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

Dr. Ellen Langer is Harvard’s first tenured female psychology professor, a pioneering researcher on the mind-body connection, and author of “The Mindful Body.” This conversation explores the radical impact of certainty on well-being and Ellen’s perspective that redefines traditional notions of mindfulness through the simple act of noticing new things. In her return, we discuss why uncertainty brings freedom, how thoughts influence health outcomes, the kaleidoscopic nature of consciousness, and why everything we think we know deserves to be questioned. Ellen is brilliant, irreverent, and wise. Her insights may transform how you think about thinking. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Roka: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL 👉ROKA.com/RICHROLL AG1: Get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Go Brewing: Use the code Rich Roll for 15% OFF 👉gobrewing.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Dr. Ellen Langer will be hosting a private, intimate Couples Retreat in Puerto Vallarta Mexico March 9-14, 2026. For information please email Randy Lennon at [email protected]. Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:05Ellen Langer?

  People think there are good decisions and bad decisions. And the only way you can assess whether it's right or wrong is by the outcome. And so, the idea of worrying about making the wrong decision doesn't make sense in the first place. And so, you're always guessing that what's the right thing to do. And I'm here to inform people, nobody knows. And it's okay not to know. Everything is mutable. Everything can be different from what it is. And so, if it doesn't work, change it.

• 1:37Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. I just want to say upfront that I appreciate your attention. Attention is precious when you pause to think about it. All we have is our attention. And while we tend to take this for granted, or overlook it, or waste it, or misdirect it, what and who you devote your attention to matters. And for that reason, I don't take it for granted that, right now, you have chosen to give your attention to me, to this podcast. It's a responsibility that I take seriously and, hopefully, honor with today's conversation, which, in many ways, is itself about attention.

• 2:19Rich Roll?

  My guest today is Dr. Ellen Langer. Dr. Langer has dedicated her career to challenging our most fundamental assumptions about the nature of the mind, consciousness, and human behavior. Dubbed "the mother of mindfulness," Dr. Langer is Harvard University's most popular psychology professor, as well as my most popular guest of 2024. And today, she returns to share deeper insights on mind-body unity, why much of what we think we know isn't so, and how embracing uncertainty and mindfulness can liberate us from our self-imposed limitations. In addition, we discuss why making decisions right matters more than making the right

• 3:03Rich Roll?

  decision, and many other topics. Dr. Langer is a force of nature, brilliantly contrarian in the best sense, and delightfully unconventional. And my hope is that this conversation will leave you questioning everything you think you know, and empowered by that uncertainty. So without further ado, please enjoy me and Dr. Ellen Langer.

• 3:29Rich Roll?

  All right, well, we're here. Thanks for coming back, Ellen.

• 3:31Ellen Langer?

  My pleasure.

• 3:32Rich Roll?

  It's a delight to have you back in the studio. You are one of our most popular, if not the most popular, guests that we had last year. And I left that last conversation with, you know, plenty of thoughts about how we could reconvene. So we talked about decisions, making decisions, and this idea of rather than focusing on making the right decision, making the decision right. You know, maybe we can spend a few more minutes kind of exploring that, because people were so fascinated.

• 4:02Ellen Langer?

  Well, the idea is you make a decision to take action. As soon as you take the action, you can't evaluate the decision, what the alternatives would have been. And the experience in anything is not a function of consequences that are fixed. You know, our minds determine our appreciation of it. And so the idea of worrying about making the wrong decision doesn't make sense in the first place. So two reasons that I've just said. One is, wrong based on what? The other decision might have been more wrong, might have been the same, might have been better, there's no way to ever know that. And that the experience you have of the outcome is up to you. You know, the example I gave in the mindful body.

• 4:47Ellen Langer?

  I came home from dinner at a friend's house and all of my neighbors were outside because my house had burned down. People in California can appreciate that now. And the next day, I called the insurance agent. And he said that, when he finally came, he said it was the first time in his 20-year career that the damage was worse than the call. Usually it's, "Oh, my God, oh, my God," and then he gets there, it's nothing. But it didn't make sense to me to throw my sanity away with all of the items that I had already lost. They weren't going to come back. Anyway, that's not the real part of the story. I move into the Charles Hotel. And it was Christmas Eve. I go out.

• 5:31Ellen Langer?

  I come back to the hotel the end of the night, and the room is full of gifts. Not from the owners of the hotel, not from the management, but from the so-called little people, the people who parked my car, the chambermaids, the waiters and waitresses. It was beautiful. And Rich, I'll tell you that it took me forever to be able to tell that story without it bringing tears to my eyes. So now we have a situation where I lost 80% of what I had. I can remember only one thing that I lost, but every Christmas, I'm reminded of what feels like the basic goodness of so many people. And so, for me, it was actually a very positive experience.

• 6:13Ellen Langer?

  But, you know, I'm human, and of course, I don't go and see my house and think, "Oh, well, that's no big deal." I mean, it was stressful. But in thinking about it, I can bemoan the things that I lost. Or I can recognize those were things that represented the prior me. You know, I didn't just buy them yesterday. And a chance then to go forward and rebuild based on who I am at the moment. So the idea being that events don't cause stress. The outcomes of events are a function of our thoughts about them. And so if you're making a decision and you know that if this happens, it'll be fine. If that happens, it'll be fine. Doesn't matter what happens.

• 6:56Ellen Langer?

  I was doing one of these podcasts on Zoom, explaining this to people. And I said, okay, look, you know, if my internet goes out right now, it's not gonna be, oh, my goodness. I'll go have lunch. You know, that the older you get, the more you realize that most of these things just don't matter.

• 7:13Rich Roll?

  One of the things my wife always says is, everything is neutral until perspective is applied. It's all a matter of your perspective that you lend to a certain series of events or outcomes, right? This is very easy to say and difficult to practice, correct? And how to kind of differentiate between trivial outcomes and, you know, outcomes that, uh, that, you know, perhaps are more dire or to which we apply a more severe perspective.

• 7:44Ellen Langer?

  But when you first find the outcome, then you're making all sorts of guesses about what it would have meant to you.

• 7:51Rich Roll?

  And that gets into all of your thoughts about prediction.

• 7:54Ellen Langer?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Rich Roll?

  And uncertainty and our great discomfort with uncertainty.

• 7:58Ellen Langer?

  Well, you know, and which is a shame because certainty makes you mindless. And uncertainty is the rule. It's not the exception. Everything is changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives. And when we're holding it still, we're confusing the stability of our mindsets with the stability of the underlying phenomenon. So we hold things still to have control, but that very holding still robs us of control. And we want control again because we want to make sure we can maximize these positive things, minimize these negative things. And when you recognize the thing itself isn't positive or negative, the whole thing becomes very easy. Now, it's not, you know, you do this often enough. I don't know.

• 8:39Ellen Langer?

  I've been very fortunate to, to live my life this way, that I'm not reinterpreting events. With a fire, yes, but with, you know, more mundane happenings. My immediate response is to understand the way it's an advantage.

• 8:54Rich Roll?

  Are you fundamentally wired that way? Is that teachable? Do you think that this is a habit that people can adopt?

• 9:00Ellen Langer?

  I think it's teachable. I had loving parents and as I'm fond of saying, my mother would have had me laminated if she could have. And, uh, You know, so I, since I'm a little kid, I'm always telling people about the other side. You know, that, no, why don't you look at it this way? Um, scarily, if most people had been positive, my mind might have gone the other way. Well, let me tell you how that could be awful.

• 9:25Rich Roll?

  Why do you think it is that the human animal is so uh, unat ease with uncertainty? When uncertainty is truly the fabric of the universe?

• 9:35Ellen Langer?

  Well, I think we're taught that. I don't think it's, um, I mean, some people argue that it's wired in. I, I don't really believe that. I think that everything is the way it is because somebody is prospering. And, um, you know, it's important for me to stay on top by leading you to believe I know things. Um, and without any uncertainty. And so that I'm superior to you in some way. And I, I argue against all of that. But regardless of whether it's wired and it's not wired in, the fact is uncertainty is the rule. And to deny it, um, is not helpful.

• 10:17Rich Roll?

  There's freedom in accepting this idea of uncertainty. And our compulsion to feel like we're in control of our lives or that we can predict outcomes is what also causes us, us suffering. So freedom is, is, is kind of confronting the reality or the lack of reality.

• 10:36Ellen Langer?

  But you can control it. You know, all you really care about is your response to the event. The event itself doesn't really matter. And that we have full control over. Now, not when we're mindless, not if we're taught that this is necessarily a bad thing. You know, and you're taught that over and over again. It's very hard when confronted with that to turn around and say, oh, you know, who cares? This is minor. But if you examine it and just ask yourself, you know, what are the advantages to it? In fact, you know, one of the things I say when people who are stressed, stress requires two things, I believe. First is a belief that something's going to happen, and second, that when it happens, it's going to be awful. So attack both of those. The first, give yourself three, five reasons why it won't happen.

• 11:21Ellen Langer?

  And you immediately feel better because you went from single-mindedly, this thing is going to happen, to, I mean, maybe it won't. But the more fun part, fun for me, but not for most people, is to then say, okay, let's assume it does happen. How is that actually an advantage? And when you do that, then you're in a position where it might happen, it might not happen, either way, I'm going to be fine. And so then you can get on with just being.

• 11:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think that, you know, there's a lot of talk, especially on podcasts, about sleep hygiene, how important it is to get eight hours, and all these sort of protocols to ensure a healthy night's sleep. But all of that is for naught if you're just hashing, you know, stress, and if stress is just this cycle that's recurring in your mind, and you're thinking about all the terrible outcomes and all the things you have to do, like if you can't put the brakes on that, or arrest it, or reframe that narrative, you know, I think that's the real source of, you know, people's inability to sleep. It certainly is for me.

• 12:23Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, but I get stuck on your original statement of eight hours, because I find it ridiculous.

• 12:28Rich Roll?

  Did you tell Andrew that yesterday?

• 12:30Ellen Langer?

  I did, actually.

• 12:31Rich Roll?

  What did he say?

• 12:33Ellen Langer?

  That if you just ran a marathon versus you were in bed all day watching television, eating candy, you're not going to need the same amount of sleep that night. And some people need more, some people need less. What happens, and I think we talked about this last time, is that I think people need to understand that science only gives us probabilities.

• 12:56Ellen Langer?

  Those probabilities are translated as absolute facts. An example I used before is I was at this horse event. This man asked me if I'd watch his horse for him because he wants to get his horse a hot dog. Ha ha, I laughed, being a straight A student. Horses don't eat meat. He came back with the hot dog and the horse ate it. All right, now, to make this a little different from the last time. Imagine having to say in school, or wherever you're taught this, rather than horses don't eat meat, you say, "These kinds of horses, given this kind of meat mixed with this kind of grain, under these circumstances, after not having eaten it, 80% of them don't eat meat." It's a mouthful.

• 13:36Ellen Langer?

  And so, we take a shorthand, but that shorthand, we then presume is more real than we otherwise should. It's not that horses don't eat meat. It's not that people need eight hours of sleep. None of these things are true for everybody all of the time. And so, the idea is to recognize when it's not true for you, that's probably fine, rather than then lose more sleep because you can't get enough, you know, get to sleep. Another thing about sleep that I always found funny, and I've done this myself. So, let's say I have to make a very early flight. So, I have to get up at 5:00 in the morning, 4:00 in the morning, make it more dramatic. I try to go to sleep very early the night before.

• 14:18Ellen Langer?

  And of course, I'm not going to be able to sleep because the amount of sleep I need isn't determined by the future, it's determined by the past. But I think that, you know, it depends on how you're spending the day, I would think, as to how much sleep you actually need. If you're mindful, you know, so that the neurons are firing and you're feeling very alive, my guess is you don't need as much sleep as if life is a drudgery.

• 14:48Rich Roll?

  Well, it gets into this idea of mind-body unity that we talked about last time. This notion that we need eight hours. If you don't get it, then you're suddenly going to feel like, oh, I'm behind, or I'm not, you know, at the peak of my powers today. And what does that mindset do to how you feel and how you behave and how you make decisions throughout the day? How much of that is purely physiological because you didn't get eight hours versus the impact of your mindset?

• 15:16Ellen Langer?

  Exactly. So, you know, we did a study in a sleep lab. There are two parts of this that are interesting. One is, all I wanted to do with the study was to have people wake up, see a clock. The clock tell them that they had two hours less sleep, fewer than they had, or the amount of sleep they had, or two hours more sleep. I could not get the scientists all over the country, who ran, I didn't want to set up a sleep lab, it was just, you know, too involved, to do the studies. Well, you know, they said, "It's not gonna work." I said, "Well, then just change the clock. If it's not gonna work, it's not gonna upset any of the other measures you're taking, or the reason you're running this study." And eventually, I got somebody to agree to do it.

• 16:01Ellen Langer?

  But it was an interesting thing, because the medical world, everybody there said, "It's not gonna work." In my department, and discussing it with colleagues, everybody said, "Of course it's gonna work." But without any doubt, on either side. Anyway, so, people wake up, they think they got more sleep than they got, and all of the cognitive and biological measures we took revealed that they were fine. You know, that they, your body follows what your mind believes, essentially. Now, I don't know how far you can push that. If you sleep only one hour... Well, first of all, I don't know if you slept one hour, we'd be able to persuade you that you actually slept eight.

