem of philosophers had
and psychologists forever.
You have a mind and a body.
How do they speak to each other?
How do you get from this fuzzything called a thought to
(07:55):
something material called the body?
And when I think about that, Isay, wait a second, this is silly.
These are just words.
So even if it's just for heuristicpurposes to be helpful and not
literally true, although I thinkit's literally true, let's put
the mind and body back together.
When we do that, wherever we're puttingthe mind, we're necessarily putting
(08:19):
the body and that gives a small ideato people of how much control we
have over our health and well being.
So the first study wedid was many years ago.
We retrofitted a retreat to 20 yearsearlier and had elderly men live there
as if they were their younger selves.
So they would be discussing pastevents as if they were just unfold.
(08:43):
for example.
So in as many ways as we could thinkof, they were now who they were.
As a result, in a period of timeas short as one week, their vision
improved, The hearing improved.
Now, these are elderly men.
You tell me when you've ever heardof an elderly man's hearing improving
strength improve their memoryand they look noticeably younger.
(09:04):
That was very exciting in the beginningof a host of studies I think if your
audience is largely women they'lllove this next one that we did.
We did this with chambermaids.
Now, interesting.
Chambermaids areexercising all day long.
That's what their work is.
But they don't recognizethat their work is exercise.
Because according to the SurgeonGeneral, who sits at a desk all day,
(09:28):
exercise is what you do after work.
And after work, they're too tired.
So we have all these chambermaidsexercising all day long, but not
seeing themselves as exercising.
If exercise itself is good foryou, regardless of what they're
thinking, they should be healthierthan similar others who aren't
exercising, but they're not.
(09:48):
All right, now what we do is we randomlytake half of them and we just teach
them that their work is exercise.
Making a bed is like working atthis machine at the gym and so on.
We take many measures.
At the end of this, we find thetwo groups, the one that sees their
work as exercise, and the workgroup that doesn't realize this.
They're not eating any differently,they're not working any harder
(10:10):
or less hard, what have you.
Nevertheless, once they changetheir mindset, they're and recognize
that their work is exercise.
They lost weight.
There was a change in waist tohip ratio, body mass index, and
their blood pressure came downsimply from the change of mind.
Kim (10:28):
With the mind body, because we often put spirit attached to it too.
So I'm wondering, is there any contactText for spirit in the research at
all, or does it contribute to mind?
No.
Okay,
Ellen (10:40):
you know, it's not again, they're all just words, right?
And when one is mindful, right?
One can describe you as spiritual.
You're just going to be your best self.
Kim (10:52):
So is that the same with intuition then?
Because intuition for me is alsolooking at is what is different or
dissimilar from a series of situations.
So how does intuitionplay into mindfulness?
At all.
If at all for
Ellen (11:05):
you.
Yeah.
Well, it's, it's interesting.
We don't really know verymuch about intuition,
Kim (11:10):
but
Ellen (11:10):
when you're mindful, you're picking up cues to
which you're otherwise blind.
If you don't have a name for thosecues, you don't know where you're
getting, you know, I don't like you.
I don't know why I don't likeyou, but I don't like you.
That's the deal.
It's not because nothing is happening.
It's because I don't know how to.
Kim (11:27):
Articulate it.
Yeah,
Ellen (11:29):
but we shouldn't think that if you feel something is intuitively
correct that it's necessarily correctbecause consider this example, you
hear a song played, and then youhear it again and again and again.
Now, imagine somebody elsesings it, and it's a different
rendition of the same song.
(11:50):
It will feel wrong.
Right.
So, our mindlessness can leadto a feeling of intuition.
I don't
Kim (11:59):
think,
Ellen (11:59):
I think we need to trust ourselves, you know, not to the
point where we ignore other waysthese feelings could come about.
Rather than waste your time.
trying to make the right decision.
You can randomly decide andmake the decision right.
You make a decision to take an action.
(12:20):
Once you take the action, It's time tochange, you know, so I can't say, should
I go to Harvard or should I go to Yale.
So if I randomly go let'ssay to Harvard, and let's
say I'm not happy there.
That doesn't mean I made the wrongdecision because I could have been
more unhappy, had I gone to Yale.
(12:40):
But I can't now go to Yale becauseI'm no longer a first year student,
Kim (12:45):
right?
Ellen (12:46):
So you can never find out.
Now what's most important for allof this is for people to recognize
that outcomes are in our heads.
They're just things that happen.
They're not good or bad.
So stress is not afunction of what happens.
Stress is a function of theview you take of what happens.
(13:08):
If you see it as, Oh myGod, Yeah, you're going to
experience it negatively.
