Simon SinekHow to Stop Letting Your Own Thoughts Make You Sick, Stressed, and Stuck | Dr. Ellen Langer
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
55 min read · 10,776 words- 0:00 – 1:27
The Story We Tell Ourselves Creates Our Stress
- SSSimon Sinek
We get stressed by the story we tell ourselves of what could happen, which could be fact, but it could also be fiction. Mindfulness is a way of changing the story
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
If you are experiencing something, you have available to yourself opportunity to reevaluate it, to reframe it, to understand it-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... differently. And the more mindful you are, the more alternative ways of understanding it come to mind.
- SSSimon Sinek
Is this a tragedy or an inconvenience? That's the question my guest, Dr. Ellen Langer, wants us to ask ourselves the next time life goes sideways, because most of the time, the bad things that happen to us, the things that feel like tragedies, like losing a job or a relationship, if we're really, really honest with ourselves, for most of us, they're not really tragedies. They're just really inconvenient. Dr. Langer's 45 years of research show us that that single distinction can dramatically reduce stress. That's why she's often called the Mother of Mindfulness. She's a psychologist, Harvard professor, and author of the books The Mindful Body and Finding Happy, both of which argue that thinking differently is good for our mood and for our bodies. If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is A Bit of Optimism.
- 1:27 – 4:29
What Mindfulness Actually Is
- SSSimon Sinek
Mindfulness is really trendy right now. [laughs]
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Oh, it's been trendy for the last, I don't know, 30 years. But okay, right now.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mindfulness is trendy and, and like many things that have-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Nobody knows what it is. That's exactly right
- SSSimon Sinek
... the word gets overused to the point of corruption-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah
- SSSimon Sinek
... like authenticity, like these things that actually are really important, but they lose their substance.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
And so just as a really good level set-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Okay, let's start by my telling your audience what is mindfulness
- SSSimon Sinek
There we go. L- what is it? 'Cause it's not some ooey-gooey, hippy-dippy thing.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
No, it's not a hippy-dippy thing at all. In fact, when people hear the word mindfulness, many think of meditation, and meditation is fine. Meditation is a practice. You sit quietly for 20 minutes twice a day, take yourself out of the world, repeat a mantra. And I did some of the early research on meditation. It's wonderful, but that's different from what I do. Mindfulness, as I study it, is not a practice. It's just a way of being that naturally follows from an understanding that uncertainty is ubiquitous. We don't know. We think we know. In fact, one of my definitions of mindlessness, the other side of this, is that we're frequently in error but rarely in doubt. You know, everything we're taught in school, uh, by our parents, the world at large teaches us absolutes, and these absolutes are invariably wrong part of the time. So, you know, I'm an A-plus-plus student when I was a student, and I go to this horse event, and this man says, "Well, I watch this horse for him because he wants to get his horse a hotdog." What are you kidding? You know, I say yes, because that's what the nice thing to do is, but horses don't eat meat. Nobody knows that better than I, the straight A student, the genius. [laughs] He comes back with the hotdog, and the horse ate it, and that's when I realized everything I thought I knew could be wrong. And most people would be worried about that, but for me, it was very exciting because that meant all sorts of possibilities opened up that otherwise would be closed. And, you know, think about it. Most of our facts are our facts at least that come from science. When you do an experiment, what you get at the end of this is a probability, and the probability is that if we were to do this exact same thing again, we're likely to get the same findings. So imagine we wanted to see do horses eat meat. We'd have to pick what kind of horses. Not all horses are the same. How heavy are they? We'd have to decide when the last time they were to be fed before the experiment. How much meat would you mix with how much grain? And at the end, we'd find that most of the horses didn't eat meat. It's a mouthful, so it's, it's shortened. Horses don't eat meat. But it's simply wrong.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
The other one that I'm fond of sharing with people is... Okay, don't feel put on the spot, Simon.
- 4:29 – 6:59
1 + 1 Doesn't Always Equal 2: The Power of Context
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
How much is one plus one? Everybody knows.
- SSSimon Sinek
I'm gonna take a wild guess and go two.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
No, not always. So if you were to add one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry, one plus one is one. If you add one cloud plus one cloud, one plus one is one. If you add one wad of chewing gum plus one wad of chewing gum, one wad. And somebody sent me one the other day. If you add one pizza and one pizza, you have two pizzas. But if you add one lasagna and one lasagna, you get one lasagna, just a bigger lasagna.
- SSSimon Sinek
[laughs]
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
So in the real world, it doesn't equal two, and this is very important because-
- SSSimon Sinek
Right
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... any time we give an answer based on our absolute understanding of things-
- SSSimon Sinek
Right
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... we're no different from robots, and you wanna be different from a robot because robots don't fall in love. They're not happy. They don't have any agency. Now, if somebody were to ask you, how much is one plus one? All of a sudden, you have a choice that you didn't have-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... before. All right? And that means you're going to be present. You're gonna pay attention to context and then decide. But when you first ans- answered, you know, it's just no different.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right. When you... I mean, when you ask the question, of course, what my mind does is it goes back to, you know, first grade or whatever it was when we learned basic math. I don't know, or second grade, whatever it was. And I can see the very academic one plus one on a blackboard, and I think what you rightfully said, which is in the real world, it depends.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
So when you don't know you don't know, you pay attention. It's just that simple. Right?
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
And so since everything is always changing, everything looks different from different perspectives-We don't know. And when you recognize that nobody knows... You see, right now people know they don't know, but they think you might know, so they don't go near the situation or they pretend. Nobody knows, and then everything becomes new again. That's top-down. You just accept you don't know, and then you're gonna be present. Bottom-up is walk outside, a place you've lived for 10, 15, 30 years, whatever, notice three new things. Notice three new things about the person you live with. You don't live with anybody, three new things about a friend, three new things about your work environment. And every time you do this, you're seeing that something you thought you knew you didn't know as well as you thought you did, and that eventually brings you to the understanding, "Hey, I don't really know anything." And you add to that the part, "But that's okay, because Simon and Ellen don't either."