• 16:43Ellen Langer?

  But all I know is that the limits, we presume to be true, I think are vastly under...

• 16:54Rich Roll?

  Well, that's the core thesis of all of your work, pretty much, right?

• 16:58Ellen Langer?

  That everybody can be happier, healthier, do more than they think that they can.

• 17:04Rich Roll?

  On that notion, just to extrapolate it, you have this idea that perhaps...

• 17:12Rich Roll?

  The entire notion of fatigue is a mindset.

• 17:15Ellen Langer?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Rich Roll?

  Situation.

• 17:17Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, so we have what I call the two thirds effect. And it's not always exactly two thirds, but you know, you're doing some activity. You know approximately how long it's going to take. You don't consciously think about all of this, but you've been through it before. And around two thirds of the way through, you start to get tired. Now, I think you start to get tired because you want to get out of the activity. Right before we started and I asked you, how long are we going to go? And you gave me a time, I said, you know, for me, I'm so bizarre that I get more and more excited and more and more energized so that I could go on, not endlessly, but certainly for a longer period of time than anybody would want me to.

• 18:02Ellen Langer?

  So how do you end the activity? And so to bring closure to things, it works very nicely for everybody to get tired two thirds of the way through. So what we did, the first study here was very simple. You know, we just had people doing a hundred jumping jacks and tell us when they're tired. So they get tired around 70, right? Now we have another group of people doing 200 jumping jacks. Tell us when you get tired. They get tired at 140. And we do this across lots of different activities. And it seems that we organize ourselves so that oddly, we're going to make ourselves tired. And the question, why?

• 18:46Ellen Langer?

  And I don't have evidence for this. It just seems to me it's a way then to exit.

• 18:51Rich Roll?

  It's our relationship to the completion, to the destination that dictates like how we meet out our energy and our perception of how fatigued we are.

• 19:00Ellen Langer?

  Right, I mean, if you, you know, go to faculty meetings or any kind of business meeting, you know, that things start off slow, then you get, you know, the big, big information out, and then eventually, okay, we've said it all, you know, because the meeting is going to end. People don't give you their, their best right up front.

• 19:22Rich Roll?

  It's curious as an athlete to think about fatigue as something that's rooted in the mind, because obviously if you could unlock that, or help people, you know, reframe their relationship with fatigue in an athletic context, that would be like this unlock to performance enhancement.

• 19:38Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, you know, well, so there was a study that was done forever ago, where a person was supposed to, as a participant, you write your name, and you just keep writing your name, and you write your name, and at some point, you just can't take it anymore. You're writing, you're writing, and then you give up. And the person who, the experimenter, then says, "Okay, just sign this form, and you can leave," and then you write. So the point is that you change the context, and everything changes. There was a wonderful study that Frank Beach did way back when. This will surprise you if I hadn't told you about it already. So you have a little boy rat, and a little girl rat, and they will copulate. And then, the little boy rat needs a refractory period.

• 20:23Ellen Langer?

  He can't take anymore. However, if immediately after, you introduce a new little girl rat, he can go on. So the idea is, you change the context, and all of a sudden, you have renewed energy. And, so you can do that when you're running, you know, that start thinking of something new, or have somebody join you at this later point, or, I don't know if you could change the scenery, but you could if you were doing it on one of those bikes.

• 20:54Rich Roll?

  But we're hardwired to, you know...

• 20:56Ellen Langer?

  Oh, you keep talking "hardwired." I don't think we have any idea what we're wired.

• 21:01Rich Roll?

  Let's say we have a tendency, maybe, is that better? Based on my observations, or maybe just from, I'll share my own personal experience.

• 21:10Ellen Langer?

  Okay, here we go. I can't argue that.

• 21:12Rich Roll?

  If, you know, if we sort of want to predict into the future, when things are going to end, or what those destination points are, so that we can then make decisions about how we're going to approach it, correct? In the context of, like, athletics, there are these adventure races, that, where the race organizer won't tell you how long it's going to go. And there's something... You know, particularly maddening about that.

• 21:34Ellen Langer?

  Really?

• 21:34Rich Roll?

  Like, you don't know, it could be days, it could be hours. And that has a tendency to like, break people mentally, right? When they don't know, like, how many challenges they're gonna have. So what is, like, how would that fit into?

• 21:46Ellen Langer?

  Well, it fits in beautifully, don't you think? You know, that, I don't know how to organize myself, should I go full out? You know, if I'm gonna run a hundred yards, then I'm gonna go full out right from the beginning. But if I'm gonna go five miles, you know, I have to hold back. And all of that is based on an assumption of how much you can do. You know, that if I think that, if I go full out, I can't do that for the five miles. I personally can't do it.

• 22:13Rich Roll?

  We make decisions about our own limitations that then predict those outcomes.

• 22:17Ellen Langer?

  And those decisions then become self fulfilling prophecies.

• 22:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The other ripple in this conversation around decision making is the importance of different types of cognition beyond like, the intellectualization that kind of monopolizes how we make decisions. Or, or the fact that we kind of overlook the other aspects that are truly informing how we're making decisions and then hang our hat on these intellectual rationales.

• 22:48Ellen Langer?

  As, for example?

• 22:50Rich Roll?

  So, we have a decision to make. For example, you know, are you gonna be a professor at this college or this college? And we make a list, here's all the pros and the cons. And then we sort of believe that we're making a decision based upon those, when in fact there's something else going on.

• 23:06Ellen Langer?

  Well, you know, yeah, that you make this, this list and you see the school you really wanna go to is losing, so then you change the, the advantages and disadvantages, change the cons.

• 23:17Rich Roll?

  So, implicit in what you just said is that it's the emotional piece that, that is really the driver of how we actually make decisions.

• 23:24Ellen Langer?

  Um, I think that people make the decisions the right way. And are led to believe by the experts that they're doing something wrong. And the only way you can assess whether it's right or wrong is by the outcome. And if we go back to my original statement that you articulated, you know, that rather than worry about making the right decision, make the decision right. So if you make the decision right, then whatever the process was, worked for you. So in other words, I think that in some level, people know that they can't do what people are telling them to do. You know, to do a cost benefit analysis makes no sense, once you recognize that every cost is a benefit, every benefit is a cost.

• 24:09Ellen Langer?

  So it's going to add up to zero. They say, "Collect information." But how much information? There's always more information that could change the sense of what you're doing. You know, we have the feeling that the more information, the better, and I think that that's a problem. If there were, in fact, 100 pieces of information, right? And you collected 90, you'd be in a better position than if you only collected 50 pieces of information. But there's not 100 pieces of information, it's almost infinite. You know, I'm trying to make a decision, I can say, "Well, is this thing going to be good for me now? Is it going to be good for me in two weeks? Is it going to be good in a year? Is it going to be good in five, and so on?

• 24:54Ellen Langer?

  Is it going to be good for my family? Is it going to be good for the world?" Potentially, it can go on and on.

• 25:01Rich Roll?

  I mean, every decision we make is doing something for us on some level, whether we're conscious of it or not. But I imagine somebody listening to this might be thinking, "Well, if this is just about making every decision that I make right, then does that not rob me of the ability to, you know, look into the rearview mirror, assess the decisions I've made in the past, and kind of do a forensic analysis and try to figure out like how I can make better decisions going forward?" Like, if I'm just like, "Well, I just make it right, and it was the right decision," then you're never really reflecting upon your decision-making ability at all.

• 25:35Ellen Langer?

  But it doesn't have to work that way. You can do all the reflecting with an awareness that it really doesn't make a difference. It doesn't make a difference with respect to making a better decision, but it is informative, it's also fun to do, can be quite mindful. It's just not going to lead to a better decision. I mean, and that's hard for people to understand. People think there are good decisions and bad decisions, and... You know, that once you've made the decision, again, you don't know what the alternatives would have been.

• 26:06Rich Roll?

  It also depends on the timeline.

• 26:08Ellen Langer?

  Yes, yeah, and not only that, but we make decisions because we think we can predict. Once you realize that prediction itself is an illusion, then, you know, even if it's a simple thing like, should I have this candy bar, well, you're a health nut, okay, so I can have this protein bar.

• 26:25Rich Roll?

  I'll have one of those once in a while, go ahead.

• 26:27Ellen Langer?

  Versus this other protein bar relies on an assumption that it's going to taste to me the same way they both tasted in the past. And then I say, well, which of these tastes do I want right now? But my biochemistry is different today than it was yesterday, and so even that assumption is wrong.

• 26:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Ellen Langer?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 26:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, for whom and when?

• 26:50Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, exactly. So if you can't predict, then what sense does making a decision make? Now, people have a hard time understanding that they can't predict because I think in general, people confuse predicting for the group with predicting for the individual. You can't predict the individual case. So, an example I used the other day. So let's say we're going to go to a Mercedes shop, all right? And you get to start, pick any Mercedes there, and you're going to turn the key, and if it starts, I'm going to give you a million dollars.

• 27:31Ellen Langer?

  If it doesn't start, you're going to give me your life savings so far. It's a pretty good bet, but nobody's going to take it because everybody knows there are lemons. Everybody knows that none of us are perfect, no matter how good we are, nothing we've produced is perfect. So while in general, those Mercedes are likely to start, certainly more likely than if you go to a used car lot. Um, any particular one, no. So people on some level are aware of this. Now, for all of us, what we're trying to predict is for ourselves, right? It's wonderful you tell me, I'm trying to see, should I have this operation?

• 28:14Ellen Langer?

  And you say eighty percent of the people who have this operation do just fine. That's, I'm happy for them. But am I gonna be a part of the twenty percent or part of the eighty percent? And there's no way of knowing. And if there's no way of knowing, then how do you make the decision?

• 28:29Rich Roll?

  And more broadly, how do we make peace with uncertainty in general?

• 28:33Ellen Langer?

  Well, again, the way I make peace with uncertainty is that whatever happens, I find the advantage to it. And so it's fine. You know, that, if we paid more attention to why we're doing what we're doing, I think we'd be a lot easier on ourselves. So let's say, um, I decide, you know, all I wanna do today is stay home and maybe watch some movies on television, just take it easy, right? And the reason I need this is because of whatever I've been traveling, I've been doing podcasts after, and I really just wanna be by myself. Okay. Then I find out that if I had only gone to whatever this event was, it could have been life-changing.

• 29:16Ellen Langer?

  Now, as long as I know why I chose what I chose, I'm not likely to regret not having chosen something else. But if I'm not aware of why I'm doing what I'm doing, I'm just sort of mindlessly, you know, being. Um, and then somebody says, oh, you missed this great thing, you know? Yeah, then I, then I will feel regret.

• 29:36Rich Roll?

  But it makes it easier to say no when you have clarity on those things.

• 29:40Ellen Langer?

  Yes, oh, sure, exactly.

• 29:41Rich Roll?

  Because you're not captured by this fear of missing out all the time.

• 29:44Ellen Langer?

  Exactly, exactly. But too often, we don't know why we're doing what we're doing. We just end up in one place or the other, um, sort of mindlessly.

• 29:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, maybe, maybe provide, once again, you did it last time, but your definition of mindfulness.

• 29:59Ellen Langer?

  Okay, so when I'm talking about mindfulness, it has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is, is fine, it's just very different process. Meditation is a practice you engage in to result in post-meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness, as we studied, is more immediate. It's a simple process of actively noticing things. When you're actively noticing, the neurons are firing. Decades of data show that it's literally and figuratively enlivening. There are two ways to become mindful. One, as we've been talking now, is top-down. Once you recognize that you don't know, you pay attention. You know, if you were to come to visit me in Cambridge, you wouldn't have to practice anything.

• 30:43Ellen Langer?

  You'd walk in, you'd say, you've never been there before. Everything would be new. You'd look at the paintings. You wondered, did she do that painting? What is she reading? What is that strange thing over there? And it would be fun. That's what we do when we travel, you know, for example. The other way, rather than top-down, is bottom-up, which is walk out your front door and notice three new things. Notice three, five new things about the person that you live with, if you live with anybody, or three new things about what's happening at work today. Each time you notice new things about the things you thought you knew, you come to realize, gee, you didn't know it as well as you thought you did.

• 31:21Rich Roll?

  It's a practice of disabusing us of our certainty. And that gets to the predictability piece also.

• 31:28Ellen Langer?

  Exactly.

• 31:29Rich Roll?

  And so, do you have a formal practice of meditation to inhabit this mindfulness state of mind? Or you just, yeah, like you sort of short-circuit right to the the purpose of meditation, right?

• 31:41Ellen Langer?

  Well, you know, once I had that horse experience, my whole life changed.

• 31:48Rich Roll?

  The hot dog eating horse.

• 31:50Ellen Langer?

  The where the horse is going to eat the hot dog. And I've said this so many times, I don't even remember if it's true or not.

• 31:56Rich Roll?

  This is your spiritual experience.

• 31:58Ellen Langer?

