I’m a gamer, so 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 span of every single person in this room by seven and a half minutes. Literally, will live seven and a half minutes longer than you would have otherwise, just you watched this talk.
Some of you are looking a little bit skeptical. That’s okay, check it out — I have math to prove that it is possible. It won’t much sense now. I’ll explain it all later, just pay 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 secret mission too. Your mission is to figure out how want to spend your extra seven and a half minutes. And I think you do something unusual with them, because these are bonus minutes. weren’t going to have them anyway.
Now, because I’m game designer, you might be thinking to yourself, I what she wants us to do with those minutes, wants us to spend them playing games. Now this is totally reasonable assumption, given that I have made quite a habit encouraging people to spend more time playing games. For example, my first TED Talk, I did propose that we should spend 21 billion hours week, as a planet, playing video games.
Now, 21 billion hours, it’s a of time. It’s so much time, in fact, that the number one unsolicited comment that I have heard people all over the world since I gave that talk, is this: Jane, are great and all, but on your deathbed, are you really to wish you spent more time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea so pervasive — that games are a waste of that we will come to regret — that I it literally everywhere I go. For example, true story: Just a few ago, this cab driver, upon finding out that a friend and I were in for 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 problem seriously. I want games to be a force good in the world. I don’t want gamers to regret the time they playing, time that I encouraged them to spend. So I have been thinking about this question a lately. When we’re on our deathbeds, will we regret the time we playing games?
Now, this may surprise you, but it out there is actually some scientific research on this question. It’s true. Hospice workers, the people take care of us at the end of our lives, recently issued a report the most frequently expressed regrets that people say when they literally on their deathbeds. And that’s what I want to with you today — the top five regrets of 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 self. And number five: I wish I’d lived a life true to my dreams, instead of others expected of me.
Now, as far as I know, no one ever told one of the workers, “I wish I’d spent more time playing video games,” but I hear these top five regrets of the dying, 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 many people, means, I wish I’d spent more time with my family, with my when they were growing up. Well, we know that playing games together has family benefits. A recent study from Brigham Young University School of Family reported that parents who spend more time playing video games with kids have much stronger real-life relationships with them.
“I I’d stayed in touch with my friends.” Hundreds of millions of use social games like FarmVille or Words With Friends to stay in daily contact with real-life friends family. A recent study from the University of Michigan showed that these games incredibly powerful relationship-management tools. They help us stay connected with in our social network that we would otherwise grow distant from, if weren’t playing games together.
“I wish I’d let myself happier.” Well, here I can’t help but think of groundbreaking clinical trials recently conducted at East Carolina University that showed that online games can outperform for treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes 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 my true self.” Well, avatars are a way to express our true selves, most heroic, idealized version of who we might become. You can that in this alter ego portrait by Robbie Cooper of a with his avatar. And Stanford University has been doing research for years now to document how playing a game with idealized avatar changes how we think and act in real life, making more courageous, more ambitious, more committed to our goals.
“I wish I’d led a life 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 the meantime, you’re wondering, who is this game designer to be talking us about deathbed regrets? And 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. wanting to die.
Now let me tell you that story. started two years ago, when I hit my head and got concussion. The 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 in order heal my brain, I had to rest it. So I had to avoid that triggered my symptoms. For me that meant no reading, writing, no video games, no work or email, no running, no alcohol, no caffeine. In other words — I think you see where this is going — no reason to live.
(Laughter)
Of it’s meant to be funny, but in all seriousness, ideation is quite common with traumatic brain injuries. It happens one in three, and it happened to me. My brain telling me, “Jane, you want to die.” It said, “You’re never going to 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 the time I said to myself after 34 days — and will never forget this moment — I said, “I am either to kill myself or I’m going to turn this a game.”
Now, why a game? I knew from researching the psychology of games more than a decade that when we play a — and this is in the scientific literature — we tackle challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re more to reach out to others for help. I wanted to these gamer traits to my real-life challenge, so I a role-playing recovery game called Jane the Concussion Slayer.
Now this became my secret identity, and the first thing I did as a was call my twin sister — I have an identical twin sister Kelly — and tell her, “I’m playing a game to my brain, and I want you to play with me.” This was easier way to ask for help.
She became my first ally in the game, my husband Kiyash next, and together we identified and battled the bad guys. Now this anything that could trigger my symptoms and therefore slow down the process, things like bright lights and crowded spaces. We also collected and 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 like cuddling dog for 10 minutes, or getting out of bed and walking around block just once.
Now the game was that simple: a secret identity, recruit your allies, battle the bad guys, the power-ups. But even with a game so simple, just a couple days of starting to play, that of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. It felt a miracle. Now it wasn’t a miracle cure for headaches or the cognitive symptoms. That lasted for more than a year, it was the hardest year of my life by far. even when I still had the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, stopped suffering.