- 6:59 – 8:16
Is Stress Actually Hardwired?
- SSSimon Sinek
What I'm curious about is our brains are constantly seeking clarity and certainty to help us not only make sense of the world, but also to help us-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
No, no. Our, our-
- SSSimon Sinek
But also to help us avoid danger, no?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Our- No. Our brains are taught to respond that way. People have also been mindlessly taught that evaluation is part of events. People are good or bad, things are good or bad, consequences are good or bad. But in fact, the, um, valence of a consequence, whether it's good or bad, is in our heads, not in events. So stress, everybody thinks they have to experience stress. They don't. All they need to do is to see that that situation that they're scared of, first, probably won't even happen. Second, that if it happens, there are advantages to that. And this is a bigger one, because people are, you know, they're just sure, "This is awful, this is wonderful." You know, I can look at it awful. I can take the thing that's awful and turn it around and experience it as wonderful. So in The Mindful Body, I tell a story-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... 'cause I know when I talk like this people say, "What the hell do you know from the ivory tower?" You know, [laughs] "There you sit in Cambridge at Harvard." I'm always compelled, it's like, wait a second. I- I'm now 79. You can't believe I haven't gone through lots of things [laughs] in my life.
- 8:16 – 13:19
Ellen's House Fire Story
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
So let me just tell you one that I write about in this book. It was a few decades ago, around Christmas. I go out to a friend's house for dinner. I come back, and all of my neighbors are outside because my house went up in smoke. It was very scary. My dogs were fine. And the next day, I called a, um, insurance agent, and he says in the 20 years he's been doing this job, this is the first time that the damage was worse than the call. So people are always, "Oh my God, oh my God." He gets there and, you know, it's no big deal. And but to me, I had already lost everything I lost. Throwing my sanity after it wasn't going to help. But now the story gets really good. So I, you know, leave my friend's house, where 80% of what I owned had been destroyed. I go to the Charles Hotel and, with my two dogs, and I'm a sight to be seen. I go out now, Christmas Eve. I come back, and my room is full of gifts. Not from the owners or the management of the hotel, but from the so-called little people, the people who parked my car, the staff, the people, uh, the waiters and waitresses in the restaurant. I mean, it took me almost a year, Simon, to be able to tell the story without it bringing happy tears to my eyes.
- SSSimon Sinek
Wow.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Now, here's the thing. Every Christmas, I'm reminded of the basic goodness of so many people, and that brings a smile to my face and a warmth in my heart. And I don't remember, except for one thing, I remember nothing that I lost in the fire. So net-net, this thing that was more awful than what most people are stressed about turned out to be a positive experience. Now, don't think that I'm saying when I got there I said, "Oh well, who the hell cares? So I don't have a house." You know, I suffered the way most people would suffer. But then talked to myself about it, and it became a very different event.
- SSSimon Sinek
Can you separate for me... And, and I think you're, you're touching on it, because stress is important for survival, if we go back to caveman times, which is the [gasps] you know-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
We're not living in caveman time, first of all.
- SSSimon Sinek
But this body we have is a legacy machine. It's still, it's still the same machine that, that was back in caveman times trying to manage itself in a modern day.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
I would say you should be eating with your hands, that you'd be walking around even when it's cold out without shoes on. You know, there's a thing called progress. Some call it evolution. I don't. [laughs] But things change.
- SSSimon Sinek
Technological progress to make our lives easier, safer, all the rest of it, is not the same as our brains reacting to a rustle in the leaves for fear that something might try to eat us or kill us and, you know, or rob us-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Right
- SSSimon Sinek
... is the modern interpretation.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Well, you're saying we were designed this way, and I'm saying as we're designed, we change.
- SSSimon Sinek
But the human animal hasn't evolved. Our brains haven't evolved at all.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Oh, mine has. [laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
Evolutionarily, the population of Homo sapiens is still the same Homo sapien that was in caveman times as it is today. Otherwise, we'd have a new species, and we don't.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, but wait a second. But all of this was theory. You're presuming that there wasn't a caveman who didn't respond this way when there was a rustle in the leaves.
- SSSimon Sinek
I think he got eaten. I'm pretty sure he got eaten.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
No, that he didn't say to himself-
- SSSimon Sinek
[laughs]
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... that that's probably a squirrel or whatever [laughs] lives in the woods out there. And then we get back to the horses don't eat meat. You know, that we're fed theory and forget that it's theory. Theory is a guess. It's a smart guess, but it's still a guess, and it doesn't account for deviation.
- SSSimon Sinek
I'm not disagreeing with the importance and premise of-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Oh yes you are. [laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
Of, of, of... No, no, no, I'm not. I'm not disagreeing with the importance and premise of mindfulness. What I'm trying to, what I'm trying to understand myself is that, that theoretically, our brains are wired to help us stay alive-And one of the things that helps us stay alive is to be alert when we hear a noise or see something we don't know, to put our guard up for fear that it may cause us or the ones we love harm. And that's-- and that stress response is not always, is not always bad.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Okay, so let's say then that once you feel, "Oh my God," um, how long does it take you to say, "Oh, it's nothing"?
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
All right. Okay, and I'm saying at the least, but I'm saying a lot more than this, the more mindful you are, the quicker you respond to anything because mindfulness, you're aware of change.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
When you're mindless, you're holding things still. When you're mindful, you're always aware that everything is changing.