  But it feels true, that, you know, it just made me question everything. And, you know, so, and I have, one of the titles that I was playing with before I came up with The Mindful Body was Who Says So? What you can do with almost everything, you know, that every fact that we're given is contextualized and we lose the context and act as if it's, you know, it's absolute. So the example I gave you last time, um, you know, and I asked you, how much is one plus one? Right. So this is the fact everybody thinks they know, but it can be many things. It can be two, if you're using a base 10 number system. It can be 10 if you're using a base 2 number system.

• 32:40Ellen Langer?

  It can be one if you're adding things that are, um, uh, hard to describe. You know, you take one puddle and you add one puddle, you have one puddle. Somebody sent me this, uh, that if you take one pizza and you add one pizza, you have two pizzas. But you take one lasagna and you add one lasagna, one plus one is one, it's just larger. On top of each other. One cloud plus one cloud is one cloud. And so in the real world, it doesn't equal two as or more often as it does. The point of the whole thing though, has nothing to do how much is one plus one. As soon as you realize you don't know, you have choices and life becomes interesting again. You know, somebody now asks you, how much is one plus one?

• 33:24Ellen Langer?

  Why you say, gee, I can give them the answer that, you know, I can say two and pass the test. I can say one and be a smart ass. I can, um, you know, say, uh, 10 to show that I have some mathematical, um, knowledge.

• 33:41Rich Roll?

  I think there's a deeper philosophical inquiry here, which is, you know, and this relates to mind-body unity, like the endpoint on some level of mindfulness is to realize the oneness of everything, right? That, that the, that the self and our notion of identity is this illusion and we're all entirely connected. And at its like endpoint. The equation of one plus one isn't even a question that you would ask.

• 34:11Ellen Langer?

  Ask, right.

• 34:12Rich Roll?

  It wouldn't make sense because there is only one.

• 34:14Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, if you say, um, you know, we look at science and you do experiments and then they lead to more experiments and more, you're never going to get the answer, the final answer because things are always changing. Um, or you could just say, if you were religious, God did it. You know, the answer is God and then the game is over. And so there's always some attempt, uh, you know, to find that middle path that gives us an opportunity to think about things.

• 34:44Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 34:44Ellen Langer?

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

• 35:28Ellen Langer?

  And, uh, when we think we need to know, um, we don't look closely and it's not interesting.

• 35:34Rich Roll?

  Sure. Anything is interesting, uh, if you're paying close enough attention to it.

• 35:39Ellen Langer?

  Yeah.

• 35:39Rich Roll?

  Then everything is fascinating.

• 35:40Ellen Langer?

  You can decide, um, wouldn't it be fun to collect, uh, teacups? You know, not particularly interesting to me, but once I start it and I notice these subtle differences and you get into it and, you know, and, uh, it becomes fun. But as soon as you think you've captured whatever, the game is over.

• 36:12Rich Roll?

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

• 36:50Ellen Langer?

  That's interesting. It's in a different way. You come to know more and more about less and less until you realize you know all about nothing.

• 36:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Ellen Langer?

  But then there's the opportunity to learn all of that. But it's this seeking, this final answer, that I think gets people crazy, leads people to be unnecessarily competitive, leads to a world that too many people are unhappy. Right now, I think, how much are people paying for antidepressants and therapy and books like mine to help them? And I don't know. It might sound naive, but it's all easier than people are acting as if it is. You want all these people who are competing, "I've got to make more billions than you've

• 37:42Ellen Langer?

  made and get higher grades and run faster and so on." What is the point of that? And I believe the point of that eventually is so that I'll think well of myself and respect myself, so I'll be happy. And there are easier ways to get to that place, which takes me to something that I mentioned last time. But it's so important to me, Rich. I feel like I have to keep saying it, as if every time I say it, I'm going to influence somebody. I don't know if anybody is ever influenced by this, but that everything we do makes sense, or else we wouldn't do it. And when you recognize that, that gets rid of all of the...

• 38:28Ellen Langer?

  Personal dislike, the way, you know, one of the things that people do is,

• 38:35Ellen Langer?

  some people blame themselves, you know, they take themselves to task because they're not very good at, or they've done something. And then you get a group of people, well-meaning, and say, "No, no, forgive yourself for that." And I think that it's that sort, it's much better to forgive yourself if you're blaming yourself, but it's better still to understand why you did what you did.

• 39:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, with understanding, there's no need for forgiveness.

• 39:05Ellen Langer?

  Exactly, exactly. And so we end up in a different world where we go back to that little song I wrote for my grandkids. You know, "Everybody doesn't know something, everybody knows something else, everybody can do something, everyone can do something else," rather than the presumption that life is a normal distribution. You know, there are some of us all the way over on, you know, the tail end, and most people in the middle, and some on the other end. I don't say which is the better end. You know, some people can do it really well, most can do it moderate, and then you have those who, who are just no good at it. Without

• 39:43Ellen Langer?

  questioning who decided the criteria, and, you know, so lots of people walk around feeling bad about themselves. And that's sad to me.

• 39:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, trying to measure up to some standard.

• 39:59Ellen Langer?

  Without even knowing that the standard was artificial.

• 40:03Rich Roll?

  Poorly calibrated.

• 40:04Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, you know, that when I wrote the On Becoming an Artist book, so I started painting when I was about 50, and great fun. So many things came to my mind then. The first was, what mark could I have put on a page as a young kid where a teacher would lead me to believe I have no creative ability? When you think of Mondrian, you know, versus Rembrandt, I mean, you know, the art that we all appreciate is so different, one painter from the next. And so then I think that I can't do it. Then the art, I don't know if you know this, that the Impressionists that people pay millions of dollars for

• 40:49Ellen Langer?

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

• 41:32Ellen Langer?

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

• 42:17Ellen Langer?

  When I gave a talk when I was young, I walk into this room and the stage is very far back from the audience. And I knew that would make me nervous. You know, too much distance. And so, first thing I did is I'm moving all the furniture, moving all of the chairs, which is also interesting, because I guess I could have left the chairs and just stood closer to people. Right. But I move all the chairs. If you asked anyone, could you, any speaker, "Could you move the chairs?", everyone's going to say yes, but it doesn't occur to us. We take what is as if it's supposed to be that way. Without realizing that what is was somebody's decision. They lived at a different time. They had different biases, different needs.

• 43:01Ellen Langer?

  And also, the more different you are, I believe, from the person who made the decision, the person who wrote the directions, who came up with the instructions, the more important it is for you not to mindlessly blindly follow them.

• 43:19Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, these rules, whoever dictated them, at least with respect to issues related to social order, are generally created and enforced by those who

• 43:32Ellen Langer?

  Prosper from them.

• 43:33Rich Roll?

  Who hold power and have an investment in the status quo.

• 43:36Ellen Langer?

  Right, exactly. And so, you know, with some of these things, it may be fine to leave the rule as it is, but not to feel bad when enacting that rule doesn't put you at the head of the class. You know, so I play tennis. If I designed the game, you'd have three serves. Because the first one, I'd kill it.

• 43:57Rich Roll?

  Because that would favor you.

• 43:59Ellen Langer?

  Right. And the second one, I'd learn from the first, and then I have my follow-up, was third serve, and I wouldn't fault. It's two serves, okay? So if you're going to play with me, we're probably going to play three serves. But if I'm playing, you know, in normal circumstances, it's going to be two serves. And so, if I'm evaluating my tennis ability, I have to recognize that it was, it's determined by somebody who meets that goal more efficiently than I myself do. Not that I can't do this. I can't do it the way it's best for you to do it.

• 44:37Ellen Langer?

  And if you're in charge, so be it. You see what I'm saying? So there are two things there. One is you can change the damn rule, which I do all the time. The older I get, the more I do it. Or I can follow the rule and recognize that it's not going to work as well for me as if I created whatever the rules of the game are.

• 44:59Rich Roll?

  What is the difference in your mind between A rule breaker or somebody who is contrarian versus being open-minded and wide-eyed and curious?

• 45:13Ellen Langer?

  Well, it depends. If the rule breaker is breaking the rules just to be a rule breaker, you know, you're not going to end up with much respect for them. The person who is open-minded, wide-eyed, and whatever else you said, is somebody who, you know, will be following rules when it makes sense to follow them and change the rules subtly or not so subtly when that's to everybody's advantage.

• 45:39Rich Roll?

  And not afraid to question them?

• 45:41Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, yeah. You know, that we have... People don't recognize the difference even between legality and morality. They're very different things. And so, you follow the law, oftentimes because you're afraid of the consequences of breaking the law. But there are times that you don't want to. You know, if the law is, you're not allowed to marry somebody of another race. You're not allowed to be gay. For some people, you know, in the past, when, during prohibition, you can't have a drink, even if, you know. These sorts of things. You see that they don't make a whole lot of sense.

• 46:23Ellen Langer?

  And then, breaking it is whether you're willing to pay the price. You know, I mean, so, I put money in the meter, and now I'm having lunch with you, and it's so exciting. And the meter's going to run out. And I make a choice. You know, do I want to end the meeting with you, go put the quarter in the meter? Or run the risk of getting a ticket? It's not a moral issue.

• 46:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's not a morality judgment on whether you...

• 46:51Ellen Langer?

  Exactly.

• 46:52Rich Roll?

  But there are with plenty of other laws.

• 46:54Ellen Langer?

  Yeah. Although, you know, when I say that, or you say that, my mind always goes to the other place. In some sense, every decision has a moral component. Even a decision, should I have M&M's or... I don't know, a baby Ruth. Do they still make baby Ruths?

• 47:12Rich Roll?

  I think so.

• 47:12Ellen Langer?

  Okay, good. I know they make M and M's. That, you know, that seems to be a decision that has nothing to do with morality. On the other hand, if, if I were a leader in this world and I'm choosing the M and M's, so I'm influencing everybody to choose the M and M's, I'm helping to put the baby Ruth people out of business. That means people will be out of jobs and so on. You can add a moral element or eliminate it from anything you're talking about.

• 47:42Rich Roll?

  Well, this notion of, of being a rule follower is, is ingrained into our educational system.

• 47:48Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, and let me say something. This is important to me because I seem like such a free spirit. I can't tell you that I, you know, basically growing up was very conservative. I mean, the only time I would, the way I would break the rule was to, to get the highest grade, for instance, so that then I could deviate.

• 48:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I ask the question of contrarianism versus open-mindedness because I, I suspect that perhaps you're accused occasionally of being this-

• 48:15Ellen Langer?

  All the time.

• 48:16Rich Roll?

  You're this rule-breaking contrarian when, you know, everything that I, when I experience you, I just think of somebody who's really curious and, and has the audacity to kind of, well, what if we looked at it from a different perspective? Or a what-if, you know, kind of question as opposed to-

• 48:31Ellen Langer?

  No, but I think that very often with my seeming to be breaking rules is because I don't know the rule. So I'm oblivious to the fact that I'm breaking it. Which reminds me of this funny thing as a little kid. It's so interesting, you know, I'm 77 years old. To think about which things I remember from my past and which I'm totally oblivious to is of some interest. But I met this dentist, a little kid. And my mother comes in and the dentist tells my mother what a good patient I was. And all I'm thinking is, what were the other kids doing? You see what I'm saying?

• 49:12Ellen Langer?

  So it wasn't that I was being good because I thought morally that's how you should be, or I was being good because I was too scared not to be. I was being with an oblivious, mindless to alternative ways of being. And lots of the time I'm break seeming to break the rules is because I don't know them.

• 49:36Rich Roll?

  Naivety.

• 49:37Ellen Langer?

  Naivety, stupidity, whatever you want to call it.

• 49:41Rich Roll?

  You talk a lot about this idea of embodied cognition. And it has me thinking about enhanced cognition and different definitions of cognition or intelligence, I guess. And I've been listening to this podcast that's blowing my mind called The Telepathy Tapes. Have you heard of this?

• 50:00Ellen Langer?

  No.

• 50:01Rich Roll?

  It's a docu-series, like, I don't know, eight or nine episodes that are about 45 minutes each, in which this documentary filmmaker spends time with neurodivergent individuals, autistic, non-verbal individuals, and goes on this exploration of their telepathic powers, their ability to communicate with their moms and with each other. And it's one of the most fascinating, mind-blowing things. And like, I'm not a scientist. Is this real? I don't know, but I can't stop listening to it. And just to ask the question, is this possible? Like, is it possible that by some, you know, reason that we can't quite fathom right now

• 50:46Rich Roll?

  that there is a different form of communication? Like, just broad it, like, if you really think about what that means and what that says about the nature of reality itself?

• 50:56Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, no, I think that we only know a very small bit. Of what's possible. And I had this experience, first when I was writing The Mindful Body, I had a chapter in it that I called the woo-woo chapter. The publishers asked me to get rid of a lot of it. But it was really interesting to me. All of these things, everybody's had these strange experiences. And then we're supposed to call them coincidences or whatever, which doesn't really explain anything. But I had one where I had just come back from a trip. And we were discussing, and I say, "Let's go to..." And I couldn't remember the name of the place. But then we both realized I was talking about Kuala Lumpur.

• 51:39Ellen Langer?

