I’m a gamer, so I to have 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 and a half minutes. Literally, you will live and a half minutes longer than you would have otherwise, because you watched this talk.
Some of you are a little bit skeptical. That’s okay, because check it — I have math to prove that it is possible. 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 out how you want to spend your extra seven and a minutes. And I 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 to spend them playing games. Now this is a reasonable assumption, given that I have made quite a of encouraging people to spend more time playing games. For example, in first TED Talk, I did propose that we should spend 21 hours a week, as a planet, playing video games.
Now, 21 billion hours, it’s lot of time. It’s so much time, in fact, the number one unsolicited comment that I have heard people all over the world since I gave that talk, is this: Jane, games great and all, but on your deathbed, are you really to wish you spent more time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea is so pervasive — games are a waste of time that we will come to regret — that I hear it literally I go. For example, true story: Just a few weeks ago, this cab driver, upon finding that a friend and I were in town for a game developers’ conference, turned and said — and I quote — “I hate games. of life. Imagine getting to the end of your life regretting all that time.”
Now, I want to take this problem seriously. I want to be a 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 have been thinking about this question a lot lately. When we’re our deathbeds, will we regret the time we spent playing games?
Now, this surprise you, but it turns out there is actually scientific research on this question. It’s true. Hospice workers, the people who take care of us at end of our lives, recently issued a report on the most frequently regrets that people say 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: wish I hadn’t worked so hard. Number two: I wish I stayed in touch with my friends. Number three: I wish I had let myself be happier. four: I wish I’d had the courage to express true self. And number five: I wish I’d lived life true to my dreams, instead of what others of me.
Now, as far as I know, no one ever told one of hospice workers, “I wish I’d spent more time playing games,” but when I hear these top five regrets of the dying, I can’t but hear five deep human cravings that games actually us fulfill.
For example, I wish I hadn’t worked hard. For many people, this means, I wish I’d spent more with my family, with my kids when they were growing up. Well, we know playing games together has tremendous family benefits. A recent study from Brigham Young School of Family Life reported that parents who spend more time playing video games with their have much stronger real-life relationships with them.
“I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.” Hundreds millions of people use social games like FarmVille or Words With Friends to stay daily contact with real-life friends and family. A recent study from the University of showed that these games are incredibly powerful relationship-management tools. help us stay connected with people in our social that we would otherwise grow distant from, if we weren’t playing games together.
“I wish I’d myself be happier.” Well, here I can’t help but think of the clinical trials recently conducted at East Carolina University that that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes of online game a day was 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, avatars are way to express our true selves, our most heroic, idealized of who we might become. You can see that in alter ego portrait by Robbie Cooper of a gamer with his avatar. And Stanford University has been research for five years now to document how playing a game with an idealized avatar changes how we 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.” games doing this yet? I’m not sure, so I’ve a Super Mario question mark. We’re going to come back to this one.
But in meantime, perhaps you’re wondering, who is this game designer to be talking to about deathbed regrets? And it’s true, I’ve never worked in a hospice, I’ve been on my deathbed. But recently I did spend months in bed, wanting to die. Really wanting to die.
Now me tell 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, was left with symptoms like nonstop headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss, fog. My doctor told me that in order to my brain, I had to rest it. So I had to everything that triggered my symptoms. For me that meant reading, no writing, no video games, no work or email, no running, alcohol, no caffeine. In other words — and I think you see where this is — no reason to live.
(Laughter)
Of course it’s meant to be funny, in all seriousness, suicidal ideation is quite common with traumatic brain injuries. It happens to one in three, it happened to me. My brain started telling 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 that I started to legitimately for my life, which is the time that I said to 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 the psychology of games for more than a decade that we play a game — and this is in scientific literature — we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, we’re more likely to reach out to others for help. I to bring these gamer traits to my real-life challenge, so created a role-playing recovery game called Jane the Concussion Slayer.
Now became my new secret identity, and the first thing I did as a slayer was my 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 way to ask for help.
She became my first in the game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together we and battled the bad guys. Now this was anything could trigger my symptoms and therefore slow down the healing process, like bright lights and crowded spaces. We also collected and power-ups. This was anything I could do on even my worst day to feel a little bit good, just a little bit productive. Things cuddling my dog for 10 minutes, or getting out of bed walking around the block just once.