- SSSimon Sinek
But this is important because when your house burned down, it was the recovery that mindfulness helped, your recovery of you because you still were upset, you still got depressed, there's still loss. You still have to go through the mourning of the loss. You weren't just like, "Oh, my house burned down. You know, things happen." You know? I have to believe that wasn't the response.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
No, but it's not as extreme in the negative as you're saying either. But I gave you an extreme example.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- 13:19 – 15:22
Stress Requires Two Things
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Now, most of the time when people are stressed, it has nothing to do with anything that big.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
They're stressed because they forgot to make a phone call, they forgot to get the report in on time, they burnt the potatoes, they are told that they have to have some minor surgery. First of all, in order to experience stress, you need two things. You need to have a, um, a belief that something's going to happen, and then that when it happens it's going to be awful. Now, we can't predict. This is another thing that we've grossly misunderstood. You can predict for the group. You can't predict for the individual. So let's say I'm playing-- Who's the biggest basketball person this day, these days? Michael Jordan was the first time I told this story, so if he's still big, we'll use Michael Jordan. So Ellen Langer is having a foul-shooting contest with Michael Jordan. They each get to shoot one basket. How much of your life savings are you going to wager on Michael Jordan winning? Okay, so now, oh, were you kidding? It's a slam dunk. You'd have to be foolish not to bet as much as you can. But let's step back a little. Michael Jordan on occasionally misses. Not frequently, but on occasion. You're talking about your whole life savings. Ellen Langer, although you don't know it, more than on occasion gets one in. Certainly nowhere near Michael Jordan. But let's say Michael Jordan had a fight with his spouse, um, right before or Michael Jordan didn't get any sleep or, you know, he sneezed right before he took the shot. I mean, it could be a million things. And so for that one basket, I very well could win. But if Michael Jordan and I were each shooting 100 baskets-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... that's when you should put your money down, okay?
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Now, that's all fine, but for all of us, we're trying to predict the single event. We're not trying to predict, you know, how correct the weather forecast is over time. It's when I walk outside today, are they going to be right or not? And everybody knows that they're often not
- 15:22 – 20:47
Is it a Tragedy or Inconvenience?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
right. Let's go back to stress. So we're saying that to be stressed, you have to believe something's going to happen. So now give yourself five reasons, three if you're too lazy, three reasons why it might not happen. So you immediately feel better because the first reaction, "Oh my God," maybe it won't even happen. Now comes the harder part. Let's assume it does happen. How is that actually an advantage? And there's always an advantage. And if you can find the advantages, you don't become frazzled. I mean, my life is, you know, s- I'm human, so it's not entirely stress-free, but it's virtually stress-free. I mean, you have to hit me over the head very hard for me to react. Okay, so I'm on a podcast and I'm explaining this and I say, "Look, let's say that my internet went out right now." Um, all right, so I go have lunch. You know, the funny thing was my internet then went out. [laughs] I don't just talk the talk, I walked the walk and I went and had lunch. But for a younger person, a person, "Oh my God, this is a career maker or breaker," people talk themselves into, into all sorts of stressful events that could have been terrible. If you look back over the last as many as you can remember, let's say last three times you were stressed, you're probably gonna find the thing you were worried about didn't even happen.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
So now we're throwing good time away for no reason. That if it ends up happening, there's time to deal with whatever it is. But all the time you're wasting worrying about it and then it doesn't happen is wearing the system down. It's certainly not good for your mental health and, and it turns out, I have a lot of evidence, it's not good for your physical health.
- SSSimon Sinek
Look, I agree with all of this stuff and I try to live my life, um, comfortable with uncertainty. I sort of appreciate chaos even. I find creativity in chaos. Without chaos, there's no creativity. The point I was, I was trying to make before was I want people to have realistic standards that, that this is not a switch you turn and instantly you have no stress, that we're still human, we have human reactions. And I just want people to recognize that it's their ability to recover from stress or understand stress or get through stress in a healthier way which is the standard here. That's the only reason I was pushing on the biology which is I just want people to recognize that the, the standard we're setting here is not, is not that something ha- actually happens.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Sure. Sure.
- SSSimon Sinek
And then the part that I wanna, I wanna double-click on because I think it's so interesting what you're saying which is we don't necessarily get stressed by the thing that happened or the thing that could happen. We get stressed by the story we tell ourselves of what could happen and it's our own story which could be fact but it could also be fiction. Um-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Right
- SSSimon Sinek
... that's what's generating the stress and the anxiety is the, is the story. Mindfulness is a way of changing the story
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
And not only that, but most of our stories were developed at a much earlier time in our lives. So at 30, do you wanna be reacting to what you understood only partially when you were 20? That's dict- Or when you were 15. At your age now, do you wanna still be stressed by the things that bother you now when you're 60 without ever rethinking them? But yes, I, I didn't mean for people to think that... You know, that's why I use the example of my house burning down. There are real things that happen, although most of our stress is not a function of things at that level. If you are experiencing something, you have available to yourself, um, opportunity to reevaluate it, to reframe it, to understand it differently. And the more mindful you are, the more alternative ways of understanding it come to mind. Next time you're stressed, ask yourself, "Is it a tragedy or an inconvenience?" And almost instantly people realize, "Yeah, you know, it's not a tragedy." And then you breathe more easily.
- SSSimon Sinek
I wanna share a story. I've told this story a bunch of times, but I love it. I was watching the Olympics, and I noticed that the journalists were all asking the athletes the same question: "Are you nervous?" Or, "Were you nervous?" And all the athletes, uh, all gave the same answer: "No. I'm excited. No, I was excited." And it got me thinking, which is if you think about what the characteristics of nervousness are, like your heart starts pounding, your hands get clammy, you start envisioning the future. But if you think about what excitement is, your heart starts pounding, your hands get clammy, you start envisioning the future. And the reason the journalists were asking, "Are you nervous?" it's because they would be nervous because they're not elite athletes. They would be nervous, which is why they asked the question. And all the elite athletes had learned to interpret this data not as nerves, but as excitement, which is one of the reasons they're Olympians in the first place, which is they have this mindset of, "Let's give this a try," versus, "Let's run away from it." I was so interested by the simple mind shift interpretation that I decided to test it out. I was on a plane, and the plane hit very severe turbulence, and ordinarily I got-- I go, I go, you know, sort of get like this and my heart starts pounding and I start envisioning the future, and I get nervous. And I literally said under my breath out loud to myself, "This is exciting." And instantly I was fine.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah. That's great.
