I’m a gamer, I like to have goals. I like special missions secret objectives. So here’s my 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 half minutes longer than you would have otherwise, just because you watched this talk.
Some of you looking a little 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 to the number 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 figure out how you want to spend your extra seven and a minutes. And I think you should do something unusual with them, because these are minutes. You weren’t going to have them anyway.
Now, because I’m a game designer, you be thinking to yourself, I know what she wants us to do with those minutes, she wants to spend 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 TED Talk, I did propose that we should spend 21 billion a week, as a planet, playing video games.
Now, 21 hours, it’s a lot of time. It’s so much time, in fact, that the number one unsolicited that I have heard from people all over the world since I that talk, is this: Jane, games are great and all, but on your deathbed, are really going to wish you spent more time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea so pervasive — that games are a waste of time that we will come to regret — I hear it literally everywhere I go. For example, 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 quote — “I hate games. Waste life. Imagine getting to the end of your life and regretting all time.”
Now, I want to take this problem seriously. I want games to be force for good in the world. I don’t want gamers regret the time they spent playing, time that I them to spend. So I have been thinking about question a lot lately. When we’re on our deathbeds, we regret the time we spent playing games?
Now, may surprise you, but it turns out there is actually scientific research on this question. It’s true. Hospice workers, people 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 their deathbeds. And that’s what I want to share you today — the top five regrets of the dying.
Number one: I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. two: I wish I had stayed in touch with friends. Number three: I wish I had let myself be happier. Number four: I I’d had the courage to express my true self. And number five: wish I’d lived a life true to my dreams, instead of what expected of me.
Now, as far as I know, no one ever one of the hospice workers, “I wish I’d spent more time video games,” but when I hear these top five of the dying, I can’t help but hear five deep human that games actually help us fulfill.
For example, I I hadn’t worked so 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 that playing together has tremendous family benefits. A recent study from Brigham Young University School of Family Life reported parents who spend more time playing video games with their have much stronger real-life relationships with them.
“I wish I’d stayed touch with my friends.” Hundreds of millions of people social games like FarmVille or Words With Friends to in daily contact with real-life friends and family. A recent from the University of Michigan showed that these games are incredibly relationship-management tools. They help us stay connected with people our social network that we would otherwise grow distant from, we weren’t playing games together.
“I wish I’d let be happier.” Well, here I can’t help but think the groundbreaking clinical trials recently conducted at East Carolina University showed that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes online game play a day was enough to create dramatic boosts mood and long-term increases in happiness.
“I wish I’d the courage to express my true self.” Well, avatars are a way to our true selves, our most heroic, idealized version of who we might become. can see that in this alter ego portrait by Robbie Cooper of a gamer with avatar. And Stanford University has been doing research for five years to document how playing a game with an idealized avatar changes how we and act in real life, making us more courageous, more ambitious, committed to our goals.
“I wish I’d led a true to my dreams, and not what others expected of me.” Are doing this yet? I’m not sure, so I’ve left a Super question mark. We’re going to come back to this one.
But in the meantime, perhaps you’re wondering, who is game designer to be talking to us about deathbed regrets? it’s true, I’ve never worked in a hospice, I’ve never been on deathbed. But recently I did spend three months in bed, wanting to die. Really to die.
Now let me tell you that story. It started years ago, when I hit my head and got a concussion. concussion didn’t heal properly, and after 30 days, I was left with symptoms like headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss, mental fog. My doctor told me that order to heal my brain, I had to rest it. I had to avoid everything that triggered my 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 to be funny, but in all seriousness, suicidal ideation is quite with traumatic brain injuries. It happens to one in three, and it happened to me. My brain started me, “Jane, you want to die.” It said, “You’re never going to get better.” said, “The pain will never end.”
And these voices became persistent and so persuasive that I started to legitimately fear for life, which is the time that I said to myself 34 days — and I will never forget this — I said, “I am either going to kill myself I’m going to turn this into a game.”
Now, a game? I knew from researching the psychology of games for more a decade that when we play a game — this is in the scientific literature — we tackle tough challenges with creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re more likely to reach out to others for help. wanted to bring these gamer traits to my real-life challenge, so created a role-playing recovery game called Jane the Concussion Slayer.
Now this became my secret identity, and the first thing I did as a slayer was call my twin — 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 me.” This was an easier way to ask for help.
She became my ally in the game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together we identified and battled bad guys. Now this 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 do on even my worst day to feel just a little bit good, just a little productive. Things like cuddling my dog for 10 minutes, or getting out of bed and around the block just once.