  I had never been there, it sounded exotic. And then we said, "Well, we just spent all this money." Which I don't understand I would even say that, since most of these trips are paid for by other people. But then I said, I don't know why, Rich. I said, "Maybe I could get the Harvard Club to pay for it." This was so bizarre. I had absolutely no interaction with any Harvard Club. And I didn't even know what the Harvard Club was, except it was something related to Harvard.

• 52:08Rich Roll?

  Okay. Okay.

• 52:09Ellen Langer?

  Now, the next day, the next day, I get a letter from the Harvard Club of Kuala Lumpur, inviting me to give a lecture. And, you know, how did this happen? Now, I didn't know, was I picking up information out there on the ether? Did I control it, make it happen? I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with very sophisticated statisticians, where we start talking, they walk away from me. And somebody would say, "Well, you probably saw the piece of mail and forgot that you saw it." And I said, "No, because I'm very efficient in certain ways,

• 52:53Ellen Langer?

  and I never open a piece of mail twice. I open it, I do it, and if I can't take care of something out of the time, I don't open it until a later time." So I knew that that wasn't true. How it happened, and to say coincidence? What does that mean?

• 53:10Rich Roll?

  So what do you make of it?

• 53:11Ellen Langer?

  I don't know. I know that the things that we have a very small world that we look at ignoring everything else, and we call everything else noise. And I think probably most of the interesting things that we'll find out in the future are part of that noise. I had this other, this thing, maybe it'll reveal too much about me, but I went to see this psychic. Friends had gone to the psychic. Okay, this is fun. No, why not? And the psychic said to me that my book, this is before the mindfulness book was written, was going to be a great success.

• 53:54Ellen Langer?

  And she also said that beware of somebody who wears three-piece suits, and that I have a crack in the foundation of my house. Oh, and then I have a gas leak, a slow gas leak.

• 54:08Rich Roll?

  That's very specific for a psychic.

• 54:11Ellen Langer?

  Now, in today's world, this was before the internet. You know, today's world, you look me up, you can get maybe even this information. But that was when, a time when that didn't exist. And so I'm thinking about it. And the first thing I do when I get home is I call the gas company to come to check for a gas leak. And they say, why do you think there's a gas leak? I said, never mind. I get off the phone because I'm embarrassed. Okay, so then I go to my house in the Cape. And I'm in the garage, and the cement is cracked. I go out, and there's a construction worker. I bring him in. I say, does that count as a crack in the foundation? He said, yes, yes, my book's gonna be a hit.

• 54:58Rich Roll?

  Gas leak, though?

• 54:59Ellen Langer?

  Well, the gas leak I never found out about because I was too embarrassed. And the person with, you know, the three-piece suit, that's an easy one to explain psychologically. I mean, if you know anybody with a three-piece suit, then you start thinking about them in such a way where, you know.

• 55:18Rich Roll?

  I mean, true or not, I think the greater point is just to appreciate or have humility around the limitations of our senses.

• 55:26Ellen Langer?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 55:27Rich Roll?

  And to understand that, you know, that not only is it possible, that there's other things going on, you know, like, I know you don't like probabilities, but like... The probabilities are that there's quite a bit going on that we're just not, you know, we're not developed enough to notice or fathom.

• 55:44Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, you know, that when you think of how many universes there are

• 55:49Ellen Langer?

  and that how little we know about different galaxies and so on. Perhaps there's life out there, you know, that I become, I remain agnostic with almost all of these things. And knowing that some people would then peg me in a way I wouldn't like to be pegged, you know, rather than open minded, but you know, somewhat weird or whatever. But we just don't know. I pay a lot of attention to the things that I don't know, not in order to learn them, but you know, to remain open.

• 56:21Rich Roll?

  One of your ideas that I think, you know, may fall into the contrarian category

• 56:27Ellen Langer?

  Yeah.

• 56:28Rich Roll?

  has to do with delayed gratification.

• 56:31Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, yeah, all right.

• 56:33Rich Roll?

  So state your thesis on this.

• 56:35Ellen Langer?

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

• 57:21Rich Roll?

  Well, I think there's different contexts for that. And perhaps the premise is a little bit flawed because there's different types of gratification. There's a sort of immediate pleasure gratification and the greater gratification of having like

• 57:33Ellen Langer?

  Sure, sure.

• 57:34Rich Roll?

  delayed, like sort of short term pleasures for meaning and purpose that comes with working towards, you know, difficult goals.

• 57:41Ellen Langer?

  And one can take any idea and break it up into, you know, we can talk about 20 different kinds of mindlessness or whatever. But in general, the idea is that there are certain things that are unpleasant. Right. And so, you know, you should do those things that are unpleasant for some loftier goal or some reinforcement in the future. And what I'm suggesting is that the way we do what we do is more important than the what we're doing. Anything can be done mindlessly or mindfully. And when we do it mindfully, it's exciting and fun.

• 58:21Rich Roll?

  So, in other words, it's about the perspective that you're, that you have about the thing that we're calling difficult or uncomfortable or a delayed gratification act. So, in the context of maybe running a marathon, oh, you're gonna have to do all this training, it's gonna be really hard, you're gonna suffer, but the choice to label it as suffering or to perceive it as hard is a choice.

• 58:47Ellen Langer?

  Exactly, exactly. And also, we said before when we were talking about fatigue, that the way you're going to do this marathon will determine, in part, the enjoyment of it. You know, that if you see yourself, oh, you know, I can't make it, or, you know, I make everything again.

• 59:07Rich Roll?

  But how would you put that into practice without kind of labeling it as Pollyanna? Like, okay, I do want to do this, it is hard.

• 59:15Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, I've been called Pollyanna, but wait, wait, wait, what's wrong with Pollyanna? No, I've been called Pollyanna many times, and what I would do is immediately-

• 59:23Rich Roll?

  Just be positive about this, or why can't you just enjoy what you're doing? Like, I'm trying to, the brass tacks of actually like putting that into practice when the alarm goes off at 4:30 in the morning tomorrow, and your instinct is to groan because you're tired, but Ellen says, like, just, you know, how, like, be grateful and be excited that you get to wake up so early in the morning.

• 59:44Ellen Langer?

  I never say be grateful.

• 59:45Rich Roll?

  Okay, what do you say?

• 59:46Ellen Langer?

  It's probably too early for me to say anything, but nothing is dictating how we feel. Our understanding of events, you know, that if I say, oh my God, I'm gonna miss the plane, you know, then I'm gonna be all nervous and, you know, and jump out of bed and not be happy. Or I can get up and- Look forward to a cup of coffee or something. Um, I, I don't know, it's hard for me to think about 4:30 in the morning. But in general, that any event can be done so that it's tedious or it's enjoyable. So we did this simple little study. We had people doing things that they don't like.

• 1:00:28Ellen Langer?

  So we have women watching football who hate football. People listening to, um, uh, what kind of musical? Classical music who don't like classical music or, um, hard rock. You know, whatever, who don't like hard rock. People looking at paintings who know nothing about art and who care less. Okay, so we have many different. We have people doing things that they don't like. One group just does it. Another group notices one new thing about it. Another group notices three new things about it. Another group notices six new things. The more you notice, the more you like it. That's the way you get into an activity. You know, so if you, if you're thinking of something as tedious,

• 1:01:12Ellen Langer?

  you're, you know, sort of looking at it as this whole, rather than looking at individual parts to it, getting engaged in it. We're brought up to wait for something to excite us, whether it's a person, an activity. And all of that, I think, is wrong. You know, that, um, anything can be made exciting. You know, you, you take a prisoner. Okay, so we have the Birdman of Alcatraz. I'm in California now. And, um, you know, all of a sudden, there are pigeons in that little window that he has in the cell, and he gets into pigeons. This is somebody who you, the last person you would expect would be a bird lover. Um, um, but starting to notice the different things about it

• 1:01:57Ellen Langer?

  and makes friends with the pigeons and all of a sudden, he's a happy camper.

• 1:02:02Rich Roll?

  So mindfulness, paying attention is always the practice.

• 1:02:05Ellen Langer?

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

• 1:02:50Ellen Langer?

  You go to a museum, you have a painting in a museum, if you had that same painting in your friend's house, you know, and in your friend's house, and you don't think they know anything about art, you don't pay any attention to the painting. Now, this painting is in the museum, it must be wonderful, you start to pay attention to it. You go into a gallery, you have a painting that's $500, and you have a painting next, in the next room, that's $50,000. So somebody is telling you, this thing is good, now you engage it.

• 1:03:22Rich Roll?

  But these are all stories. To every experience, we bring a story that we've constructed based upon our past experience that we then use as a predictor of how we're gonna experience some present or future event.

• 1:03:36Ellen Langer?

  But it's not, but, these are all stories, it's, these are all stories.

• 1:03:41Rich Roll?

  These are all stories.

• 1:03:42Ellen Langer?

  It's different because the but, the but sounds like, you know, what is the alternative?

• 1:03:47Rich Roll?

  The reason I use the word but is to underscore the fact that they're fantasies or illusion. All of these stories are untrue.

• 1:03:56Ellen Langer?

  No.

• 1:03:57Rich Roll?

  They're only true to the extent that we have decided that they are.

• 1:04:01Ellen Langer?

  Well, they're neither true nor untrue. I mean, you know, whatever the experience you're having is, can be understood in multiple ways. I can see you now as charming and drawing out of me interesting things to say. I could see you as hostile. I could see you as interested in in me, or only interested in the podcast.

• 1:04:26Rich Roll?

  But there's nothing objectively true about any of that.

• 1:04:29Ellen Langer?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:04:30Rich Roll?

  That's my point, is that it's a story.

• 1:04:31Ellen Langer?

  Yeah. No, so what is the point about it being a story?

• 1:04:34Rich Roll?

  Well, the point is that

• 1:04:36Ellen Langer?

  The but said that there was something wrong with the being a story.

• 1:04:38Rich Roll?

  Well, it's just to illustrate that we use these stories to make sense of the world around us. And when we enter into an experience, we rely upon that story as a sense-making kind of affair that then becomes a predictor of how we're going to experience it.

• 1:04:55Ellen Langer?

  I see.

• 1:04:56Rich Roll?

  And mindfulness is a means to disabuse us of this.

• 1:05:00Ellen Langer?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Rich Roll?

  Because when you're fully present, you're not living in the past. In other words, you're not marinating in a story. And you're not, you know, thinking about what it means to you in the future or what it's going to do for you.

• 1:05:12Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, that's perfect.

• 1:05:13Rich Roll?

  You're just in experience.

• 1:05:14Ellen Langer?

  Right, and you know, that it doesn't have to be a new experience. You can be adding to the experience. But it's not being so sure of how it's going to unfold so that you're actually in the present and creating the story. It's not just that you're experiencing a story. You're making that story. And when you realize that you can add whatever ending you want to it, it becomes a very different kind of living.

• 1:05:58Rich Roll?

  Well, let's talk about relationships.

• 1:05:59Ellen Langer?

  Let's talk about them.

• 1:06:00Rich Roll?

  Because I think stories play a big part.

• 1:06:01Ellen Langer?

  Sure.

• 1:06:02Rich Roll?

  And, you know, how we think about and participate in our various relationships. I know you're hosting a couples retreat in March. So I'm curious, you know, because this is a little bit, this is outside of what was in the Mindful Body book.

• 1:06:15Ellen Langer?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:15Rich Roll?

  How do you think about relationships? What is your kind of thesis on this?

• 1:06:19Ellen Langer?

  Well, there's so much to say, um, you know, that, um, there are some people who believe, you know, we've been together for 20 years, it's, you know, sort of almost boring, or you've been working at a job for 20 years, pick whatever number, um, and it's boring. And, um, so before, uh, Thanksgiving, I say to my students, um, you know, because they're going to go home, and are their parents going to say to them that they're boring because they've known them for 20 years, um, that, or you don't even do that with a favorite plant, you know, and the difference between the marriage or the relationship, um, and the, uh, relationship to a child or a plant is you expect the child

• 1:07:02Ellen Langer?

  to grow. You expect, expect the plant to be changing, and that's what keeps it lively. And, um, so in a relationship, once you think you've captured this other person, they become less and less interesting, and they're changing, and you're changing, and by this, uh, awareness and this, this presence in the relationship, uh, keeps it lively.

• 1:07:29Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:30Ellen Langer?

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

• 1:08:13Ellen Langer?

  And so you have to be careful what you ask yourself, because no matter what you ask yourself, you're going to find, uh, evidence for it. And so if you're looking for the person's faults, you're going to find them. Now, I think that, uh, another aspect of relationships that's probably important...

• 1:08:30Ellen Langer?

  Is recognizing what we talked about in the past and brought it up again here. Behavior makes sense or else the person wouldn't do it. So rather than casting aspersions, if we ask, why is the person doing this thing that's driving us crazy? How is it actually an advantage for them? And then we'd understand them and rather than get ourselves to try to forgive them for whatever it is. So, you know, why is a new relationship exciting? A new relationship is exciting because it's new. But an old relationship should also be new because today is different.

• 1:09:12Ellen Langer?

  Today, you're different people than you were in the past and you have all these potential adventures to explore.

• 1:09:21Rich Roll?

