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