Now the game was that simple: a secret identity, recruit your allies, battle the 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 like a miracle. Now wasn’t a miracle cure for the headaches or the cognitive symptoms. lasted for more than a year, and it was the hardest year my life by far. But even 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 put up blog posts and videos online, explaining how to play. But not everybody has a concussion, obviously, everyone wants to be “the slayer,” so I renamed game SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing from people all over the world were adopting their own secret identity, recruiting their own allies, they were getting “super better,” facing challenges like cancer chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. Even people were playing for terminal diagnoses like ALS. And I could tell from their and their videos that the game was helping them 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 feeling happier, even though they were in pain, even they were tackling the toughest challenge of their lives.
Now the time, I’m thinking to myself, what is going on here? I mean, how could 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, it out there’s some science here, too. Some people get stronger and happier after traumatic event. And 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. scientists now know that a traumatic event doesn’t doom to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can use it as a springboard to unleash 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 me happy.” “I closer to my friends and family.” “I understand myself better. know who I really am now.” “I have a new of meaning and purpose in my life.” “I’m better able to focus on my and dreams.”
Now, does this sound familiar? It should, because top five traits of post-traumatic growth are essentially the direct 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 with regrets.
But how does it work? How do you get trauma to growth? Or better yet, is there a way to get the benefits of post-traumatic growth without the trauma, without having to hit head in the first place? That would be good, right?
I wanted to understand the better, so I devoured the scientific literature, and here’s I learned. There are four kinds of strength, or resilience, contribute to post-traumatic growth, and there are scientifically validated activities that you can do every to build up these four kinds of resilience, and you don’t need a to do it.
I could tell you what these four types 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 together. This is where you earn the seven and a half minutes bonus life that I promised you earlier. All you to do is successfully complete the first four SuperBetter quests. And I feel you can do it. I have confidence in you.
So, ready? This is your first quest. Here we go. Pick one: Stand up and take 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 doing both. You are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That is worth +1 physical resilience, means that 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. single second that you are not sitting still, you are improving the health of your heart, and your lungs brains.
Everybody ready for your next quest? I want 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 interfere with counting to 50.
(Snapping)
(Laughter)
Nice. Wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that. physical resilience. Well done, everyone. Now that’s worth +1 mental resilience, which you have more mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. know from the scientific research that willpower actually works 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 or counting backwards from 100 seven is actually a scientifically validated way to boost your willpower.
So good job. number three. Pick one: Because of the room, fate’s really this for you, but here are the two options. If you’re inside, find window and look out of it. If you’re outside, a window and look in. Or do a quick YouTube or Google search for “baby [your favorite animal.]”
Do it on phones, or just shout out some baby animals, and I’ll put them on the screen. So, do we want to see? Sloth, giraffe, elephant, snake. Okay, let’s see what we got. Baby dolphin and baby llamas. look. Got that? Okay, one more. Baby elephant.
(Audience) Oh!
We’re for that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, what we’re feeling there is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like curiosity love, which we feel looking at baby animals, when you need them most.
Here’s a secret the scientific literature for you. If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for one negative emotion over the course of an hour, day, a week, you dramatically improve your health and your to successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. And this is called the three-to-one positive 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 someone a 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 means you actually get strength from your friends, your neighbors, your family, your community. Now, great way to boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch even better.
Here’s one more secret for you: Shaking someone’s for six seconds dramatically raises the level of oxytocin in your bloodstream, that’s the trust hormone. That means that all of you who just shook hands biochemically primed to like and want to help each other. will linger during the break, so take advantage of the opportunities.
(Laughter)
Well, you have successfully completed your four quests, let’s if I’ve successfully completed my mission to give you and a 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 — live 10 years longer than everyone else. So this is true. you are regularly achieving the three-to-one positive emotion ratio, if you never sitting still for more than an hour at a time, you are reaching out to one person you care about every day, if you are tackling tiny goals to boost your willpower, you will live 10 years longer than 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, but we from more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies that you can add 10 years of by boosting your four types of resilience. So every year that you are boosting your four types of resilience, you’re earning .128 more years of life or 46 more days of life, or 67,298 more minutes of life, means every single day, you are earning 184 minutes of life, or every hour that you are boosting your four types of resilience, like we just did together, you earning 7.68245837 more minutes of life.
Congratulations, those seven and a half minutes are all yours. You earned them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. You still have your mission, your secret mission. How are you going to spend these of bonus life?
Well, here’s my suggestion. These seven a half bonus minutes are kind of like genie’s wishes. can use your first wish to wish for a million wishes. Pretty clever, right? So, if you spend these seven and a half today doing something that makes you happy, or that you physically active, or puts you in touch with someone you care about, even just tackling a tiny challenge, you’re going to boost your resilience, so you’re to earn more minutes.
And the good news is, you can keep like that. Every hour of the day, every day of life, all the way to your deathbed, which will now be 10 years than it would have otherwise. And when you get there, more likely, you will not have any of those top regrets, because you will have built up the strength and to lead a life truer to your dreams. And 10 extra years, you might even have enough time to a few more games.
Thank you.
(Applause)