  Long-term relationships, it's curious what you just said. Like, I've been with my wife for 25 years and, you know, it's work to keep it. It's a dynamic living thing and it can only, you know, it can only thrive when you're continuing to nourish it. In long-term relationships, though, there is that thing like, well, this is who we are, you're you and I'm me and this is how we do things. And we, no matter how well we know the person, we're still projecting some notion of who we think they are onto them and vice versa. My wife said to me the other day, she's like, I don't know who you think you're married to in the sense, not in like a, like, whatever's in your mind, like, you know, that's not who I am.

• 1:10:05Rich Roll?

  It's just a construct, right? Not in a, not in like a pejorative sense, just an observation. But then when they divert from that or they do something different or they grow and they evolve because that's what we do, it's like you've changed or like you're, you're not the same person. It's like, of course we're not, right? So it's like we, we don't want it to stay the same and be stale, but then when we grow and evolve, like the tendency is, then what you often see is like resenting that person because they have, they're different than they were when you first met them.

• 1:10:36Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, no, so when, when I first met you, not in reality, but, you know, in our relationship, if we were together, that I love, just love the fact that you're so stable.

• 1:10:50Ellen Langer?

  It gives me an anchor. And then eventually, I can't stand it that you're so boring. It's the same thing, right? I love that you're so spontaneous. At the other end of the relationship, you're so impulsive. I love that you're so trusting of everybody. I can't stand that you're so gullible. And so we take, you know, you're gonna find whatever you want to find. And the idea is to recognize that whatever way you're characterizing it has an equally potent but oppositely balanced alternative. That that negative thing that's driving you crazy was the very same thing that perhaps was exciting.

• 1:11:32Ellen Langer?

  There's something else that happens in relationships, you know, that it's very unlikely, I think, although I don't have data for this, but it seems to be true, that if you're a neat Nick, you know, you really like things neat, that you're gonna be involved with somebody who's an ultra slob. It just doesn't happen, right? So we choose people from the outset that are similar to us in whatever ways that we value. But over time, you know, no two people are going to be the same. So we're not gonna be equally neat. We're not gonna be equally able to deal with money. We're not gonna be, you know, and so the difference starts to become apparent. You know, so I'm with you oblivious to the fact

• 1:12:17Ellen Langer?

  that part of the reason we're together is because we both value a certain kind of order. But you're a little more ordered, so now I decide you're neurotic. Or you decide that I'm sloppy. Making, in other words, the wrong comparison.

• 1:12:32Rich Roll?

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

• 1:13:13Rich Roll?

  Or what is the fear that, uh, that is, that is motivating you giving voice to this otherwise meaningless thing?

• 1:13:20Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, you know, interesting that if, um, so the little argument starts, I might say to you, are you saying I don't love you? Which puts the nade to it right away, because no, you're not saying that. You know, somehow we're into some minutia. And with that, an awareness that, um, the world impinges on us. And sometimes we bring that into the relationship, you know? Um, I think that if we just take a deep breath, we, we need to treat ourselves the same way. You know, to recognize that, um, what we're doing makes sense or else we wouldn't do it. And, uh, you know, I think that we have so many, in the book, remember, I talk about, um,

• 1:14:05Ellen Langer?

  that there's a better than better way. And, um, I think that we need to appeal to that almost all the time. People think they should forgive themselves for their faults. I don't think you should forgive yourself for your faults. I don't think you should say amiss faults. You should understand why you're doing what you're doing, that there's always some sense to it. And then you maintain respect for yourself. And then it's easier when you feel good about yourself to feel good about your partner. Um, I live with somebody who leaves the cabinets open. This at first drove me crazy. You know, of course cabinets deserve to be closed. And then I thought about it, I thought, well, this is ridiculous to get crazy.

• 1:14:48Ellen Langer?

  It takes me three seconds to close the cabinet, you know, rather than let it irritate me. Um, but the alternative is also to say, why is the cabinet open? You know, if you're cooking, you know, and the cabinets, you know where everything is. I open it and close it, you know, um, and, um, then I thought, you know, so I, I mentioned before that I'm an anti procrastinator. I do everything early and I'm involved with somebody, living for many, many years with somebody who waits till the last minute. And I noticed, you know, that there really is no advantage to one way versus the other. You know, I will get the, um, uh, never not get the seat on the plane because I'm, I'm

• 1:15:33Ellen Langer?

  getting the ticket so early, um, but I'm also not getting the best price for them. Um, there are times I'll be doing something early and then the event will be changed. You know, um, maybe not the best examples, but it's interesting because the world says that procrastinator is wrong. This whole thing about procrastination is crazy also. Every time I hear somebody, uh, putting somebody down themselves or somebody else, I stop and say, wait a second, what's going on there? You know, that no matter what you're doing, no matter what it is you're doing, there are all these other things you're not doing. And you can see yourself as procrastinating because you're not doing them, or you can

• 1:16:18Ellen Langer?

  pay attention to what you are doing.

• 1:16:19Rich Roll?

  Adam Grant talks a lot about that.

• 1:16:21Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, Adam was my student.

• 1:16:23Rich Roll?

  Oh, he was? Amazing. Uh, yeah, he's been speaking a lot about the, like, the important, there's a value in procrastin- there's something going on in your unconscious mind that is doing some problem solving for you and you need that. Like the attention away from the problem at hand in order to best solve it. And so there is a productivity aspect to it.

• 1:16:42Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, but there are lots of ways of of understanding it. The one I just said, which is that if you know why you're doing what you're doing, then you don't take yourself to task for not doing these other things.

• 1:16:54Rich Roll?

  As long as it's not an excuse to keep doing the thing that is not serving. I mean, there's a reason why the alcoholic drinks. It's serving a need, right? And it doesn't mean that you don't redress the problem, but you also need to address the underlying need that is driving the errant's behavior.

• 1:17:12Ellen Langer?

  Well, yes, but if you do that with respect, then you have the strength to make the change. So in in a one book I had asked people, so you're anxious and you do X, and that relieves your anxiety. Is it a good thing to do X? Yes, everybody would say. But then when you put in, you know, what you're doing is having that drink, or that third drink, then all of a sudden it seems bad. And so then you take yourself to task for it, but you shouldn't because it serves the purpose that you needed. Then with that strength, you now can look and say, is there some other way I can meet that need

• 1:17:56Ellen Langer?

  without having the, you know, the negative effects of the first chosen alternative?

• 1:18:02Rich Roll?

  So in the context of you being an anti procrastinator and needing to get to the airport three hours early, on some level, I suppose there's a stress reduction aspect to that. Like there's some, yeah, like I I need to get there early because I don't want to freak out or have to deal with long lines or or be stressed out about not, you know, getting through security on time, right?

• 1:18:24Ellen Langer?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:24Rich Roll?

  Uh, but to the extent that your way of travel is at odds with your partner, then then and it's creating relationship problems, then is there a different way for you to mitigate your stress so that you don't have to be there three hours early?

• 1:18:41Ellen Langer?

  I think that if we each Describe why we're doing what we're doing. So it made sense to the other person. And it's not that I'm doing this. My doing this is not because I want to irritate you, which is the way in relationships we often think of these things. Um, I think that the problem tends to go away. But my mind is consumed now with a story just to make clear how crazy I am with respect to this antichrist nation. Um, I, many years ago, you, um, if you were going to Canada, you needed to have just a driver's license. I don't remember when this was. So I'm going to give a talk in Toronto. Um, I get to the airport and they say, no, you need a passport.

• 1:19:26Ellen Langer?

  Nobody told me I used to be able to go just for the driver's. I had enough time to go home, get my passport.

• 1:19:33Rich Roll?

  But this is ammunition for your argument.

• 1:19:35Ellen Langer?

  Exactly, you know.

• 1:19:36Rich Roll?

  This is why you're right.

• 1:19:38Ellen Langer?

  Well, no, you know, I'm right for me.

• 1:19:40Rich Roll?

  Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?

• 1:19:41Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, no, oh, no. Sadly, people think that that's the choice. Um, yeah, you know, the alternative is I could go to the airport early and you come, it's good for you.

• 1:19:53Rich Roll?

  But these, this is a story. Okay, remember that time when I, you know, I got there early and I had to go back and I, you know, get my passport and I was able to do it. And this is why I'm correct. And this is why it's a good idea to always be early, right? It can be weaponized in a relationship.

• 1:20:07Ellen Langer?

  Exactly, and, and that's a mistake. Again, it comes back to people believing there's only a single right answer, um, a single way of doing things. And we're taught that in, with respect to everything. You're in school, you're asked a question, you're expected to give one answer. Um, uh, and life would be so different if in fact you were asked for three reasons for this, five reasons, and why these reasons are good, why they're bad, you know, and so on, rather than now we understand it.

• 1:20:39Rich Roll?

  It goes all the way back full circle to our attachment to certainty.

• 1:20:44Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. Um, or it can't be exactly, almost exactly.

• 1:20:50Rich Roll?

  In some cases.

• 1:20:52Ellen Langer?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Rich Roll?

  So. When you do these couples retreats and people show up and air out their malfunctions and resentments, etc., like, what is the counsel? Like, how do you?

• 1:21:03Ellen Langer?

  Well, we don't count there.

• 1:21:04Rich Roll?

  Is that how it works?

• 1:21:05Ellen Langer?

  Yeah. Well, this is gonna be the first, so I can't tell you how it has worked. But it's a matter of giving people a very different way of appreciating each other and activities that, you know, we get to the point where almost everything we do is for show. And the older you get, I think that changes. Where finally you realize, none of this stuff matters. And if you can do that earlier in a relationship, the relationship is going to unfold and be more fun. Let me give you an example. This is not an example that we'll use, but not so different from it. Did I tell you last time about what I tell my students about shoes? Okay.

• 1:21:50Rich Roll?

  I can't remember. Maybe.

• 1:21:52Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, well, I can't remember.

• 1:21:53Rich Roll?

  We talked about this. Like, I don't, I never remember.

• 1:21:55Ellen Langer?

  Okay, that's fine.

• 1:21:56Rich Roll?

  Indulge me.

• 1:21:57Ellen Langer?

  But I tell them, you know, so the classmates Tuesday and Thursday. And on Tuesday, I tell them they can't come to class on Thursday unless they're wearing two different shoes. Now, this is very hard for a lot of people. So, some are just not gonna come, very few. Most of them wear two different shoes where the shoes look almost exactly the same. You know, the two black shoes. Then you have the people who, you know, really get into it, and they're wearing a red shoe and a black shoe or whatever, where it's very clear. The point of it is, once they get there, nobody noticed, and if they notice, nobody cares. Yet, we're so hung up with it. And so, this wonderful thing happened.

• 1:22:39Ellen Langer?

  This, one of my students comes in, "Professor Lang, you won't believe what happened." I said, "Watch." I'm in the elevator. This man looks at my shoes, looks at my face, looks at my shoes, looks at my face, points to my shoes and says, "Is that intentional? Do you know what I did? No. What did you do?" She says, "I looked at his shoes. I looked at his face. I looked at his shoes. I looked at his face. I pointed to his shoes and said, 'Was that ...'" And because everybody knows in some sense that you can't be sure. The problem people have is that they think other people do know. So you know you don't know. They're pretending that they do know, and that makes all of us uncomfortable. Who decided we should wear the same shoes? You know, socks more important than shoes.

• 1:23:22Ellen Langer?

  Because shoes, you can make an argument that if the heels are not exactly the same, maybe it's unsafe or whatever. But, you know, most people's washing machines are built to eat the socks. I don't know. You put, you know, five pair in and somehow you come out with three, um, three pairs on the other end.

• 1:23:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:41Ellen Langer?

  Um, and, you know, but if you wanted to wear two different socks, most people would be afraid to.

• 1:23:51Rich Roll?

  There's something, you know, sort of socially transgressive about it for no reason whatsoever.

• 1:23:55Ellen Langer?

  Exactly, but who decided?

• 1:23:56Rich Roll?

  Right, who decided? And on top, I think you did share this, but the other point, maybe this is what we kind of flushed out previously, is, is it disabuses you of this notion that, that everyone is thinking about you and judging.

• 1:24:08Ellen Langer?

  Exactly.

• 1:24:09Rich Roll?

  Like, you're, you're glaringly wearing two different shoes. And for the most part, no one even notices. Nobody cares. Maybe the guy in the elevator, you know, will say something. But for the most part, we're, we believe that, uh,

• 1:24:21Ellen Langer?

  And we control our behavior and keep ourselves.

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  And they're not, they're thinking about themselves.

• 1:24:25Ellen Langer?

  Exactly, exactly. In fact, so many different stories come to mind. I was doing therapy when I was at Yale, uh, just briefly. And it was wonderful for me because I realized how everybody is so worried about what everybody else thinks, that I never worried again. Because I'm not worried about what you're thinking of me, because I know you're worried about what I'm thinking of you. But, you know, so we're doing this research on mindful contagion. And we, we're using, uh, these monks are helping us. And so I'm in conversation with the head monk, whatever he's called. And what we need are these monks to be dressed like undergraduates.

• 1:25:05Ellen Langer?

  Because we want to see if their mindfulness will have the effect without people knowing that they're monks, right? And he said he doesn't know if they'll be willing to give up their robes.

• 1:25:19Ellen Langer?

