I’m a gamer, so I like to have goals. like special missions and secret objectives. So here’s my mission for this talk: I’m going to try to increase life span of every single person in this room seven and a half minutes. Literally, you will live seven a half minutes longer than you would have otherwise, just because you this talk.
Some of you are looking a little skeptical. That’s okay, because check it out — I have to prove that it is possible. It won’t make sense now. I’ll explain it all later, just pay attention the number at the bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. That will be my gift you if I’m successful in my mission.
Now, you have a mission too. Your mission is to figure out how you 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 have them anyway.
Now, because I’m a game designer, you be thinking to yourself, I know what she wants to do with those minutes, she wants us to them playing games. Now this is a totally reasonable assumption, that I have made quite a habit of encouraging 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, video 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 from people all over the world since I gave that talk, is this: Jane, games are great all, but on your deathbed, are you really going to you spent more time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea so pervasive — that games are a waste of time that we will come to — that I hear it literally everywhere I go. For example, true story: Just few weeks ago, this cab driver, upon finding out a friend and I were in town for a game developers’ conference, turned around and said — I quote — “I hate games. Waste of life. getting to the end of your life and regretting all that time.”
Now, want to take this problem seriously. I want games to a force for good in the world. I don’t want gamers regret the time they spent playing, time that I encouraged them to spend. So I have been about this question a lot lately. When we’re on deathbeds, will we regret the time we spent playing games?
Now, this surprise you, but it turns out there 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 say when are literally on their deathbeds. And that’s what I want to share with you today — the five regrets of the dying.
Number one: I wish hadn’t worked so hard. Number two: I wish I had in touch with my friends. Number three: I wish I had let myself happier. Number four: I wish I’d had the courage to express 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 of the hospice workers, “I I’d spent more time playing video games,” but when I hear 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 people, this means, I wish I’d spent more time with family, with my kids when they were growing up. Well, we know that games together has tremendous family benefits. A recent study from Brigham Young University School of Life reported that parents who spend more time playing games with their kids have much stronger real-life relationships with them.
“I wish I’d stayed touch with my friends.” Hundreds of millions of people use games like FarmVille or Words With Friends to stay in daily with real-life friends and family. A recent study from University of Michigan showed that these games are incredibly powerful relationship-management tools. They help us stay connected people in our social network that we would otherwise distant from, if we weren’t playing games together.
“I wish I’d let myself happier.” Well, here I can’t help but think of the groundbreaking clinical recently conducted at East Carolina University that showed that online games outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes of online game play a day enough to create dramatic boosts in mood and long-term in 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, version of who we might become. You can see that in this ego portrait by Robbie Cooper of a gamer with his avatar. And Stanford University has doing research for five years now to document how playing a game with an avatar changes how we think and act in real life, us more courageous, more ambitious, more committed to our goals.
“I I’d led a life true to my dreams, and what others expected of me.” Are games doing this yet? I’m not sure, so I’ve left a Super Mario 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 to 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 die.
Now let me tell you that story. It started two ago, when I 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, mental fog. My doctor told that in order to heal my brain, I had to it. So I had to avoid everything that triggered symptoms. For me that meant no reading, no writing, no games, no work or email, no running, no alcohol, caffeine. In other words — and I think you where this is going — no reason to live.
(Laughter)
Of course it’s meant to be funny, but all seriousness, suicidal ideation is quite common with traumatic brain injuries. It happens to in three, and it happened to me. My brain started telling me, “Jane, want to die.” It said, “You’re never going to get better.” said, “The pain will never end.”
And these voices became so persistent and so persuasive that started to legitimately fear for my life, which is the that I said to myself after 34 days — and 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 psychology of games for more than a decade that when play a game — and this is in the scientific — we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, we’re more likely to reach out to others for help. I wanted to these gamer traits to my real-life challenge, so I created role-playing recovery game called Jane the Concussion Slayer.
Now this my new secret identity, and the first thing I did as slayer was call my twin sister — I have an identical sister named Kelly — and tell her, “I’m playing a game heal my brain, and I want you to play with me.” This was an easier to ask for help.
She became my first ally in game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together we identified and battled the bad guys. Now was anything that could trigger my symptoms and therefore 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 day to feel just a little bit good, just little bit productive. Things like cuddling my dog for 10 minutes, getting out of bed and walking around the block just once.