- 20:47 – 22:26
Emotions Are Choices: Reframing Your Biochemical Responses
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
[laughs] That's... Well, you know, it turns out all emotions are biochemically similar in the way you just described. You know, so let's say you're going out on a date, on first date, and you see yourself as anxious versus you see yourself as excited, the same thing you're explaining now. You posture yourself in very different ways, and chances are you're more likely to have the second date if you saw yourself as excited. And so what people don't understand is that emotions are choices, okay?
- SSSimon Sinek
This is good.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Biochemically similar-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... then you can call it by one of several different things, and what you call it will determine basically how you respond and subsequent feelings about it.
- SSSimon Sinek
And whether it's a date or a job interview or a conversation with your boss, when you come into it go, "I need this. Oh my God, I want this. I wanna get married. I want the promotion. I need this. I gotta have this," you know, we've all said that employee or that person you go on a date with that reeks of desperation. You know?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
It's... And we can feel it, we can see it, versus the confidence of excitement, which is, "This would be great, but it's okay if it doesn't. It's okay if I don't get it also." And that calm is incredibly attractive. [laughs]
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yes, for sure. But, you know, to go back to what you were saying before, if a person can't do it and seems a little crazed, it's fine. If you're so sure the person you're talking to is seeing you that way, then you call it by that. Say, "Boy, I guess I'm more nervous about this than I thought I would be."
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Then it's a non-event.
- SSSimon Sinek
Then it relieves the tension, doesn't it?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah. Yeah. And the person can no longer evaluate you by that because you've stolen his thunder in some sense.
- SSSimon Sinek
So, so
- 22:26 – 28:26
The First Step to Mindfulness: Embracing Uncertainty
- SSSimon Sinek
we've lived a life of doing the opposite of what you recommend, most of us.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah. Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
And so what is the first step to mindfulness? To living a mindful life versus a mindless life? What is the first step that we can all take?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
I mean, the first thing is really to try to garner a healthy respect for uncertainty, which, you know, just know you don't know. So every time you're thinking you know... And, and that's hard because when you think you know, you're not there to know that you're not there to make the change. So do the noticing three new things, five new things. But there's something else that I have some extraordinary research findings. You know, we're able to help people with chronic illnesses turn back time somewhat, heal our wounds fast. I mean, lots of... But the one thing after all these years that has become more important to me, seeming more important than any of these, is the simple idea that behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective or else the actor wouldn't do it. And you're an actor. So every time you do something and then you look at it and you think, "Oh, God. How could I have been so stupid, clumsy, aggressive," whatever it is, you know that that wasn't motivating the action. Every time you're judgmental of somebody else. Even you have a dog, and the dog is barking, and so what do most of us do? We go, "Stop that barking!" [laughs] And you just sort of respond as foolishly as the dog is. If you said to yourself, "Why is the dog barking?" So dogs don't just bark for no reason. People aren't just awful for no reason. From the dog's perspective, the dog is afraid. And if-- imagine if you say to yourself, "My dog is afraid, therefore I'm gonna hit him?" No. I mean, only the cruelest among us would do that. You know, we can't change these behaviors. This is what I found most interesting. So I could come to you, um, Simon, and sayPlease help me. I am so gullible it defies belief. We both agree I'm gullible, and so I'm gonna make a commitment, I'm gonna do whatever all the experts say to do, but it's never going to be effective. And why is that? Because going forward, I'm not being gullible. Going forward, I'm being trusting. And as long as I value being trusting, there are times I'm gonna seem gullible. An example I would use is, "Simon, you are so damn inconsistent, it must drive everybody who knows you crazy." Oh my God, look, I did all those incon- you know. And but you're never gonna change that because from your perspective, what you were is flexible. So if you want to change yourself or somebody else, you have to change it from the perspective from which they were enacting the behavior. Change and find out what they value, and if they value being flexible, they're gonna appear inconsistent. If you value being spontaneous, you're going to seem impulsive. Each and every negative description that we apply to ourselves or somebody else has an equally strong, a positive alternative, no matter what it is.
- SSSimon Sinek
I mean, I, I, this is-- I love this.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
That would make people more mindful because part of our mindlessness-- Well, first of all, whenever we're being evaluative, we're being mindless, right? We're seeing what this behavior is rather than realizing it can be understood in multiple ways.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
When you and I now understand each other better and care more about each other, it's-- I'm more open to be mindful and less afraid you're gonna hit me over the head, you know, if I don't follow the script.
- SSSimon Sinek
What's nice about talking to you is you're reinforcing a lot of the lessons I've learned along the way. One thing which has helped me as an entrepreneur is embracing uncertainty. When I was young as an entrepreneur, I thought, uh, I thought I had to not only know the answers, I thought I had to get the answers right. And now, when I make decisions, I'm very comfortable with th- that every decision I make could absolutely be, quote-unquote, "the wrong decision," and the results that I hope to get from this decision might actually go the opposite way. And so even though I wanna make the best guess that's informed by data and a little bit of gut, you know, and a little bit of, you know, sort of checking the wind, I'm very comfortable with the fact that I might get it wrong and then will change. And-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Well, you see, now I think that the posture that a successful person should have is to be confident but uncertain.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
And that's the way you were describing yourself. And in the world today, confidence and uncertainty are conflated. I mean, you think that if you're confident, it's because you're certain. And now we should just turn that around. You see somebody who's acting like that, and you know-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... that they're mindless.
