I’m gamer, so I like to have goals. I like special missions secret objectives. So here’s my special mission for this talk: I’m to try to increase the life span of every single person in this room by seven and half minutes. Literally, you will live seven and a half minutes longer than would have otherwise, just because you watched this talk.
Some you are looking a little bit skeptical. That’s okay, because check it — I have math to prove that it is possible. It won’t make much sense now. I’ll explain all later, just pay attention to the number at the bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. That be my gift to you if I’m successful in my mission.
Now, you have a mission too. Your mission is to figure out how you want spend your extra seven and a half minutes. And think you should do something unusual with them, because these bonus minutes. You weren’t going to have them anyway.
Now, I’m a game designer, you might be thinking to yourself, know what she wants us to do with those minutes, she wants us to spend playing games. Now this is a totally reasonable assumption, given that I have made quite a of encouraging people to spend more time playing games. example, in my first TED Talk, I did propose that we should spend 21 billion hours a week, a planet, playing video games.
Now, 21 billion hours, it’s a lot of time. It’s much time, in fact, that the number one unsolicited comment I have heard from people all over the world since gave that talk, is this: Jane, games are great and all, but your deathbed, are you really going to wish you more time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea is so — that games are a waste of time that will come to regret — that I hear it literally everywhere I go. example, true story: Just a few weeks ago, this cab driver, finding out that a friend and I were in town for a game developers’ conference, turned around and — and I quote — “I hate games. Waste of life. Imagine getting to the end of your and regretting all that time.”
Now, I want to take this seriously. I want games to be a force for good in the world. I don’t gamers to regret the time they spent playing, time that I them to spend. So I have been thinking about this question lot lately. When we’re on our deathbeds, will we regret the time spent playing games?
Now, this may surprise you, but it turns out there is actually scientific research on this question. It’s true. Hospice workers, the people who take of us at the end of our lives, recently issued a report on the frequently expressed regrets that people say when they are literally on their deathbeds. And that’s what I to share with you today — the top five regrets the dying.
Number one: I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. two: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Number three: I I had let myself be happier. Number four: I I’d had the courage to express my true self. And number five: wish I’d lived a life true to my dreams, instead what others expected of me.
Now, as far as I know, no one ever told one of the workers, “I wish I’d spent more time playing video games,” but when I these top five regrets of the dying, I can’t but hear five deep human cravings that games actually help fulfill.
For example, I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. many people, this means, I wish I’d spent more time my family, with my kids when they were growing up. Well, we know that games together has tremendous family benefits. A recent study from Brigham University School of Family Life reported that parents who spend more time video games with their kids have much stronger real-life with them.
“I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.” Hundreds of millions of people social games like FarmVille or Words With Friends to stay in contact with real-life friends and family. A recent study from the University Michigan showed that these games are incredibly powerful relationship-management tools. They help us connected with people in our social network that we would grow distant from, if we weren’t playing games together.
“I I’d let myself be happier.” Well, here I can’t help think of the groundbreaking clinical trials recently conducted at East Carolina University showed that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical and depression. Just 30 minutes of online game play a day was enough create dramatic boosts in mood and long-term increases in happiness.
“I I’d had the courage to express my true self.” Well, avatars are a to express our true selves, our most heroic, idealized of who we might become. You can see that this alter ego portrait by Robbie Cooper of a with his avatar. And Stanford University has been doing for five years now to document how playing a game with an idealized avatar changes how we think act in real life, making us more courageous, more ambitious, more committed to goals.
“I wish I’d led a life true to my dreams, and not what others expected me.” Are games doing this yet? I’m not sure, so I’ve left a Super Mario mark. We’re going to come back to this one.
But in the meantime, perhaps you’re wondering, who is this designer to be talking to us about deathbed regrets? And it’s true, I’ve never worked in hospice, I’ve never been on my deathbed. But recently I did three months in bed, wanting to die. Really wanting die.
Now let me tell you that story. It two years ago, when I hit my head and got concussion. The concussion didn’t heal properly, and after 30 days, was left with symptoms like nonstop headaches, nausea, vertigo, loss, mental fog. My doctor told me that in order to heal brain, I had to rest it. So I had to avoid that triggered my symptoms. For me that meant no reading, no writing, no video games, no or email, no running, no alcohol, no caffeine. In other words — and I think you where this is going — no reason to live.
