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