- SSSimon Sinek
The, the way, the way I've always described myself is strong opinions loosely held.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Good.
- SSSimon Sinek
And because I speak in hard words and because I sound like I, I, I, you know, I, this is the answer, I think people think that I'm closed-minded to some things. But I love when somebody has a good argument to prove me wrong. And people who, who wanna debate or fight with me, what they, what they often don't, is I'm actually listening. I'm actually listening. If their logic makes sense to me-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah
- SSSimon Sinek
... I'm all in.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
And what's really funny is I-- when, when the logic doesn't make sense to me, I start asking lots and lots and lots of questions, which then somebody who wants certainty and isn't comfortable with uncertainty gets very, very defensive very, very quickly.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
Whereas I enjoy being questioned, and I'm only asking questions not to prove someone wrong, but I'm looking for information to see if I'm wrong.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Well, so what we should do is start the buzzword, you know, when, um, anybody is being certain, somebody should, you know, call them mindless. You know, just have a little, mm, a little buzzer. And you should see the response when I would ask somebody, "How much is one plus one?" You know, "What are you, an idiot?" You know, "Why are you asking me this?" And they would
- 28:26 – 35:49
Age + Wisdom: Why Young People Struggle With Uncertainty
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
tune out.
- SSSimon Sinek
So how much does age play into this, right? Because when we're young, we're carrying a lot of insecurity that we want to be liked, we wanna be right, we wanna be smart, we wanna be perceived as all those things because it'll benefit our careers. And I think that one of the things that you and I have the benefit of is we've lived a few years, and as I got older, I realized I know less than I thought I did. In fact, when I was young, I thought I knew so much. N-now I realize-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Well, that's-
- SSSimon Sinek
... I know so little
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... studying for a PhD, you come to learn more and more about less and less until you know all about nothing.
- SSSimon Sinek
I mean, isn't that beautiful? But how much of is this what we're actually describing is the v- the value of getting older and just wisdom? And how do young people embrace what you're talking about more readily?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
I teach a large class on, on health psychology at Harvard, and so every year I am addressing this issue. You know, I said, "Here's what happens if, but why wait?" Now, but before I do that, um, make that clearer, little kids, you know, you take a little kid and you put him in a room, and all that's there are cardboard boxes, and he's gonna make games out of it, or she, and have great fun until, uh, the parent somehow teaches them that's just a cardboard box and let me go spend a lot of money on a toy. I think that once, especially when there's some language, little kids are very mindful, and we teach it out of them, which is very, very sad. And then there are people who are so stubborn in their thoughts that, um, they don't experience the wisdom of getting older. But in a more general way, yeah, I think that, you know, all you need to do is a little reflection. You know, so you're two years old and you scrape your knee and you're screaming bloody murder, and then you're five years old and you're really too old for that. I mean, it hurts, but you know it's gonna stop hurting. But now you're seven years old or however old it is, and Jamie or Johnny didn't send you a valentine... you know, in the class. And, "Oh my God, the world's gonna, no one's gonna love me." And then you become 15, 16. And so if you're doing the looking back, you notice that, yeah, all the things you were expecting to happen, um, that no longer happened. That pimple didn't mean you were going to be forever, you know, marked as somebody unattractive as you were marking yourself. Um, but there are some people who probably don't do that. But surely, you know, if you don't become wiser with age, then, well, then it's very sad.
- SSSimon Sinek
So I'm curious how you think about sort of, you know, therapy and that who we are and our anxieties and our insecurities and the, the struggles we're having are the result of our, our parents and overcoming how our parents w- you know, screwed us up.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
I would say it's our parents, our schools, every institution that, uh, we experience have taught us to be mindless. And so how do you get out of it? Well, there are several things. First is most of our learning is absolute. Horses don't eat meat. One and one is two.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right, right.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
So if no matter what you're taught, you make it conditional, allowing that there are other ways and never closing-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... the book so it's always interesting. So there's that, learning conditionally. Second is, um, recognizing that everything can be understood in multiple ways and teaching young people, people at any age, to become comfortable with uncertainty. And then how to evaluate outcomes so they're not letting other people's misdeeds or things that happen by chance determine your well-being. It's really right there for, in front of us, you know? And we have so much data, Simon, that when you're more mindful, the neurons are firing, and it's literally, literally and figuratively enlivening. When you're having fun, you know, you can't have fun unless you're mindful. Here's another thing, um, only tangentially related. So when I give these lectures in person, I ask, "Is there somebody really tall out there, 6'5"?" And I don't know why, but I always seem to have a six-footer in the audience. So I invite him to the stage, and there we stand, and I'm 5'3", and we look silly together, right? And so all I d- I just stand there and let everybody see us. And then I say, "Should we do anything physical the same way?" Probably not. It's ridiculous. His hand is three inches larger than mine. So now here's the rule: the more different you are from the person who wrote the rule, wrote the directions, wrote the instructions, the more different you are from that person, the more important it is for you not to mindlessly do it the way they're telling you to do it.
- SSSimon Sinek
I wanna go back to the very beginning of this conversation, which is context, context, context, right? Because without the context, there is a point where somebody will just become annoying to hang out with because they're, they're like, you know... Like the one plus one example is fun in an academic situation like this one where we're sort of debating what one plus one actually means, but there are practical applications. So one of the things that I love, my, my dear friend and mentor Ron Bruder, um, he taught his kids this very lesson, right? Which is to question what thing, what the world means. And he was standing at a, a crosswalk with his kids, and he started to go and, and, and he, and the kids pointed out and says, "But Dad, it says 'don't walk,' and it means we have to stand here." And he said to them, he goes, "How do you know it doesn't mean to, we have to run?"
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
[laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
You know?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
That's great. That's great.
