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