  And I thought, oh my goodness, this is sad. You know, that even people who are supposed to be reasonably evolved are trapped in... By their own attachments. Yeah, yeah. And so, part of the, you know, at the retreat was, it would be to free these going to be wealthy people. And, you know, can these wealthy women, for example, who spend a lot of time on their clothes, allow themselves to wear something that is inexpensive, that doesn't look particularly good? You know, there's a lot of news now about how social media is bad for people. And there is a way.

• 1:26:03Ellen Langer?

  And the data are such that undergraduates, for instance, who spend a lot of time on social media, end up with lower self-esteem. But it's not social media. It's never the technology. It's always the way we're using the technology. And so I say to these people, why, you're Harvard students, for goodness sakes. You know, you've got such a head up over most other people. Why only post the picture where you look wonderful? You know, why not change the norm? And you wouldn't believe how bad I looked last night. You know, you wouldn't believe how I spent the night worrying about this or that, rather than just your successes.

• 1:26:48Ellen Langer?

  Or for people to realize that the successes that people are posting are in fact unusual for them, or else they wouldn't post them. Yeah. You know, it's a funny thing with reinforcement that people think, you know, say you're playing tennis or whatever your sport is, and, you know, so I hit a fabulous serve. And then you say, wow! You know, crowds, it's never true, but the crowds are roaring for me. And then I screw up the next shot. And the assumption people mistakenly make, it was because of the praise. That now I'm too self-conscious. But what happens is you get the praise for the unusual event.

• 1:27:32Ellen Langer?

  If every time I serve that way, people would not be applauding. Well, I would not be applauding myself, right? It's because it's better than usual. And so there's always a regression to the mean. If I do something extraordinary, the next time it's going to be less extraordinary, without anybody saying anything. And if it's not less extraordinary, then that becomes the new mean. You know, so there'll be something even better that will move towards that, towards that spot. And so, people could assume that the posts that people are making are in fact unusual.

• 1:28:16Ellen Langer?

  In which case, you know, you'd already feel better. Do you see that?

• 1:28:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. I guess when I think of, I think when I think of social media, you know, there's something uniquely pernicious about it in the sense that, A, to your example or experiment about wearing two different shoes to show that like people aren't really thinking about you. When you post on social media, you're opening up yourself to all manner of crazy opinions. And people are very quick to judge and say mean things. And if you're sensitive, or you're already somebody who spends too much time, you know, kind of captured by what other people think of you, this is not going to be good for your mental health. Because you're going to be, no matter what you post, you're going to be on the receiving end of all kinds of stuff.

• 1:29:05Rich Roll?

  And, and these platforms, you know, by dint of their algorithms and business models, amplify content that is intended to outrage and divide. And those voices tend to be ones that are very certain, right? They're locked into an ideology and they're, and they want to tell you why they're right and you're wrong. And it's pitting people against each other and dividing us apart and creating a tremendous amount of loneliness and unhappiness.

• 1:29:34Ellen Langer?

  Sure. If you're afraid of that, then you're not going to post. I'm talking about the person who's looking at other people's posts. And feeling

• 1:29:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:29:44Ellen Langer?

  Feeling bad by comparison.

• 1:29:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:46Ellen Langer?

  Um, and, you know, if they were aware that that other person wouldn't post it if it were the norm for them, uh, they would appreciate it, appreciate it differently.

• 1:29:57Rich Roll?

  But they're still in St. Bart's and you're not, you know, there's always that.

• 1:30:01Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, it's interesting because

• 1:30:03Rich Roll?

  Or you're missing out.

• 1:30:05Ellen Langer?

  No, no, I understand.

• 1:30:05Rich Roll?

  You see your friends doing things, you weren't invited.

• 1:30:07Ellen Langer?

  For sure, for sure. But that raises the issue of, um, if you're making the moment matter, you can't do more than that. And it doesn't matter if you're in St. Bart's or, um, you're in Malibu, uh, doing a podcast. If it's good, it's good. And so, uh, you don't need to envy anybody else. Um, it doesn't, you know, I was on this, um, panel, uh, in Australia, a lot of heavy lifters, and we each give our talks and they bring us out. And the, um, the person in charge, I knew this was happening, it was going to happen, asked everybody about their bucket list. So I'm the last one there. So the first

• 1:30:51Ellen Langer?

  one goes on, and now comes to me, and so I've had some time to think about it. And I'm thinking, what's the matter with me? I don't have a bucket list. But of course, knowing who I am and how I'm going to be, I'm gonna say, that's a good thing. So how is it a good thing? That if you're doing, if you're enjoying what you're doing, you don't need to be doing something else. And then I thought, you know, if you only had one question to ask people to see how mindful they are, I hadn't tested this, but it might be about work. How much do you need a vacation? Needing a vacation means that you're working mindlessly. Um, enjoying a vacation is, is a different story. And so again, um, a bucket

• 1:31:33Ellen Langer?

  list suggests, you know, I'm not so happy now, I just wish I could be doing these other things. And so if I'm a happy camper, um, and I'm looking at other people in all other parts of the world, that's great. I, I don't have that same feeling, um, you know, the

• 1:31:51Rich Roll?

  Well, need is the real pivot here, right?

• 1:31:54Ellen Langer?

  Yes.

• 1:31:54Rich Roll?

  Because it's fine to have things on a list that you aspire to experience. It's the idea that you need to have those experiences in order to feel like a, like a fully, you know, develop human or whatever, or, or you can't be happy until.

• 1:32:09Ellen Langer?

  Right, right. And so it goes back to the point of why do we need all of these awards, money, and, you know, so on.

• 1:32:19Rich Roll?

  Because we want to, we all want to, we want love and approval.

• 1:32:22Ellen Langer?

  Exactly.

• 1:32:23Rich Roll?

  You know, and, and we want some sense of immortality, I guess, that we attach to that.

• 1:32:26Ellen Langer?

  Oh, that's interesting. I don't know about the immortality part, but the love and approval from others mainly so that we'll feel it about ourselves. And then I go back again to, if you know why you're doing what you're doing, you'll feel fine about yourself. If you do it mindlessly, then you're potentially vulnerable to other people's understanding of why you're doing what you're doing, you know, so that you go to the airport early, that's because you're neurotic, you know, and maybe so, but that's not the reason we do what we do.

• 1:33:07Ellen Langer?

  And, you know, and I think that people have taught us sort of accept your shortcomings. And again, I think this is a big mistake. Certainly better to accept your shortcomings than to, you know, regret your shortcomings, but better than better is to understand how they're not shortcomings. We call them long goings, you know, they're, they're not deficits.

• 1:33:31Rich Roll?

  Well, you can't change anything until you first accept it, but acceptance is like the first piece.

• 1:33:37Ellen Langer?

  But no, but accepting still sounds like, you know, here's this negative.

• 1:33:41Rich Roll?

  There's a guilt or a shame.

• 1:33:42Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, there's something negative about it that I'm going to just accept rather than, well, this is actually a good thing. Now, how is this thing that seems bad to everybody actually good?

• 1:33:55Ellen Langer?

  And, you know, it depends on what the thing is. But certainly with all of the behavior descriptions that we've talked about, you know, you're impulsive, you hate yourself for being impulsive. That's because you value being spontaneous. You're inconsistent. What's the matter with you? You're so inconsistent. That's because you value being flexible and so on. And to get to the point where you let other people tell you why you did what you did and ignore the other alternative. It's very sad to me, but that's the way most of us are. And then we have some people who pretend to know.

• 1:34:34Rich Roll?

  Then how do you think about the role of suffering in growth and evolution? So first, let me just set it up with an example.

• 1:34:41Ellen Langer?

  Okay.

• 1:34:43Rich Roll?

  No, I'm super curious because this is personal. So I'm in recovery. I've been in recovery for a long time. And when you're talking about like acceptance, I think of, you know, I think of alcoholism. I think of it in that context. And it brings me right back to the, you know, the hitting bottom and making that decision. Okay, I can't live this way anymore. I need to find a new way to live. And I'll fully admit a tremendous amount of guilt and shame, you know, accompanying that and a lot of suffering. And I could have made the choice in that moment to be excited. Oh, my God, I'm finally accepting that I'm an alcoholic. And this gives me this incredible opportunity to like grow and change my life. How exciting. That was not my experience.

• 1:35:28Rich Roll?

  But I will say that the suffering, you know, the pain of that experience created a willingness that didn't exist prior that motivated a series of actions that changed my life. And so I look at suffering as positive. I don't think of it as a negative attribute. It was something that motivated and instilled energy in me to like make this change.

• 1:35:52Ellen Langer?

  Yeah. Okay, so I said succinctly, no pain, no gain. And I don't agree with that. I think if you're in pain, surely it's to your advantage to find a way to gain from it. But one can gain without the pain.

• 1:36:12Rich Roll?

  Why is it so much more difficult to gain without the pain? So, for example, you can't stop eating cake. You know it's not good for you. You take pleasure in it, but now you have type 2 diabetes. And so, once you get ill enough, or your body feels poorly enough, maybe you're motivated to make a change and invest in your well-being. But the choice remains well in advance of that. When you took that first piece of cake to say, "I'm not gonna do that anymore. It's not good for me." It's just more difficult to make that choice at that stage.

• 1:36:47Ellen Langer?

  I think that by saying that you shouldn't do it, makes it more appealing to do it. Then you think less of yourself for having done it, which makes it even harder to change the behavior. I think that, again, what you're doing makes sense, or else you wouldn't do it. And let yourself have a stupid piece of cake. But if you have the cake and you think you shouldn't have the cake, now you're a type of person who's not strong enough to resist the cake, which makes you want the cake even more and thinking less of yourself. And so, it's like, you know, New Year's resolutions. Or we're not so far from everybody's making these resolutions. People make the resolutions and then almost never do you follow up with it.

• 1:37:32Ellen Langer?

  And the reason for that is the thing that you're doing makes sense to you. You know that, "Oh, I should go to the gym." Why should you go to the gym? Who decided you should go to the gym? You know, so somebody gives you this idea that this is the only way you're going to be healthy. You really don't wanna go to the gym. You sabotage yourself and you don't go to the gym. And I think that you should question the commitment in the first place. You know, you wanna be healthy? There are lots of ways to be healthy. You know, that years ago, when I was your age, what people should be doing is having cottage cheese and carrots and celery.

• 1:38:17Ellen Langer?

  And if you go on this kind of diet, it's not gonna last. You know, and so deprive yourself, you know, that... So, for me, if... Why should I admit this, but I do? You know, if I have a big plate and you give me a... You know, it's full, I'm gonna eat everything that's on it. If you give me a small plate, I'm gonna eat everything that's on it and I'm gonna be just as satisfied. You know, that it's, um, by not depriving myself, I find that I, I just eat less. But again, who says you should or shouldn't have this or that? You know, if you pay attention to the science, it keeps changing.

• 1:39:00Ellen Langer?

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

• 1:39:44Ellen Langer?

  I mean, is your life gonna change so terribly if you have a piece of cake? No. What happens though, is that because you thought you shouldn't have the piece of cake, now, you know, uh, your so-called willpower, which doesn't exist either, you know, is diminished and, um, you know, you, you go on a diet, you break the diet, then you do the kitchen sink, you eat everything.

• 1:40:07Rich Roll?

  Well, I think there's a couple pieces there. I mean, there is a neurochemical thing when you indulge in a certain habit and then you become sort of, uh, you know, more powerless to its wiles in the future. And then there's the mental piece, which is like, well, you know, I already broke it, so, you know, who gives a fuck? And like, you know, here you go, like, down the thing. And then there's the emotional piece, which is, I'm a piece of shit. I can't do anything right. And you go down the shame spiral, which reinforces the, the

• 1:40:37Ellen Langer?

  And then you have to have the cake.

• 1:40:38Rich Roll?

  And then you have to have it to feel better, right? Like, this is the nature of addiction. And there's a lot of science on how mindfulness can help us with these patterns and loops, because the more we're paying attention, the less, you know, we're in this context, like, uh, prone to overeating or indulging, et cetera. Mindfulness is a Means to which you can break a bad habit and form a new one, I suppose. But you're saying like, well, let's just go up to 10,000 feet and say, who cares?

• 1:41:12Ellen Langer?

  Right?

• 1:41:12Rich Roll?

  Like, you're asking the bigger question about like, why is it that it is important to you to break this habit or form a new one in the first place?

• 1:41:19Ellen Langer?

  Well, the forming the new one, I take issue with it. Back then, working on that in a new book. Habits are, so a good habit is better than a bad habit. But there's a better than better way. You know, as soon as you're doing something habitually, you're not there anymore. You're not taking charge of it. You're not enjoying it. You're not modulating whether it should be a little more, less of, you know, whatever. And, you know, people want to have good habits because they're afraid to let themselves just be. You know, that if I don't go to the gym every day, then I'm not going to go to the gym at all. Why? You know, that, you know, if you have multiple reasons for doing things, and if you go

• 1:42:04Ellen Langer?

  to the gym, why should you go to the gym if it's aversive? I don't get it. You know, but it shouldn't be aversive. You make it fun while you're there, unless you have a tiny person who believes unless it's aversive, I'm not gaining anything from it. That's back to your no pain, no gain. I don't know. I think that we just make things very complicated for ourselves. And, you know, then you get older and it all becomes easier again. All the things you worried about seem so silly. You know, I wrote this thing a while ago. You're two years old and you fall and you scrape your leg and you're screaming bloody murders that the world's gonna end.