(Laughter)
Of it’s meant to be funny, but in all seriousness, suicidal ideation is quite common with brain injuries. It happens to one in three, and it happened me. My brain started telling me, “Jane, you want die.” It said, “You’re never going to get better.” It said, “The will never end.”
And these voices became so persistent so persuasive that I started to legitimately fear for life, which is the time that I said to myself after 34 days — and I will forget this moment — I said, “I am either going to kill myself or I’m going to this into a game.”
Now, why a game? I from researching the psychology of games for more than a that when we play a game — and this is in the scientific — we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re more likely to out to others for help. I wanted to bring these gamer to my real-life challenge, so I created a role-playing recovery called Jane the Concussion Slayer.
Now this became my secret identity, and the first thing I did as a slayer was call my twin sister — I an identical twin sister named Kelly — and tell her, “I’m playing a game to heal my brain, and want you to play with me.” This was an way to ask for help.
She became my first ally the game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together we identified and battled the bad guys. Now was anything that could trigger my symptoms and therefore down the healing process, things like bright lights and crowded spaces. We also and activated power-ups. This was anything I could do on even my day to feel just a little bit good, just little bit productive. Things like cuddling my dog for 10 minutes, or getting out of bed and walking around block just once.
Now the game was that simple: Adopt a secret identity, your allies, battle the bad guys, activate the power-ups. even with a game so simple, within just a couple days of to play, that fog of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. It felt like a miracle. Now wasn’t a miracle cure for the headaches or the cognitive symptoms. That for more than a year, and it was the year of my life by far. But even when I still the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, I suffering.
Now what happened next with the game surprised me. I put up some blog and videos online, explaining how to play. But not has a concussion, obviously, not everyone wants to be “the slayer,” I renamed the game SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing people all over the world who were adopting their own identity, recruiting their own allies, and they were getting “super better,” facing challenges like cancer chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. Even people were playing for terminal diagnoses like ALS. And I could tell their messages and their videos that the game was them in the same ways that it helped me. They talked feeling stronger and braver. They talked about feeling better by their friends and family. And they even talked feeling happier, even though they were in pain, even though they were tackling the toughest challenge of lives.
Now at the time, I’m thinking to myself, what is going here? I mean, how could a game so trivial intervene powerfully in such serious, and in some cases life-and-death, circumstances? I mean, if hadn’t worked for me, there’s no way I would have believed it possible. Well, it turns out there’s some science here, too. Some people get stronger and after a traumatic event. And that’s what was happening to us.
The game was helping us experience what call post-traumatic growth, which is not something we usually hear about. We usually hear about post-traumatic disorder. But scientists now know that a traumatic event doesn’t us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can use it a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead happier lives.
Here are the top five that people with post-traumatic growth say: “My priorities have changed.” “I’m not afraid do what makes me happy.” “I feel closer to friends and family.” “I understand myself better. I know who I am now.” “I have a new sense of meaning and purpose in life.” “I’m better able to focus on my goals dreams.”
Now, does this sound familiar? It should, because the top traits of post-traumatic growth are essentially the direct opposite of top five regrets of the dying. Now this is interesting, right? It that somehow, a traumatic event can unlock our ability lead a life with fewer regrets.
But how does work? How do you get from trauma to growth? Or yet, is there a way to get all the of post-traumatic growth without the trauma, without having to hit your in the first place? That would be good, right?
I wanted to understand the phenomenon better, I devoured the scientific literature, and here’s what I learned. There four kinds of strength, or resilience, that contribute to post-traumatic growth, and there are scientifically validated activities that you do every day to build up these four kinds of resilience, and you don’t a trauma to do it.
I could tell you what these four types strength are, but I’d rather you experience them firsthand. I’d rather all start building them up together right now. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll play a game together. This is where you earn the seven and a half minutes of bonus that I promised you earlier. All you have to do successfully complete the first four SuperBetter quests. And I feel like you can do it. I have confidence you.