But there's always a way thatthat, oh my God, might be the
best thing in the world for you.
Kim (13:23):
So what's the impact of mindfulness in the context of leadership?
Ellen (13:28):
What's interesting is that women, I believe, tend to be more
mindful because women have been takento task for using conditional language.
Take a position rather than seem on thefence with it could be possibly maybe
often, but those words all indicatethat you're mindful that you know
(13:49):
that there are circumstances wherewhat you're saying may be true other
circumstances where it may not be true.
And, and this is very importantbecause when you're mindful,
so you're actively noticing newthings, rather than thinking,
right, that puts you in the present.
makes you sensitive to context andperspective, and while you're actively
(14:11):
noticing the neurons are firing and 45years of our research shows that it's
literally and figuratively enlightened.
It feels good.
It's good for you.
Not only that, but when you're beingmindful, people find you more authentic.
attractive, trustworthy.
Not only that, so it's good for yourhealth, people like you more, as I
(14:34):
said a moment before, it also leavesits imprint on what you're doing.
So we have orchestras, for example,performing mindlessly or mindfully, We
have audiences oblivious to the factthat it's a study evaluating the music
and more often than not people findthe mindfully played piece better.
Kim (14:54):
I think it's interesting though what you just said about women being
taken to task for not being specificenough in their language and that once
Once you've named something, it isnamed, the allowance for the possibility
that not all things are as we see them.
I think we're living rightnow in a moment when some
(15:15):
people are seeing things verydifferent than what is normal.
perceived.
Yeah.
Our perceptions are at odds witheach other and we're living two
different kinds of realities.
And
Ellen (15:27):
the problem is that both sides think what they're saying is real.
Right.
And the more mindful you are,you're the more aware you are of
In some sense, multiple realities.
Right.
Let me just go back for a moment.
So the way to be mindfulis this active noticing.
Kim (15:43):
Right.
But
Ellen (15:44):
you don't actively notice when you think you know.
Kim (15:47):
So there
Ellen (15:48):
are two ways to become more mindful generally.
One is you notice new things aboutthe things you thought you knew.
So when I started painting, to goback to that, if you had asked me
what color are leaves, not in thefall, I would have said green.
Then I start painting, and I go, my god,there are hundreds of different shades
of green, and it changes dependingon where the sun is, and so on.
(16:10):
So, this one thing became Anything.
Which gave me many more choices.
Now, the other way to be mindful,and this is better but harder,
is to just accept you don't know.
So I know I don't know.
I'm not afraid of not knowing.
Everybody knows they don't know,but they think they should know.
(16:32):
So they pretend, or they stand back.
But I know I don't know, you don't know.
You know that, and I know that this guywho's trying to make me uncomfortable
with his knowing that I can, you don'twant to do this, but I could emasculate
him in seconds through a series ofquestions to make clear he doesn't know.
Kim (16:53):
Right.
Ellen (16:54):
So the best way to be, I believe, is to be uncertain and
confident because it's okay not to know.
And when you don't know thateverything is new and exciting.
Now the interesting thing is that thisactive noticing is energy beginning.
(17:14):
So it feels good and you becomeenergized rather than depleted.
Kim (17:20):
But in a leadership context, being uncertain.
Can be perceived as beingweak, knowledgeable.
So no,
Ellen (17:26):
because right now when people are uncertainly they look, they look
Kim (17:31):
uncertain
Ellen (17:32):
when you're standing tall.
I don't know if I say it likethat, believe me, you're not
going to think I'm uncertain.
In fact, you're going to take astep back and be scared of me.
If you're strong and you'rea woman and you're seen as.
Can I say a bitch?
Yes, please.
Go
Kim (17:50):
ahead.
We know it.
We all know
Ellen (17:52):
it.
And if you're weak, thenyou're not a good leader.
So what's a woman to do?
Let me tell you firsta little study we did.
So we took women and we were goingto have them being male, like
forceful female, like sweet andloving and mindful or mindless.
And it turned out.
that when she was mindful,it didn't matter whether
(18:16):
she was male like or female.
And so another, several thingsabout leadership is that the smart
leader knows she doesn't know.
And so she's open.
To getting information from otherpeople, but if that creates in
your mind, the image of, Oh,I don't know, can you help me?
(18:36):
Of course, you're not going toseem strong, but if you're standing
tall and this can be many differentthings, Kim, what do you think?
The whole game changes.
In this study that I did withsymphony orchestras, as I said, we
gave, this is about leadership, butit'll take a moment to get there.
So one group is told, makeit new in very subtle ways
(18:58):
that only you would know.
That's the mindful group.
The mindless group is told,remember a time you played this
well and just try to replicate it.