• 1:42:49Ellen Langer?

  You're seven years old, Johnny or Janie doesn't send you a valentine, and oh my God, the world's gonna end. You're, you know, 13, you have a pimple, oh my God, I'm never gonna look good. You're 18, you know, and it just goes on. At some point, you look back on all of it, how stupid it all was. And the culture allows it in some sense, almost promotes it. I'm not sure why. But at the end of it, there's always somebody who's profiting.

• 1:43:19Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, yeah, you look back on it and say how silly. But at the same time, the fact that you like didn't get that Valentine when you were in seventh grade or whatever, you know, creates some neural pathway in your brain that, you know, 30 years later, you're still acting out on as a result because it's some form of trauma that remained unhealed.

• 1:43:41Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, you know, but to recognize that other people's responses to us are a function of their needs. They say nothing about us.

• 1:43:54Ellen Langer?

  Every compliment you give me is not really about me. It's more about you.

• 1:44:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:01Ellen Langer?

  Every insult.

• 1:44:02Rich Roll?

  My need for you to like me.

• 1:44:03Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, every insult and so on. And if we were brought up to understand those things, even a seven-year-old can understand them if they're spoken in kiddies, then Johnny doesn't give you the Valentine, yeah, so Johnny didn't give you a Valentine. It doesn't have to, you know, you go from that, you didn't get the Valentine, therefore, nobody likes you, therefore, your life is going to be a failure. It's silly, right? I mean, how do we communicate these things to the children? Somebody says, how many Valentines did you get, Mary? And you got more than Suzie, so therefore, you're a better person.

• 1:44:42Ellen Langer?

  Whereas Suzie would say, yeah, but I've got the Valentines from the most important people.

• 1:44:47Rich Roll?

  That's all, it's all crazy.

• 1:44:48Ellen Langer?

  It's crazy, yeah.

• 1:44:49Rich Roll?

  It's all crazy.

• 1:44:49Ellen Langer?

  You know, I talked to you about how that pancreas story, you know, that I still can't, this was a story where I'm not going to eat the pancreas, but I feel I have to eat it because now I'm a married woman at this very young age. And I still can't figure out why I thought that. You know, that there's so many things that are communicated to us. You know, if you're sophisticated, these are all the things that you'll do. And we go back and people, I don't know, it's become my new mantra, who says so? You know, and when you recognize the three levels that I talked about,

• 1:45:32Ellen Langer?

  you know, where level one and three look the same, but they're very different.

• 1:45:36Rich Roll?

  Level one, two, three thinking, maybe explain that.

• 1:45:39Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, well, you know, the easiest example, I keep using The New Yorker. It's a wonderful magazine, and this example doesn't shine, but so be it. Level one, we have people who don't read The New Yorker. Level two, people who read The New Yorker. Level three, people who don't read The New Yorker anymore. Level one and three look the same, but they're very different people. You could have them read it again, but that makes the story too complicated. You know, you have, a young kid is uninhibited. The rest of the world is inhibited. And then you get to a certain point where you say, who gives a damn? You know, and you become disinhibited. But when they accuse the older person of being like a child, they're not. They're very different. The child doesn't know the rule.

• 1:46:24Ellen Langer?

  The older person knows the rule and thinks it's silly. You know, and I remember, you know, again, this is so silly. But if I had gotten spilled something on my shirt, you know, I'd be walking around like this, you know, so nobody would see it, without realizing how ridiculous this itself looks. As if every moment is, this is going to describe who we are for a lifetime, that people won't realize, yes, you could have dirt on yourself. One minute doesn't mean that's the way you wear your clothes. You're wearing two different shoes doesn't mean you don't know that there'll be a different response to wearing the same shoe.

• 1:47:09Ellen Langer?

  Oh, everybody worrying so about what other people think. And everybody knows they themselves don't know. And the joke is thinking that other people do know. And so you're always guessing that what's the right thing to do. And I'm here to inform people, nobody knows. And nobody can know, because everything is changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives. And it's okay not to know, because there are other things you do know.

• 1:47:42Ellen Langer?

  And so if we stop evaluating, you know, here are the great people, here are the miserable people, and you're always trying to make sure you're more on the top than on the bottom. I think, you know, that we need to take this vertical line and make it horizontal. And it almost happened briefly during COVID, when the person who was delivering the toilet paper was all of a sudden more important than the architect, you know, and so it just didn't last.

• 1:48:13Rich Roll?

  This level one, two, three thinking, you know, naivete to certainty and back to like kind of awe and wonder, right?

• 1:48:21Ellen Langer?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:48:22Rich Roll?

  And it's earned through life experience, et cetera. You finally arrive at this point where, you know, you can call it like the, you know, I don't care anymore phase, but it's really like, it's more a function of like, I know who I am, I know who my friends are, I know what I care about, I, you know, I invest my energy in the things that are important to me and everything else really doesn't matter.

• 1:48:44Ellen Langer?

  But it's also, no, that's perfect, Rich, but it's also knowing that all of those things change, that, yeah, you know, my person, my friend felt this way then, but the day before felt this other way.

• 1:48:54Rich Roll?

  Because you've lived enough to see the ups and the downs and how everything kind of...

• 1:48:57Ellen Langer?

  And to see that it doesn't matter.

• 1:48:58Rich Roll?

  Right, the pendulum's always swinging.

• 1:49:00Ellen Langer?

  Which I'm trying to do, so when I lecture to these kids, you know, these undergraduates, there's no reason for them to have to wait for this wisdom.

• 1:49:09Rich Roll?

  This is the question I was getting at, like, how do you expedite, you know, getting from two to three with a young person who doesn't have that life experience, who's still trying to figure out who they are, what they stand for, and what's important to them, and are easily captured by the opinions of other people and influenced by that, and it creates this insecurity where you really do think the stain on your shirt is important, et cetera.

• 1:49:32Ellen Langer?

  Well, I think that if people were aware of multiple ways of understanding any situation, they were aware of how any outcome that's bad is also good in some other context, that everything becomes more fluid, the kind of growth we're talking about would happen naturally. You know, that if you, I don't know... So somebody asks you to do something and you say yes because you're afraid of not doing it, right? Then you get a little older and you've had experiences where you're freed from that and you can say no nicely. But if you ask yourself in the original context, what are the advantages of doing it? What are the disadvantages of doing it?

• 1:50:17Ellen Langer?

  When would it matter? When would it not matter? Why should it matter? Why should it? You know, just make this thing that's made so simple broader in its potential meaning is very freeing. And when I know that if I do it, if I think if I do it, good things will happen. If I don't do it, bad things. If on the other hand, I think here are the good things that could happen from my not doing it, good things that could happen from my doing it, then doing it, not doing it just becomes simpler.

• 1:50:47Rich Roll?

  I'm curious around how this is received by your students because on some level, if you're at Harvard and end up in your class, it's a self-selecting population to the extent that you get to Harvard by being very good at following rules. You learn how to take the SAT test, you know how to get good grades, you know how to study and, you know, perform on tests. And that's, that's about like high performance in a very narrow kind of construct that is all about like rule following.

• 1:51:15Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, I have very often won the best teacher award, so there's something that they appreciate. You know, I don't know. And sometimes, you know, you tell people things and you think they're understanding what you're telling them. Years ago, I'm in Manhattan, I'm walking down the street and this woman comes running up to me. She's so excited because I had apparently given her therapy at an earlier time. It's very important to me because I asked her, what did I tell her that was so important to her? And she told me, and I know there was no way that I actually said those words, you know, so that, again, it goes back to the way we're talking about relationships, you know?

• 1:51:59Ellen Langer?

  People can understand what's being said in so many different ways. I think the, well...

• 1:52:07Ellen Langer?

  I think that they get from this that a little bit of being an iconoclast and just questioning what they hadn't questioned before. Because it happens over and over again, you know, with whatever we're talking about. But here's, here are the five other ways we might look at that. And so some of that must rub off.

• 1:52:28Rich Roll?

  What are your thoughts on, on romantic love? Because we talked about long-term relationships, but your students are, they're at the beginning stages of trying to be in relationships. Like in that, in that same story around, you know, having a story, projecting an idea onto another individual and, you know, kind of embarking on a relationship when you're both just trying to impress each other and you're in that kind of honeymoon period.

• 1:52:55Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, and they ask when there are problems and then it's always coming up with another way of, of looking at the, you know, at the issue. I think that people come to see who they are from other people, right? The way I am in your eyes tells me who I am. And so then I become very vulnerable. And at the beginning, you, you want to really care about me or leave me to believe you really care about me, so that makes me feel good about myself and so on. Part of that is what is exciting. I'm not sure, you know, I feel like there's something behind your question that I'm not seeing.

• 1:53:34Rich Roll?

  I guess I'm just curious, you know, because you're with young people all the time, if you had a perspective on, on kind of dating and relationships in those early stages that, that might be iconoclastic or a different lens on what you usually hear about, you know, about how to navigate these.

• 1:53:52Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, the, the assumption is every belief I have is, is counter to whatever the world believes. It's not a bad guess, but I remember my stepson was in college, so he's like 43 now. So it was a few decades ago. And I saw that the kids were doing, were very different from when I was in college, that they did everything as a group. Which was very nice, not pairing off. And I don't know what the case is for the students today. You know, so when I was young, if you didn't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you felt very bad about it and so on. And I don't know if that's still the case.

• 1:54:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think it's changed significantly.

• 1:54:39Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, I'm sure it has. I think the problem is that when I'm with these students, I'm doing all the talking. So you're leading me to believe I should do more listening, but if they're not talking about their relationships, I'm not going to know the ins and outs of it. I don't think the problem's changed very much, you know, sadly, from when you're 15, 20, 30, you know. At some point, hopefully by the time you're 50, most of it has come together and you realize that a lot of the things you worried about were not worth worrying about.

• 1:55:20Ellen Langer?

  Much of a relationship is, all of a relationship really is in your head, right? You know, I don't really know what your smiles mean, whether they're meant to fool me, to impress me, or you're just really pleased. You know, so many understandings of any behavior that you're really in control of the relationship in ways you're not aware of. And a simple thing, I talked about this forever ago. You know, let's say you're at a party and there's somebody there who's ignoring you. You feel ignored.

• 1:56:02Ellen Langer?

  You could feel that the person is a snob looking down on you, in which case you might feel bad about yourself, dislike them, and so on. You might assume the person is shy. The shy person and snob are going to behave pretty much the same way, a level one and three in some sense. If you assume that they're shy, then you might go over and befriend them. And then even if they were a snob, they may now become a friend of yours. So the ways we understand people, we create our own relationships, more than people assume. They assume it's two separate people come together and then they either hit it off or they don't.

• 1:56:46Ellen Langer?

  And I think that two people come together and you either make it work by the different thoughts that you have or not, based on whatever your individual needs are.

• 1:56:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I wonder whether our tethering to our devices, especially with the younger generation, is impacting that ability to read social cues in, you know, complex contexts, right? Like, if you've spent most of your formative years engaging with people through a device and text, are you as, you know, kind of skilled at like reading those cues that you're getting in person from people that are subtle?

• 1:57:28Ellen Langer?

  But it might be that whether you are as good or not, you don't believe you're as good, which then makes you pay more attention.

• 1:57:38Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:57:39Ellen Langer?

  You know, because if I think I'm so good at reading you, I need very little information and then I'm off on my own thoughts and Rich is this kind of person and so on. Again, I think that it depends less on what we're doing than the way we're doing it. And if we do it mindfully, you know, there's a lot of information to, you know, looking at your phone, there's nothing about the phone that's an advantage or a disadvantage. I know that people are accused of being on their phone too much by people who want them to pay more attention to them. And I have this hypothesis, maybe you can test this eventually, which is, let me go

• 1:58:24Ellen Langer?

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

• 1:59:08Ellen Langer?

  You know, that if you're great fun, I'm going to rather speak to, I don't want to be on my phone right now, because I'm having fun with you. But if it wasn't fun, you know, I'll play words with friends.

• 1:59:22Rich Roll?

  Or to chastise a child and say, you need to be off your phone. And it's, you, you, and then, well, what am I going to do now? Well, you need to be bored right now.

• 1:59:30Ellen Langer?

  Exactly, exactly. You know, so the idea is not to tell kids to get off their phones, but for parents to up their games. Same thing in relationships. One person is spending too much time doing whatever they're doing. The alternative, you know, it's not to yell at them, you know, look, you're ignoring me, setting code, but rather to make it more interesting to be with you.

• 1:59:54Rich Roll?

  You said that meaning is extrinsic. In other words, like, imagine the person who says, I'm trying to find meaning in my life, or I'm on the search for meaning, or I don't know what my purpose is. Okay, but this is like a common thing, like they feel, they put that pressure on themselves, that guilt, and that, why don't I know what my purpose is?

• 2:00:15Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, you know, the meaning of life, it's the hokey pokey. Isn't it, that's what it's all about.