- SSSimon Sinek
And but, you know, which is, which is, which is, which is-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah
- SSSimon Sinek
... a great lesson, which is a great lesson that don't accept the world as it is and-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Right
- SSSimon Sinek
... and, and, and, and, and it's all the things you're talking about. However, the reason they came up with that system was so that people don't get hit by cars, and it actually means stand still.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
The answer is not to mindlessly stand still, mindlessly run or walk.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
The answer is to notice. You know, so if there's not a car in sight, you know-
- SSSimon Sinek
Right
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... I wa- I had this, uh, guy that I was dating very briefly right after graduate school, and wonderful man. Um, but we got to a crosswalk, there was no traffic.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yes.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
He stopped and I'm walking and I just said, "S- It, it's just not gonna work," [chuckles] you know?
- SSSimon Sinek
I mean, like I'm a New Yorker where jaywalking is-
- 35:49 – 42:41
Who Determines the Context? The Question of Control
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
But here's-
- SSSimon Sinek
And-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
No, it's bigger than that. It's bigger than that, Simon.
- SSSimon Sinek
Oh.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Because... Yeah, it is. Okay. So my colleagues for forever, uh, it used to be, um, one's personality mattered, then social psychologists were saying no, it's context, and a debate between the two of them. For so long, my view of question is who determined the context? And it's very important because whoever determined the context is controlling your behavior. So let me give you a, well, a media example.
- SSSimon Sinek
Well, hold on. I, the, you, you-- Let me make my argument for context first 'cause-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
No. See if your argument holds after I give you the example. If it doesn't-
- SSSimon Sinek
But I didn't even say... You st- you interrupted and started disagreeing with me before I made my point.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Because I-
- SSSimon Sinek
All I did was say a word
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
I know, but I know the word-
- SSSimon Sinek
[laughs]
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... I know what the word means to you. Okay, go on. I'll be quiet, and I'll even try to listen.
- SSSimon Sinek
For me, when I say context, what I mean is, is like, and it goes back to the don't walk. The context is, is this sign at a suggestion, or is there a reason for this sign? And if I go to my, my reaction to a personal situation, when I say what's the context here, which is like, am I reacting to reality, or am I reacting to the story I'm telling myself? And those things tend to be pretty easy to solve, and it's not me determining the context. It's me saying, "Can I be, you know, you know, I have a belief that this is gonna happen. Am I 100% certain this has happened? Am I 100% certain this is gonna happen?" And eventually that logic falls down if the answer is no.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Okay. So when we think of context, consider, you know, you're at a football game. And a football game, it's great to get up and yell and scream and whatever, versus you're in a library, right? In the library, that context demands that we be quiet so as not to influence other people.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Okay. So now I'm in the hospital. Uh, they have visiting hours. A hospital is like the library. My mother is, um, has been diagnosed with, uh, breast cancer that's now metastasized. And I go in, and the rule is somebody decided, um, that visiting hours are from X to Y, whatever timeframe they give. I make clear to the powers that be there, okay, so if I'm in, put my head, as you would do, in the hospital context-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... saying, "Well, these rules were decided. They make some sense. So when they say I should leave, I should leave." You're a New Yorker, Simon, and if you were caring for me in the hospital, I know you wouldn't do that. And I say to the powers that be there that because my mother, the maternal context I brought to bear, okay?
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
I'm in the hospital. That's one context.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
I let myself think of another context, my relationship with my mother, and that was going to take precedence. And I said, "I will be here for as long as my mother wants me to be here, and we can fight about it. You can try to get rid of me. We can make it a whole big show, or you, you can turn the other way, or you can just smile and let me be. But that's what I'm going to do." And they let me be. Let's say you're walking by, and you wanna cut through this person's lawn, and there's a, a big sign that says, "Don't walk on the grass." And so most people, unless you're from New York, are not gonna walk on the grass. Now, assume instead that sign says, "Ellen Langer says, 'Don't walk on the grass.'" All of a sudden you realize that that grass belongs to somebody. Maybe I can negotiate with them. Maybe she's not home. Maybe they don't care now 'cause things have changed since she put... Okay, so the point is, everything that has been created was created by people. And once we put people back in the equation-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... all sorts of control for us opens up. So if I say to you, "Smoking causes cancer," okay, so you know not to smoke. If we put people back in the equation, and you say, "A study by Simon and Ellen found that for most of the time, people under these conditions, more of them are like-- more smokers are likely to get cancer," and you give the actual papers-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... uh, it's all of a sudden less persuasive. So when you wanna persuade somebody of something-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... you take people out of the equation. But just as surely when you want people to feel more room to make decisions, you put people in.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- 42:41 – 46:24
Mind Over Matter: The Experiment That Started It All
- SSSimon Sinek
quite young, when I was in my sort of... Oh, I probably was maybe 13, 14, uh, years old, I started to become really curious about the mind over matter. Somebody had used the phrase or I'd heard it, you know, mind over matter, and I did an experiment in my bed. So my bed was up against a wall, and one side of my bed was just wall, it was white, and the other side was looking into my room, obviously. And so I laid on my shoulder, on my left shoulder, looking out into the room, and I closed my eyes and imagined, what if I was on the other side of the bed, still on my left shoulder? What if I was on the other side of my bed, and if I were to open my eyes right now, I would see wall? And the reason I picked that is because wall is an easy thing to imagine, right?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
And I just lay there concentrating, concentrating, concentrating that if I open my eyes, I'd be on the other side of the bed looking at the wall. And lo and behold, like a switch, I would've put money down, I would've bet anything that I was on the other side of the bed-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Wow
- SSSimon Sinek
