I’m gamer, so I like to have goals. I like special missions secret objectives. So here’s my special mission for this talk: I’m to try to increase the life span of every single person in this room by seven and a 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 looking a bit skeptical. That’s okay, because check it out — I have math prove that it is possible. It won’t make much now. I’ll explain it all later, just pay attention the number at the bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. That will be gift to you if I’m successful in my mission.
Now, you a secret mission too. Your mission is to figure out how want to spend your extra seven and a half minutes. And think you 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 know she wants us to do with those minutes, she wants us spend them playing games. Now 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 Talk, I did propose 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 so much time, in fact, that number one unsolicited comment that I have heard from all over the world since I gave that talk, this: Jane, games are great and all, but on your deathbed, you really going to wish you spent more time playing Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea is so pervasive — that games are waste of time that we will come to regret — that I hear it literally everywhere go. For example, true story: Just a few weeks ago, this cab driver, finding out that a friend and I were in town a game developers’ conference, turned around and said — and I — “I hate games. Waste of life. Imagine getting to the end of your and regretting all that time.”
Now, I want to take this 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 I encouraged them to spend. So I have been thinking about this question lot lately. When we’re on our deathbeds, will we regret the time we spent playing games?
Now, may surprise you, but it turns out there is some scientific research on this question. It’s true. Hospice workers, the people who take of us at the end of our lives, recently issued report on the 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 five regrets of the dying.
Number one: I wish I hadn’t worked hard. Number two: I wish I had stayed in touch my friends. Number three: I wish I had let myself be happier. four: I wish I’d had the courage to express my true self. And number five: wish I’d lived a life true to my dreams, 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 regrets of the dying, I can’t help but hear five deep human cravings that games actually help fulfill.
For example, I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. many people, this means, I wish I’d spent more with my family, with my kids when they were growing up. Well, we that playing games together has tremendous family benefits. A study from Brigham Young University School of Family Life reported that parents who more time playing video games with their kids have much stronger real-life with them.
“I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.” Hundreds millions of people use social games like FarmVille or With Friends to stay in daily contact with real-life friends and family. recent study from the University of Michigan 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 together.
“I wish I’d let myself be happier.” Well, here can’t help but think of the groundbreaking clinical trials recently at East Carolina University that showed that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical and depression. Just 30 minutes of online game play a day was to create dramatic boosts in mood and long-term increases happiness.
“I wish I’d had the courage to express true self.” Well, avatars are a 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 his avatar. And Stanford University has been doing research for five now to document how playing a game with an idealized changes how we think and act in real life, 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 mark. We’re going to come back to this one.
But in meantime, perhaps you’re wondering, who is this game designer to talking to us about deathbed regrets? And it’s true, I’ve worked in a hospice, I’ve never been on my deathbed. But recently I did spend three months bed, wanting to die. Really wanting to die.
Now me tell you that story. It started two years ago, when I hit my head and got 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 me that in order to heal my brain, I to rest it. So I had to avoid everything that triggered my symptoms. For me meant no reading, no writing, no video games, no or email, no running, no alcohol, no caffeine. In other words — 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, you want to die.” It said, “You’re never going get better.” It said, “The pain will never end.”
And these voices became so persistent and so that I started to legitimately fear for my life, which is time that I said to myself after 34 days — 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 games for more than a decade that when we a game — and this is in the scientific literature — we tackle tough challenges more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re more likely to reach to others for help. I wanted to bring these gamer to my real-life challenge, so I created a role-playing game called Jane the Concussion Slayer.
Now this became new secret identity, and the first thing I did as a slayer was call my sister — I have an identical twin sister named Kelly — and tell her, “I’m playing a game heal my brain, and I want you to play with me.” This an easier way to ask for help.
She became my first ally the game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together we identified and the bad guys. Now this was anything that could trigger my and therefore slow down the healing process, things like bright lights and crowded spaces. also collected and activated power-ups. This was anything I could do on even my worst day feel just 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 so simple, within just a couple days of starting to play, that fog of depression anxiety went away. It just vanished. It felt like a miracle. it wasn’t a miracle cure for the headaches or cognitive symptoms. That lasted for more than a year, and it was the year of my life by far. But even when still had the symptoms, even while I was still pain, I stopped suffering.
Now what happened next with game surprised me. I put up some blog posts and videos online, how to play. But not everybody has a concussion, obviously, not everyone wants be “the slayer,” so I renamed the game SuperBetter.