So, mindful is always somethingnew, mindless, same old.
We record it, and people preferthe mindfully played piece.
Now, when I was writing thisup, all of a sudden I realized,
this is interesting, when wehad people where everybody was
(19:23):
essentially doing their own thing.
You had superior coordinated experience.
All right.
And so it led me to think that themajor role of the leader is to provoke
the mindfulness in those being led.
And you want to do that becausegeez, sometimes this thing
isn't what I think it is.
(19:44):
And people bring with themall sorts of information
that we ourselves don't have.
So you want to be open to it.
Women actually should be the bestleaders because they're most likely
to encourage other people's successes.
They're most likely tocarry themselves to the top.
(20:05):
Confidently, but with that degreeof uncertainty, if I'm uncertain
and you know that you will shareinformation with me, it's all
in the way we carry ourselves.
And so it's wonderful not to know,again, everything becomes new.
Kim (20:21):
And that this mindfulness for all women.
I think as women become moremindful, we tip the equilibrium.
What is the rule?
Who made the rule?
Who gets to make the rules and why?
Ellen (20:32):
Yeah.
And then you change it.
So some things you can change, but inthe not changing, knowing how it came
about in the first place is useful.
So we take what is, we find good reasonto make us think it had to be that way.
It has to be that way.
It's always been that way.
Another example that I use,you know, you have insurance.
(20:53):
Yeah.
Is the insurance companygoing to pay for the drug?
Now, what rules are they using?
So I use Viagra as an example.
Kim (21:03):
Now
Ellen (21:03):
imagine the people on the committee in the insurance making
this decision are a group of lusty50 year old men versus the committee
consists of a group of nuns.
The first group is this.
Yes, we should pay for it.
The second group.
No.
So what does that mean?
(21:24):
That means when something thatis doesn't meet our needs,
don't back off when you push it.
And then it's clear that it's notsitting based on irrefutable data.
Because all the data again, whenwe ever talk data or probability,
if you follow what, what I writeabout fully, you come to see that
(21:48):
everything is mutable, everything.
And that's not the way we're brought up.
When I was a kid, the first timeI gave a lecture, I walk into
this room and the stages hereand the chairs start back here.
Too far away and I'm nervous.
What did I do?
I moved the chairs.
But most people wouldn't, wouldn'tthink to do that, you know,
(22:10):
that everything can be changed.
Now for women, this is evenmore important than for men.
When I'm giving some lectures, I'llsee somebody very tall in the audience.
Oh, he's a six foot five guy.
I don't know why.
I'll ask him to come to the stage.
So there he is at six, five,and here I am at five, three.
(22:30):
We look funny.
I'll ask him to put hishand up and put his hand up.
His hand is threeinches larger than mine.
And then I just raised the question,should we do anything the same way?
Anything.
No.
Now, if he created the how to do,it's not going to serve me well
to mindlessly do it the way hesaid, because we're two different.
(22:54):
All right.
And so
Kim (22:56):
the culture we live
Ellen (22:57):
in though, right?
Yeah, yeah, no, and always have.
And I think that part of the reasonis that it sustains the status quo.
It's as if He, or whoever on top,deserves to be there, as if they know
things now we, we know they don't know.
So as a rule, I think the more differentyou are from the person who wrote the
(23:18):
rule, the more important it is foryou to change how you're doing it.
We walk into a room and virtuallyeverything that is there seems to
be there for some stable reason.
And it's, everything is.
Was once a decision and meansthere was uncertainty and means
(23:40):
there were people who made thisdecision that met their needs that
may not meet the needs anymore.
I have a mindfulness scale.
How moronic would it be forme to do poorly on this scale?
So the more similar you're going to beto me, the better you're going to do.
And that's the case witheverything, everything.
People don't understandeverything is mutable.
(24:03):
Sometimes you're going to win andsometimes not, but the game is fun.
Recognizing that everythingthat's put in front of you
was to please some people.
And if it doesn't please you, change it.
Kim (24:25):
So we asked this question, what is your wish for every other woman?
Ellen (24:29):
When you're mindful, you get to see advantages to
which other people are blind.
You avoid the pit holes, again,that other people are oblivious to.
You have all sorts of choices andyou don't need to make those choices
because whatever you're experiencing,you recognize will feel good.
(24:51):
You can fight the fightand still enjoy the day.
Kim (24:55):
Be visible.
Voice
(25:16):
Lessons is co produced, written,and spoken by me, Kim Cutable.
It's also co produced andedited by Sergio Miranda.
You can find past episodes, shownotes, and the cool stuff our guests
recommend at VoiceLessonsPodcast.
com.
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