So, everybody ready? This is your first quest. Here go. Pick one: Stand up and take three steps, or make your hands into fists, raise them over head as high as you can for five seconds, go! All right, I the people doing both. You are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That worth +1 physical resilience, which means that your body can withstand stress and heal itself faster. We know from the research that the number thing you can do to boost your physical resilience is to not sit still. That’s it takes. Every single second that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the health your heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody ready your next quest? I want you to snap your fingers 50 times, or count backwards from 100 by seven, this: 100, 93… Go!
(Snapping)
Don’t give up.
(Snapping)
Don’t let people counting down from 100 interfere with your counting 50.
(Snapping)
(Laughter)
Nice. Wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that. physical resilience. Well done, everyone. Now that’s worth +1 mental resilience, which means have more mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. We from the scientific research that willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets stronger the more exercise it. So tackling a tiny challenge without giving up, even as absurd as snapping your fingers exactly 50 times or backwards from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically validated way to boost your willpower.
So job. Quest number three. Pick one: Because of the room, fate’s really determined for you, but here are the two options. If you’re inside, find window and look out of it. If you’re outside, find a and look in. Or do a quick YouTube or Google search for “baby [your favorite animal.]”
Do it on your phones, or just shout out baby animals, and I’ll put them on the screen. So, what do we to see? Sloth, giraffe, elephant, snake. Okay, let’s see what we got. Baby dolphin baby llamas. Everybody look. Got that? Okay, one more. elephant.
(Audience) Oh!
We’re clapping for that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, we’re just feeling there is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or love, which feel looking at baby animals, when you need them most.
Here’s a secret from the literature for you. If you can manage to experience positive emotions for every one negative emotion over the of an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle problem you’re facing. And this is called the three-to-one emotion ratio. It’s my favorite SuperBetter trick, so keep up.
All right, pick one, last quest: Shake someone’s hand six seconds, or send someone a quick thank you text, email, Facebook or Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, good. Nice, nice. Keep it up. I love it! All right, everybody, that +1 social resilience, which means you actually get more from your friends, your neighbors, your family, your community. Now, a way to boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch is better.
Here’s one more secret for you: Shaking someone’s hand for six dramatically raises the level of oxytocin in your bloodstream, that’s the trust hormone. That means that all of you who just shook hands biochemically primed to like and want to help each other. This will linger during break, so take advantage of the networking opportunities.
(Laughter)
Well, you successfully completed your four quests, let’s see if I’ve successfully my mission to give you seven and a half minutes of bonus life. Now I get to share more little bit of science with you. It turns out that people who boost these four types of resilience — physical, mental, emotional and social — 10 years longer than everyone else. So this is true. If you are regularly achieving three-to-one positive emotion ratio, if you are never sitting still more than an hour at a time, if you are out to one person you care about every single day, if you tackling tiny goals to boost your willpower, you will 10 years longer than everyone else, and here’s where that math showed you earlier comes in.
So, the average life in the U.S. and the U.K. is 78.1 years, we know from more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies that you add 10 years of life by boosting your four types of resilience. So every single that you are boosting your four types of resilience, you’re actually earning .128 more years life or 46 more days of life, or 67,298 more minutes of life, means every single day, you are earning 184 minutes life, or every single hour that you are boosting four types of resilience, like we just did together, you earning 7.68245837 more minutes of life.
Congratulations, those seven a half minutes are all yours. You totally earned them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. You have your special mission, your secret mission. How are you going spend these minutes of bonus life?
Well, here’s my suggestion. seven and a half bonus minutes are kind of genie’s wishes. You can use your first wish to wish a million more wishes. Pretty clever, right? So, if you these seven and a half minutes today doing something that makes you happy, or gets you physically active, or puts you in touch with someone you care about, or even tackling a tiny challenge, you’re going to boost your resilience, so you’re going earn more minutes.
And the good news is, you keep going like that. Every hour of the day, every day your life, all the way to your deathbed, which will now 10 years later than it would have otherwise. And when you get there, more than likely, will not have any of those top five regrets, because you will have built up the strength resilience to lead a life truer to your dreams. And with 10 years, you might even have enough time to play few more games.
Thank you.
(Applause)