... until I opened my eyes and I realized I wasn't. I did it a few times, and then I pushed my experiment even further, which is what if n- instead of being on the other side because my weight was still on the left shoulder, what if I was actually on my right shoulder? So now I'm looking out at the room, but on the same side of the bed, just on the other shoulder, you know? So here I am lying facing the room, and I'm imagining facing the wall, 'cause a wall's an easy thing to imagine, but this time I'm imagining being on my other shoulder. And I concentrated on that thought, and lo and behold, I would've put money down that my weight was on the opposite shoulder until I opened my eyes to realize I was actually staring out at the room.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
And this is when I became convinced-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Mm
- SSSimon Sinek
... that our minds are so powerful that I can trick my body that my weight was on the wrong shoulder-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah
- SSSimon Sinek
... that if I could do that with my mind, then I could trick myself, good or bad, into anything.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah. So you know, I mean, the reason you're talking to me about this is because of my work since 1979 about mind-body unity.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
So the idea that you have a mind and a body, then you have a question, how do they talk to each other? How do you get from a fuzzy thought to something material? No one's been able to answer that. And I thought, "Well, this is silly. Mind, body, they're just words. If we make it one unit, then wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting the body." And I had two very early experiences. The one, I was married when I was obscenely young, and I go to Paris on my honeymoon and I order a mixed grill. On the mixed grill un- is a pancreas. I ask my then husband, "Which of these is the pancreas?" He points. I then... I'm a big eater, having a wonderful time. Now comes the moment of truth. Can I eat the pancreas? And I start eating it, and I literally get sick. All right? Would've been easier to imagine the wall [chuckles] on the other side of the room. And then he starts laughing, which is not good at any time. On honeymoon, very not good. And I say, "Why are you laughing?" He said, "Because that's chicken. You ate the pancreas a long time ago." So I had made myself sick. Now, to go back, the other pancreas story I have, most people don't have a single one, I have two good pancreas stories-
- SSSimon Sinek
I don't have any
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... is my... Well, you can borrow one. Don't borrow, borrow the first one, not the second. When my mother's cancer had metastasized to her pancreas, that's the end game. And then magically it was totally gone, and the medical world couldn't explain it. So you know, I had made myself sick, she had made herself well, and that was going to lead to decades of my research trying to figure out, you know, what's going on. The findings of these studies, you know, the, the one that many people know about, the Counterclockwise Study,
- 46:24 – 47:07
The Counterclockwise Study: Turning Back the Clock on Aging
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
and the reason I think people know about it is because if you tune in to "The Simpsons Go to Havana," they talk about the study. So you know you've made it, Simon, [chuckles] once "The Simpsons" are talking about you.
- SSSimon Sinek
I have not been mentioned on "The Simpsons" yet.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Stay well then.
- SSSimon Sinek
So I, I'm still working at it.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
All right. Anyway, so this was a study where we retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier. We had elderly men live there as if they were their younger selves. So they put their minds back 20 years, okay? So they would be discussing past events as if they were just unfolding. And five days, in five days, that's a pretty short time, their vision improved, their hearing improved, their strength, their memory, and they looked noticeably younger. We'll go to the second
- 47:07 – 48:02
The Mindset That Changed Bodies
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
one. So what we did was ask chambermaids how much exercise you get. They say they don't get any exercise. That's because to them, exercise is what the surgeon general says you do after work, and after work they're just too tired. We take a ton of measures. Then what we do is we divide them into two groups. So one group, the important group, we tell them, "Your work is exercise. Making a bed is like working at this machine at the gym." So we persuade them in a short discussion that their work is exercise. Now we do our follow-up measures, and we find out, has their eating changed? No, the two groups are still the same. Has the effort they're putting into their work changed? No. Nevertheless, the group that has changed their mindset, changed their minds, now see their work as exercise, they lost weight. There was a change in waist-to-hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure came down. And
- 48:02 – 49:34
The Placebo and Nocebo Effect: Your Mind's Power Over Health
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
some way that really says more than most people understand. It speaks to what we call the nocebo effect. So everybody knows a placebo, you take a nothing, you think it's something, and it does the work of the something. A nocebo is you take a something, but you think it's a nothing, and it takes away the effects thereof.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
So as you were saying, you know, that it works, we can bring about good or, or bad for ourselves.
- SSSimon Sinek
You always hear in hospitals, right, doctors always say, you know, "She was a fighter. He was a fighter." These people of medicine, they often refer to the mindset of the patient, you know, when they talk about these re- remarkable recoveries.And I don't even think they realize they're saying it when they say it.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah. And I think that being a fighter is a bad metaphor. You know, I was giving a talk to about 5,000 people who were dealing with cancer, and, uh, this was very early on in my work, and, uh, one man objected strenuously, and he said his wife was a fighter. You know, she fought the cancer. And, you know, and I got through the, the day with that, making sure he was okay, and everybody understood more fully what I meant, and I thought about it, and I thought, you know, if a little kid was pulling on your pants leg, you wouldn't see yourself as fighting the kid, right? It's an annoyance. And so when you bring out the full artillery, fighting the cancer, you've already raised the opponent to a very big position. Oh, so let me just tell you about this, the next to last
- 49:34 – 52:01
The Wound Healing Study: When Perceived Time Controls Biology
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
study. We inflict a wound, a minor wound, 'cause they wouldn't let us do the study, and I don't wanna hurt people anyway, and then we put people individually in front 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 wound is gonna heal when the wound heals. I mean, what's the difference, right? But no, in fact, the wound heals based on clock time, perceived time. So we have demonstration after demonstration of the extraordinary control we have over our health and wellbeing. I mean, we had people in a sleep lab, and they wake up and they think they got more sleep than they got, less sleep than they got, and biological and cognitive functions follow perceived amount of sleep.