Now the was that simple: Adopt a secret identity, recruit your allies, the bad guys, activate the power-ups. But even with a game so simple, within a couple days of starting to play, that fog of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. felt like a miracle. Now it wasn’t a miracle cure the headaches or the cognitive symptoms. That lasted for 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 with 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 renamed game SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing from people all the world who were adopting their own secret identity, recruiting own allies, and they were getting “super better,” facing challenges cancer and chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. Even were playing it for terminal diagnoses like ALS. And could tell from their messages and their videos that the game was helping them in same ways that it helped me. They talked about stronger and braver. They talked about feeling better understood by their friends and family. they even talked about feeling happier, even though they were in pain, though they were tackling 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 so powerfully in such serious, in some cases life-and-death, circumstances? I mean, if it hadn’t for me, there’s no way I would have believed it was possible. Well, turns out there’s some science here, too. Some people get stronger and happier after a event. And that’s what was happening to us.
The game was us experience what scientists call post-traumatic growth, which is not something we usually hear about. We hear about post-traumatic stress disorder. But scientists now know that a traumatic event doesn’t doom us to indefinitely. Instead, we can use it as a springboard to unleash best qualities and lead happier lives.
Here are the top 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 sense of meaning and purpose in my life.” “I’m able to focus on my goals and dreams.”
Now, does this familiar? It should, because the top five traits of post-traumatic growth are essentially direct opposite of the top five regrets of the dying. this is interesting, right? It seems that somehow, a event can unlock our ability to lead a life with fewer regrets.
But does it work? How do you get from trauma growth? Or better yet, is there a way to get all 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, so I devoured the scientific literature, and here’s what learned. There are four kinds of strength, or resilience, that contribute post-traumatic growth, and there are scientifically validated activities that you can do every day build up these four kinds of resilience, and you don’t need a to do it.
I could tell you what these four types of 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 half minutes of bonus life that I promised you earlier. you have to do is successfully complete the first four SuperBetter quests. And I feel like you can it. I have confidence in you.
So, everybody ready? This your first quest. Here we go. Pick one: Stand up and take steps, or make your hands into fists, raise them over head as high as you can for five seconds, go! All right, I like the people both. You are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That is worth +1 physical resilience, which that your body can withstand more stress and heal itself faster. We know from the research that the one thing you can do to boost your physical resilience is to sit still. That’s all it takes. Every single second that you not sitting still, you are actively improving the health of your heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody for your next quest? I want you to snap your fingers 50 times, or count backwards from 100 by seven, this: 100, 93… Go!
(Snapping)
Don’t give up.
(Snapping)
Don’t let the people 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 mental focus, more discipline, and willpower. We know from the scientific research that willpower actually like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. So tackling a tiny challenge giving up, even one as absurd as snapping your fingers exactly 50 times counting backwards from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically validated way to your willpower.
So good job. Quest number three. Pick one: of the room, fate’s really determined this for you, here are the two options. If you’re inside, find a window look out of it. If you’re outside, find a and look in. Or do a quick YouTube or Google image search “baby [your favorite animal.]”
Do it on your phones, or just shout out 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 got. Baby dolphin and baby llamas. Everybody look. Got that? Okay, more. Baby elephant.
(Audience) Oh!
We’re clapping for that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, what we’re feeling there is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you have ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or 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 experience three positive emotions for every one negative emotion the course of an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your health and your ability 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 for six seconds, or send someone a quick thank you by text, email, or Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, looking good. Nice, nice. Keep up. I love it! All right, everybody, that is +1 social resilience, which means you actually more strength from your friends, your neighbors, your family, your community. Now, a great to boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch is even better.
Here’s one 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 and want to help other. This will linger during the break, so take advantage of the networking opportunities.
(Laughter)
Well, you successfully completed your four quests, let’s see if I’ve successfully completed mission to give you seven and a half minutes of bonus life. I get to share one more little bit of with you. It turns out that people who regularly boost these four of resilience — physical, mental, emotional and social — live 10 longer than everyone else. So this 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 reaching out to one person care about every single day, if you are tackling tiny 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, the average life in the U.S. and the U.K. is 78.1 years, but we know from than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies that you can add 10 of life by boosting your four types of resilience. So every single year you are boosting your four types of resilience, you’re actually .128 more years of life or 46 more days life, or 67,298 more minutes of life, which means every 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 minutes of life.
Congratulations, those seven and a minutes are all yours. You totally earned them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. You have your special 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 like genie’s wishes. You use your first wish to wish for a million more wishes. Pretty clever, right? So, you spend these seven and a half minutes today something that makes you happy, or that gets you active, or puts you in touch with someone you about, or even just tackling a tiny challenge, you’re going boost your resilience, so you’re going to earn more minutes.
And the good news is, you can keep going that. Every hour of the day, every day of your life, the way to your deathbed, which will now be 10 years later it would have otherwise. And when you get there, more likely, you will not have any of those top five regrets, because you have built up the strength and resilience to lead life truer to your dreams. And with 10 extra years, might even have enough time to play a few games.
Thank you.
(Applause)