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