And soon, I hearing from people all over the world who were adopting their own secret identity, their own allies, and they were getting “super better,” facing like cancer and chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. people were playing it for terminal diagnoses like ALS. I could tell from their messages and their videos that the was helping them in the same ways that it helped me. They talked about feeling and braver. They talked about feeling better understood by friends and family. And they even talked about feeling happier, even though they were in pain, even though they tackling the toughest challenge of their lives.
Now at the time, I’m thinking to myself, what is on here? I mean, how could a game so trivial intervene so powerfully in serious, and in some cases life-and-death, circumstances? I mean, if it hadn’t worked for me, there’s no I would have believed it was possible. Well, it turns out there’s some here, too. Some people get stronger and happier after a traumatic event. that’s what was happening to us.
The game was helping experience what scientists call post-traumatic growth, which is not something usually hear about. We usually hear about post-traumatic stress disorder. But scientists know that a traumatic event doesn’t doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can use it a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead lives.
Here are the top five things that people with post-traumatic growth say: “My priorities 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 of meaning purpose in my life.” “I’m better able to focus on my goals and dreams.”
Now, does sound familiar? It should, because the top five traits of post-traumatic growth essentially the direct opposite of the top five regrets of the dying. Now this is interesting, right? 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 from trauma to growth? Or yet, is there a way to get all the of post-traumatic growth without the trauma, without having to hit your head the first place? That would be good, right?
I wanted to understand the better, so I devoured the scientific literature, and here’s what I learned. There are 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 kinds 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 you experience them firsthand. I’d rather we start building them up together right now. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll play a game together. This is where you earn the seven and a half of bonus life that I promised you earlier. All you have do is successfully complete the first four SuperBetter quests. And I feel like you can do it. have confidence in you.
So, everybody ready? This is first quest. Here we go. Pick one: Stand up and three steps, or make your hands into fists, raise them over your head as high as you for five seconds, go! All right, I like the people doing both. You 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 know from the research the number one thing you can do to boost your physical is to not sit still. That’s all it takes. Every single that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the of your heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody for your next quest? I want you to snap fingers exactly 50 times, or count backwards from 100 by seven, this: 100, 93… Go!
(Snapping)
Don’t give up.
(Snapping)
Don’t let the people counting 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 have more mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. We know from scientific research that willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you it. So tackling a tiny challenge without giving up, even as absurd as snapping your fingers exactly 50 times or counting backwards from 100 by is actually 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, find a window and look of it. If you’re outside, find a window and look in. do a 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 we to see? Sloth, giraffe, elephant, snake. Okay, let’s see what we got. Baby and baby llamas. Everybody look. Got that? Okay, one more. Baby elephant.
(Audience) Oh!
We’re 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 like curiosity or love, which we feel looking at animals, when you need them most.
Here’s a secret from scientific literature for you. If you can manage to three positive emotions for every one negative emotion over course of an hour, a day, a week, you improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. And this called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s my favorite SuperBetter trick, so it up.
All right, pick one, last quest: Shake someone’s hand for six seconds, or send someone a thank you by text, email, Facebook or Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, good. Nice, nice. Keep it up. I love it! All right, everybody, is +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 resilience is gratitude. is even better.
Here’s one more secret for you: Shaking someone’s hand for six seconds dramatically raises the of oxytocin in your bloodstream, now that’s the trust hormone. That that all of 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 completed your quests, let’s see if I’ve successfully completed my mission give you seven and a half minutes of bonus life. Now I get to share one little bit of science with you. It turns out that people who regularly these four types of resilience — physical, mental, emotional social — live 10 years longer than everyone else. So this is true. If you are regularly the three-to-one positive emotion ratio, if you are never sitting for more than an hour at a time, if you are reaching out to one person you about every single day, if you are tackling tiny goals to boost your willpower, you will 10 years longer than everyone else, and here’s where that math showed you earlier comes in.
So, the 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 studies that you can add 10 years 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 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 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 spend these minutes of life?
Well, here’s my suggestion. These seven and a half bonus are kind of like genie’s wishes. You can use your first wish to wish for a more wishes. Pretty clever, right? So, if you spend these seven and a half minutes today doing that makes you happy, or that gets you physically active, or puts you touch with someone you care about, or even just tackling a challenge, you’re going to boost your resilience, so you’re to 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 will now 10 years later than it would have otherwise. And you get there, more than likely, you will not have any those top five regrets, because you will have built the strength and resilience to lead a life truer to dreams. And with 10 extra years, you might even have enough to play a few more games.
Thank you.
(Applause)