• 2:00:20Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 2:00:22Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, you know, not, not everybody asks those questions. And so if you look at who's asking them and who's not asking them, the not askers probably are level one and level three. You know, level one, where it wouldn't occur to them to even know that there's supposed to be some meaning. And level three, where the meaning is whatever you're deriving from the interaction. You know, there's no larger meaning.

• 2:00:52Rich Roll?

  What is the counsel to the person who says, you know, I would like my life to have purpose. I don't feel purposeful, I don't know, you know, I don't feel like there's meaning in what I'm doing.

• 2:01:02Ellen Langer?

  So bring it to a much smaller level and just actively notice. You know, that's so for those people who are women who are watching a football, and by noticing new things end up liking the football game, it doesn't matter whether they're noticing the rear ends of the football players, the crowd size, as long as you're actively noticing that makes you engage. And when you're engaged, you're not asking those questions that are all suggestive of you not being involved. Getting involved is not something, people, too many people are led to believe, you know, some, I have a calling for this, you know, and so they're waiting to be called, rather

• 2:01:46Ellen Langer?

  than, you can engage anything, like the Birdman of Alcatraz, use that example. You notice new things about something, you become engaged, that becomes a passion, that becomes the reason you're doing what you're doing. And I don't think if you're actively engaged in one thing, that it's any less important than an act of engagement in anything else. So remarkably, what I'm saying, to give you something to disagree with, that if you're mindfully cleaning toilets, it's as meaningful as if you're deriving some new theory of relativity.

• 2:02:29Ellen Langer?

  The only advantage to the theory of relativity is that it doesn't have a presumed, false, but presumed end to how many things we can notice about it and how grand we can make the theory. The toilet, you know, you're led to believe now it's clean, that's the end. But it can always be cleaner change, there's always more to do or not.

• 2:02:56Rich Roll?

  But in either case, the meaning is a product of

• 2:02:59Ellen Langer?

  Of noticing.

• 2:03:00Rich Roll?

  Of noticing, but also taking action, right? Like you, like the idea that you're gonna, you're waiting around until you get struck with some epiphany about like what your purpose is, it doesn't work that way. Like the purpose is revealed in the

• 2:03:13Ellen Langer?

  In the doing.

• 2:03:13Rich Roll?

  In the doing and the exploration and the trying of things.

• 2:03:16Ellen Langer?

  Right, exactly.

• 2:03:18Rich Roll?

  What is your most controversial

• 2:03:20Ellen Langer?

  Believe?

• 2:03:21Rich Roll?

  Take on things? Yeah. Or the one that people give you grief about?

• 2:03:26Ellen Langer?

  I don't know if I scare them away so they don't get me grief, or they give me grief and I'm oblivious to it. I don't experience a lot of grief giving.

• 2:03:37Ellen Langer?

  I don't know, it depends on the audience, you know, that if I'm speaking to medical people, the idea that we can control these chronic illnesses probably doesn't sit well with a lot of them.

• 2:03:53Ellen Langer?

  I don't know, Rich.

• 2:03:54Rich Roll?

  You don't know?

• 2:03:54Ellen Langer?

  I think my manner in stating all of these outrageous ideas is so soft that it's easy for people to accept.

• 2:04:02Rich Roll?

  Well, you're very endearing.

• 2:04:03Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, thank you. You know, but most of the time, I find myself, I'm not selling.

• 2:04:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:04:08Ellen Langer?

  You know, I'm sharing. And so it is leads me to behave differently and probably for the information to be received differently. You know, if I'm saying, this is, you know, this is the fact, then it's going to get you crazed and showing me how it's not the case. Whereas I'm saying, one way of looking at it might be

• 2:04:29Rich Roll?

  There's a perspective.

• 2:04:30Ellen Langer?

  But I'm sure that there are people who think I'm

• 2:04:32Rich Roll?

  It might be possible.

• 2:04:33Ellen Langer?

  I mean, we know there are people who think I'm outrageous. I'm sure there are people who think that I'm totally wrong. I remember Way back when, I mean, this is, what, forty years ago, maybe more, I was speaking to some people about the first nursing home study that we did. You know, and this was the beginning of mind-body medicine in some sense, where we take people in nursing home, we give them choices to make, a plan to take care of, encouragement to be making these choices. And then we go back and find out that the group given these choices, which eventually became mindfulness, live longer.

• 2:05:14Ellen Langer?

  And I was speaking as Nobel Prize winner who just dismissed it. You know, I mean, it wasn't nice. You know, it would have been a nice conversation if he told me why it can't be true. But, you know, then more and more people in the culture believe it to be true.

• 2:05:32Rich Roll?

  Or if he said, "I disagree, but tell me more."

• 2:05:34Ellen Langer?

  Some, anything, you know, rather than just dismiss. But that, that was the only time I remember, you know, having that experience. I'm sure there are people who disagree in the same way he did, but they don't, they're not face to face. And now, I'm older and I care less about some of these things. And, you know, it's fine, we'll see. We'll see, if you believe that your thoughts don't matter, and, you know, this negativity is the rule rather than the exception for you, somebody out there can evaluate our lives down the road and make some judgment.

• 2:06:17Ellen Langer?

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

• 2:07:01Ellen Langer?

  they would sit there for two hours and then they'd leave complaining about what an awful movie it was. And to me, either find a way to enjoy it or leave. Life is short.

• 2:07:13Rich Roll?

  This like implied contract that you have to stay at the end.

• 2:07:16Ellen Langer?

  Yeah. Or, you know, there's a funny line. It was Henny Youngman, um, goes into this restaurant and he says, "The food was awful and the portion's so small." You know, and it's supposed to be funny because if the food is awful, why would you want a lot of it? But I understood that. Yeah, give me a lot. Doesn't matter how good. So I could imagine, you know, staying. I think that people are led to believe by criticizing that they're discerning. And, um, you know, that I, I don't think people appreciate, um, how hard it is in some sense to make things sound simple. Um, you know, we have a level one and level three again. And so it seems,

• 2:07:57Ellen Langer?

  my goodness, how, um, silly she is with these views.

• 2:08:04Rich Roll?

  Either you believe that your thoughts have an impact on your well-being and your behavior and the world around you, or you don't. And if you do, what are the implications of that?

• 2:08:15Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, the implications are that you don't have to be miserable. Uh, the implications are that whatever exists can, uh, be improved. And whatever has happened can be understood in multiple ways where the other individual is just saddled with, this is a terrible thing. You know, there are people who believe, I'm sure you're not one of them, but that, you know, stress is all around. It's a normal thing, you have to be stressed. Work has to be hard. There are terrible things out there.

• 2:08:50Rich Roll?

  Like it's a dimension of the universe or something?

• 2:08:52Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, yeah. I think it's terrible that people are taught to accept stress. The baseline should be being at ease. Then when you're disat ease or diseased, you notice it very early on, you know, and take care of it. I mean, it's, we just don't pay attention, you know? It's sort of, um, somebody might gain a pound, three pounds, and they don't notice it because they're oblivious to everything. And you don't notice it until you've gained 10 pounds or, you know, uh, need a larger size. It's much harder to lose the 10 pounds than the one or two pounds. And, uh, we do that with, with most things.

• 2:09:37Ellen Langer?

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

• 2:10:13Rich Roll?

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

• 2:10:50Ellen Langer?

  Sure.

• 2:10:50Rich Roll?

  If a room full of stressed out people, you know, like it's going to impact you if you're there. You're going to feel that stress. And what is that doing to you when it wasn't even you that, you know, kind of created the stress in the first place?

• 2:11:02Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, no, I think negativity spreads as quickly as positivity. And when people talk, you know, people have to understand things are not positive, things are not negative. Things are things. And our understanding of them creates our experience.

• 2:11:20Rich Roll?

  You don't understand. You don't understand how bad it is and how hard my life is. And have you been watching the news, Ellen? You know, you need to be concerned and like, what are you doing about this?

• 2:11:30Ellen Langer?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:30Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's sort of our pervasive kind of like.

• 2:11:33Ellen Langer?

  No, for sure, for sure. You know, I live with somebody like that. And I'd say, look, this is crazy that either go do something or stop thinking, you know, think about something else. That the chicken little, the world is, you know, is going to explode. Everything is awful.

• 2:11:54Ellen Langer?

  There's no evidence for that.

• 2:11:56Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of agitation at the moment. There's a lot of people celebrating. There's a lot of people very upset. There's a lot of polarization, division, acrimony, fear, uncertainty, right? Like, what is going to happen?

• 2:12:11Ellen Langer?

  Yeah, but I think a lot of that stemmed from the naive realism that I talked about before. There's one view. And so if I have this view and you believe other, you must be wrong. Rather than recognizing and asking the other side how they come to the views that they have. To see that, you know, it's reasonable. It's hard to imagine now with some of these alternative views as having some sense behind them. I mean, you take an anti-vaxxer.

• 2:12:43Ellen Langer?

  Okay, well, you know, uh, my God, how can you not get a vaccine? It's so simple. You get the stupid injection and then you're safe, you know, whatever. And so you conceive of this person as less than, uh, on so many dimensions. And we just ask them why they believe that. And you know, there was a time, I have another friend who, we agree on everything, almost, except, you know, when she said that she wasn't going to get, uh, the, um, vaccine, the COVID shot. Um, and it was because, uh, what was the, uh, uh, polio, yes. Um, and there were people who were given the polio vaccine who actually got polio.

• 2:13:28Ellen Langer?

  And you could imagine, of course, that's going to be the case, you know? And so for that reason, she doesn't want the vaccine. Now, at no time do you know whether this vaccine is going to give you the disease or protect you from the disease. And you can't be sure. Um, but it's not irrational to, to, um...

• 2:13:48Rich Roll?

  Right. It affirms this point that like, you know, everyone's making a decision for, for their own reason.

• 2:13:54Ellen Langer?

  Right, exactly.

• 2:13:55Rich Roll?

  And we're better to investigate understanding than to, you know, judge and dismiss.

• 2:14:00Ellen Langer?

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

• 2:14:45Rich Roll?

  No, I don't, I want you to speak your truth. I'm not trying to push you towards like...

• 2:14:48Ellen Langer?

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

• 2:15:32Ellen Langer?

  You know, rather than rec-- I have a dearest person to me who, if given Dexedrine, puts her to sleep.

• 2:15:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:15:43Ellen Langer?

  Wow. You know, but you see this up close and you say, "Wait a second, you just can't be sure." And that, and when you're not sure, then you pay a different kind of attention. And which we should all be doing with any medication, anything we're doing, to see what is our, our individual response to it. That doesn't mean we have to, you know, argue against everything that the world is offering, but I don't think we should just be mindlessly accepting it.

• 2:16:14Rich Roll?

  I think that's a good place to end it.

• 2:16:17Ellen Langer?

  You thought, huh? So I said it.

• 2:16:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Is there anything else? What did we leave on the table? Any, any like burning desire to share anything else before we wrap it up here?

• 2:16:26Ellen Langer?

  Well, there's always more. Remember, I told you, the more I talk, the more I want to continue.

• 2:16:31Rich Roll?

  I know, and I told you, let's leave the audience wanting more.

• 2:16:34Ellen Langer?

  All right. But then I'll come back.

• 2:16:36Rich Roll?

  Will you come back?

• 2:16:37Ellen Langer?

  Of course.

• 2:16:38Rich Roll?

  Great. That was wonderful. I adore you. I appreciate you coming today. That was really fun to talk to you. And you have this couples retreat coming up in March, March 13?

• 2:16:48Ellen Langer?

  In Mexico.

• 2:16:49Rich Roll?

  In Mexico? Where can people learn about that?

• 2:16:51Ellen Langer?

  Um, just contact me.

• 2:16:54Rich Roll?

  On your website?

• 2:16:55Ellen Langer?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:56Rich Roll?

  Okay. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot.

• 2:16:59Ellen Langer?

  Also, I have a new, I have a children's book that's gonna come out.

• 2:17:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, you do?

• 2:17:01Ellen Langer?

  But I'll come back and we'll talk about that.

• 2:17:02Rich Roll?

  All right. What's that called?

• 2:17:04Ellen Langer?

  The name keeps changing. The current name might be Where's Happy?

• 2:17:09Rich Roll?

  Is this inspired by the song, the lyrics to the song?

• 2:17:12Ellen Langer?

  That's in it. It's in it. And the, the message is, this is my key to happiness. And I end every class with a slideshow of the paintings, the one-liners, that ends with glado. It's all about glado.

• 2:17:29Rich Roll?

  What is glado?

• 2:17:30Ellen Langer?

  Okay. Be generous, loving, authentic, direct, and open.

• 2:17:37Ellen Langer?

  Each of these comes about by our being mindful. Each of these leads to our being mindful. Each leads to the other. And that's the way to be happy. Be generous, loving, authentic, direct, and open. So the new book is a children's version of this.

• 2:17:54Rich Roll?

  Glado.

• 2:17:55Ellen Langer?

  Glado. Easy to remember.

• 2:17:57Rich Roll?

  We'll come back and talk to me some more about that.

• 2:17:59Ellen Langer?

  I'd be happy to.

• 2:18:00Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:18:12Rich Roll?

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

• 2:18:57Rich Roll?

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

• 2:19:41Rich Roll?

  Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Tractor Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.