- SSSimon Sinek
Wow. So I used to wear an Oura Ring.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
And my Oura Ring used to tell me more often than not that, that I wasn't getting enough sleep, right? And then I got something called Eight Sleep, which are these sheets. I got them because they can cool your bed. That's really re- why I got them-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah
- SSSimon Sinek
... 'cause I like a cold bed. But they just happen to measure sleep, which I don't care about, but they happen to measure it. And the sleep score I get from Eight Sleep is always fantastic. I'm like the favorite... Now, by the way, my sleep habits have not changed. Some will argue that because the sheets are colder, I'm doing better, but I ha- would keep the room very cold, you know?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
I just thought this was more efficient than keeping the air conditioning on all night, right?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
And I honestly can say that I sleep better now, but I don't know that I'm actually sleeping better, but because I'm being told that I'm sleeping better, I believe it.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
So I belie- so the stress created by the Oura Ring was you, you suck at sleep, and I was always tired. [laughs] And now I'm always well-rested because I'm a champion sleeper according to my sheets.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Okay, so I have one that's the, uh, negative bragging, if there is such a word. So I had believed always that if I have coffee, caffeine, but it has to be in coffee, after 12 in the afternoon, it keeps me up till 3:00 at night. However, if the last cup of coffee I have is at 10 of 12 in the afternoon, it has no effect on me. [laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
Right. [laughs]
- 52:01 – 53:14
We're Mindless Almost All the Time: The Uncomfortable Truth
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
The most important part of all of this is that all of these decades of research has made clear to me virtually all of us are mindless almost all the time.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah. Yeah.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
And, you know, when you're mindless, you're not there to know you're not there.
- SSSimon Sinek
And you're not invalidating the research, but as you said right at the beginning, which is it is preponderance, it's predictability, it's en masse, it's, like, more likely. When these studies are telling us likelihoods, we are interpreting it as certainty.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Now, that's very good. You're trying to hoist me by my own petard, and I didn't even know I had a petard, whatever a petard is.
- SSSimon Sinek
I can tell you what a petard is. You know in cartoons, the little, the little bomb that's round with a little fuse? That's a petard.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Oh, is that a petard?
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah, that's a petard. So to be hoisted by a petard-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Why would anybody have their own petard? It just-
- SSSimon Sinek
[laughs]
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, it just means, you know, that-
- SSSimon Sinek
It means you blow- you, you're blown up by your own grenade.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yes.
- SSSimon Sinek
Hoisted by your own petard.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
At any rate, um-
- SSSimon Sinek
[laughs]
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
... to we- in defense of my petardlessness, that when you've done, um, four decades worth of research, you know, leading to the same conclusion, it's a little different than a single study.
- SSSimon Sinek
But you're still talking about likelihood because even your research, there is uncertainty.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Of course, of course.
- SSSimon Sinek
[laughs]
- 53:14 – 56:58
Is There Ever a Time to Be Mindless?
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
So it's interesting because people say to me, you know, "Ellen, isn't there a time being mindless is better?" And I say, "No," and I say it unequivocally. And how could that be? How could she speak with certainty? You know, it's like everything is uncertain except... You know, so then I say, "Imagine, Simon, you're in the park with a little three-year-old, and the three-year-old starts walking into the traffic." You'd say, "Isn't it better that I mindlessly just pull her out of the traffic?" And then I say to you, "Simon, if you were mindful, she wouldn't have ended up in the traffic in the first place. Second, if you're going to pull her out, you know, you don't know whether the driver sees you pulling her out or is himself starting to ev- you know, swerve in the opposite direction. You wanna make sure you're pulling her away from the traffic-"
- SSSimon Sinek
Uh-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
"... rather than-"
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Anyway.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah. I, I think I'd fi- I would recommend finding a different example because we can't make it revisionist, right? If, if something bad is bound to happen and we say, "Well, if you were mindful, it wouldn't have happened in the first place," which is kind of a mean thing to say. The-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
[laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
Because things do happen, and I think there, I think, I think there are things that mindlessness is okay.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
No.
- SSSimon Sinek
And I will come up with a really good example, but-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Good. You think while I talk for a second because, um, no matter what you're doing, you can do it mindfully or mindlessly. If you're doing it mindlessly, you're not there. The neurons aren't firing. There's no advantage to doing it.
- SSSimon Sinek
Wait, hold on. Your definition is two things now 'cause, because mindlessness in your, in your car example is about reaction and an automated response.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Well, it doesn't have to be an automated response, though. What I'm saying is I grab you quickly 'cause you're my little child now
- SSSimon Sinek
But human reaction, it's like the same reason why when you touch a hot stove, your body says, "Move your hand," and then you feel the heat. But the reaction when your child is about to be hurt, that is automatic, that you grab someone and, and, and hopefully it's, it works out the right direction and works out the right way. You know? But I think... And then you realize, "Oh my God, what just happened?" It happens afterwards. That is our mind's-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yes
- SSSimon Sinek
... that is our mind-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah
- SSSimon Sinek
... protecting before-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah
- SSSimon Sinek
... before the understanding happens.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
I'm sure at your age you've been protected from something that was actually good for you.
- SSSimon Sinek
I-
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Because the person misjudged.
- SSSimon Sinek
Oh. And I've also been protected from things that were actually bad for me.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, but who's to say before the, before the protection? The point is-
- SSSimon Sinek
All I can say is that sometimes it worked out well and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it was, I wish it happened, and sometimes I wish it didn't
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
Still, you can do things mindfully or mindlessly no matter what you're doing, and the overwhelming evidence, theoretical and practical, is to be there. If you're gonna do it, be there for it. And when you're mindless, you're not there. You're no different from a robot. And would you like... In fact, if I said to you, "Your kid is in the road. Do you want me to send a robot to get the kid out of the road or an Olympic athlete?" 'Cause the robot, you see, has only been programmed for certain things, and if you're uncertain, we know something that hasn't gotten into the program could be operating.
- SSSimon Sinek
I'm gonna, I, I'm gonna end right there. Ellen, so much fun. Thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.
- ELDr. Ellen Langer
I enjoyed it, Simon. You stay well.
- SSSimon Sinek
You too.
Episode duration: 56:59
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Transcript of episode PZzOWtUws68