Now what happened next with the game surprised me. I put up some blog and videos online, explaining how to play. But not everybody has a concussion, obviously, not wants to be “the slayer,” so I renamed the SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing from people all the world who were adopting their own secret identity, recruiting their allies, and they were getting “super better,” facing challenges like cancer and chronic pain, and Crohn’s disease. Even people were playing it for terminal diagnoses like ALS. And I tell from their messages and their videos that the game was helping them in same ways that it helped me. They talked about feeling and braver. They talked about feeling better understood by their friends family. And they even talked about 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? mean, how could a game so trivial intervene so in such serious, and in some cases life-and-death, circumstances? I mean, if it hadn’t for me, there’s no way I would have believed it possible. Well, it turns out there’s some science here, too. people get stronger and happier after a traumatic event. And that’s what was to us.
The game was helping us experience what scientists call post-traumatic growth, which is something we usually hear about. We usually hear about post-traumatic stress disorder. But scientists now know that a event doesn’t doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can it as a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead happier lives.
Here are the five things that people with post-traumatic growth say: “My priorities have changed.” “I’m afraid to do what makes me happy.” “I feel to my friends and family.” “I understand myself better. I who I really am now.” “I have a new of meaning and purpose in my life.” “I’m better able to on my goals and dreams.”
Now, does this sound familiar? It should, because the top five of post-traumatic growth are essentially the direct opposite of top five regrets of the dying. Now this is interesting, right? seems that somehow, a traumatic event can unlock our to lead a life with fewer regrets.
But how it work? How do you 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 to hit your head the first place? That would be good, right?
I wanted to understand the phenomenon better, I devoured the scientific literature, and here’s what I learned. There are four kinds of strength, resilience, that contribute to post-traumatic growth, and there are scientifically validated activities that can do every day to build up these four of resilience, and you don’t need a trauma to do it.
I could tell you what four types of strength are, but I’d rather you experience them firsthand. I’d we all start building them up together right 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 of bonus life I promised you earlier. All you have to do successfully complete the first four SuperBetter 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: up and take three steps, or make your hands fists, raise them over your head as high as you can for five seconds, go! right, I like the people doing both. You are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That worth +1 physical resilience, which means that your body can withstand more stress and heal itself faster. We from the research that the number one thing you do to boost your physical resilience is to not sit still. That’s all it takes. single second that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the health of your heart, and lungs and brains.
Everybody ready 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. Well done, everyone. Now that’s worth +1 mental resilience, means you have more mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. We know the scientific research that willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets the more you exercise it. So tackling a tiny without giving up, even one as absurd as snapping your fingers 50 times or counting backwards from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically way to boost your willpower.
So good job. Quest number three. Pick one: of the room, fate’s really determined this for you, but here are the two options. you’re inside, find a window and look out of it. If you’re outside, a window and look in. Or do a quick or Google image 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, 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 clapping that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, what we’re just feeling there is plus-one emotional resilience, which you have the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like or love, which we feel looking at baby animals, when you need 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 ability to successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. And this is called three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s my favorite SuperBetter trick, so keep up.
All right, pick one, last quest: Shake someone’s hand six seconds, or send someone a quick thank you text, email, Facebook or Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, looking good. Nice, nice. 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 to boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch is even better.
Here’s more secret for you: Shaking someone’s hand for six dramatically raises the level of oxytocin in your bloodstream, now that’s the hormone. That means that all of 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 if I’ve successfully completed mission to give you seven and a half minutes of life. Now I get to share one more little bit of science you. It turns out that people who regularly boost these types of resilience — physical, mental, emotional and social — live 10 years longer everyone else. So this is true. If you are regularly the three-to-one positive emotion ratio, if you are never sitting still for than an hour at a time, if you are reaching out to person you care about every single day, if you are tackling tiny goals to boost your willpower, will live 10 years longer than everyone else, and here’s where that math I showed you comes in.
So, the average life expectancy in the U.S. and U.K. is 78.1 years, but we know from more 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies that you can add 10 years of life boosting your four types of resilience. So every single 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 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 of resilience, like we just did together, you earning 7.68245837 more minutes of life.
Congratulations, those seven a half minutes are all yours. You totally earned them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. You still have your special mission, secret mission. How are you going to spend these minutes bonus life?
Well, here’s my suggestion. These seven and a half bonus minutes are kind like genie’s wishes. You can use your first wish wish for a million more wishes. Pretty clever, right? So, if you these seven and a half minutes today doing something makes you happy, or that gets you physically active, or you in touch with someone you care about, or even just tackling a tiny challenge, you’re going to 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, all way to your deathbed, which will now be 10 years later than would have otherwise. And when you get there, more than likely, you will not have of those top five regrets, because you will have built up the strength and to lead a life truer to your dreams. And with 10 extra years, you might have enough time to play a few more games.
Thank you.
(Applause)