Now the game that simple: Adopt a secret identity, recruit your allies, the bad guys, activate the power-ups. But even with a game simple, within just a couple days of starting to play, that fog of depression and went away. It just vanished. It felt like a miracle. Now wasn’t a miracle cure for the headaches or the cognitive symptoms. That lasted for more a year, and it was the hardest year of my life by far. But when I still had the symptoms, even while I still in pain, I stopped suffering.
Now what happened next with the game surprised me. I up some blog posts and videos online, explaining how to play. not everybody has a concussion, obviously, not everyone wants to be “the slayer,” so I renamed the SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing from people all over the world were adopting their own secret identity, recruiting their own allies, and they were getting “super better,” facing 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 talked about feeling stronger and braver. They about feeling better understood by their friends and family. And they even talked about feeling happier, even though were in pain, even though they were tackling the toughest challenge of their lives.
Now 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, it 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 stronger and happier after a traumatic event. And that’s what was happening to us.
The game helping us experience what scientists call post-traumatic growth, which is not something we usually about. We usually hear about post-traumatic stress 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 five things that people with post-traumatic growth say: “My have changed.” “I’m not afraid to do what makes 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 my goals and dreams.”
Now, does this sound familiar? should, because the top five traits of post-traumatic growth are essentially the opposite of the top five regrets of the dying. this is interesting, right? It seems that somehow, a traumatic event can unlock ability to lead a life with fewer regrets.
But how does it work? How do get from trauma to growth? Or better yet, is there a to get all the benefits of post-traumatic growth without the trauma, without having 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 I learned. There are four kinds of strength, or resilience, that contribute to post-traumatic growth, and there are validated activities that you can do every day to build these four kinds of resilience, and you don’t need trauma to do it.
I could tell you what these four of strength are, but I’d rather you experience them firsthand. I’d rather all start building them up together right now. Here’s we’re going to do. We’ll play a quick game together. This is where earn the seven and a half minutes of bonus life that I promised you earlier. All you to do is successfully complete the first four SuperBetter quests. I feel like you can do it. I have confidence 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 as you can for five seconds, go! All right, like the people doing both. You are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That is worth +1 physical resilience, which means your body can withstand more stress and heal itself faster. We from the research that the number one thing you can do to your physical resilience is to not sit still. That’s all it takes. Every single second you are not sitting still, you are actively improving health of your heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody ready for next quest? I want you to snap your fingers exactly 50 times, count backwards from 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 first time I’ve ever seen that. Bonus physical resilience. 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 willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets stronger the you exercise it. So tackling a tiny challenge without up, even one as absurd as snapping your fingers 50 times or counting backwards from 100 by seven is a scientifically validated way to boost your willpower.
So good job. Quest three. Pick one: Because of the room, fate’s really determined this you, but here are the two options. If you’re inside, a window and look out of it. If you’re outside, a window and look in. Or do a quick YouTube 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. that? Okay, one more. Baby elephant.
(Audience) Oh!
We’re for that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, what we’re just feeling is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you have the ability to powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or love, which we feel looking at animals, when you need them most.
Here’s a secret the scientific literature for you. If you can manage experience three positive emotions for every one negative emotion over course of an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. this is called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s my favorite SuperBetter trick, so keep up.
All right, pick one, last quest: Shake someone’s for six seconds, or send someone a quick thank by 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 strength your friends, your neighbors, your family, your community. Now, a great way boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch is even better.
Here’s more secret for you: Shaking someone’s hand for six seconds dramatically raises 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 and want help 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 I’ve successfully completed my mission to give you seven and half minutes of bonus life. Now I get to share one more bit of science with you. It turns out that people who regularly boost four types of resilience — physical, mental, emotional and social — live 10 years than everyone else. So this is true. If you are regularly achieving the three-to-one positive emotion ratio, if are never sitting still for more than an hour at a time, you are reaching out to one person you care about every single day, if you are tiny goals to boost your willpower, you will live 10 years than everyone else, and here’s where that math I showed you earlier comes in.
So, the average 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 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 of life or 46 more days of life, 67,298 more minutes of life, which means every single day, you are 184 minutes of life, or every single hour that you are boosting four types of resilience, like we just did together, are earning 7.68245837 more minutes of life.
Congratulations, those and a half minutes are all yours. You totally 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. 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 seven and a half minutes today doing something that makes you happy, or that gets you active, or puts you in touch with someone you care about, or even just tackling a challenge, you’re going to boost your resilience, so you’re going earn more minutes.
And the 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 those top five regrets, because you will have built up the strength and resilience to lead a life to your dreams. And with 10 extra years, you might even enough time to play a few more games.
Thank you.
(Applause)