I’m a gamer, so I like have goals. I like special missions and secret objectives. So here’s my special 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, just because you watched talk.
Some of you are looking a little bit skeptical. That’s okay, because check it out — have math to prove that it is possible. It won’t much sense now. I’ll explain it all later, just pay attention the number at the bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. That will my gift to you if I’m successful in my mission.
Now, you have a secret mission too. mission is to figure out how you want to spend your extra and a half 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 might be thinking yourself, I know what she wants us to do those minutes, she wants us to spend them playing games. Now this is a reasonable assumption, given that I have made quite a habit of encouraging people to spend more time games. For example, in my first TED Talk, I did propose we should spend 21 billion hours a week, as a planet, playing video games.
Now, 21 hours, it’s a lot of time. It’s so much time, in fact, the number one unsolicited comment that I have heard from people all over world since I gave that talk, is this: Jane, games great and all, but on your deathbed, are you really going wish you spent more time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea is so — that games are a waste of time that we will come to regret — that I it literally everywhere I go. For example, true story: Just a few weeks ago, cab driver, upon finding out that a friend and were in town for a game developers’ conference, turned around and said — I quote — “I hate games. Waste of life. Imagine getting to the of your life and regretting all that time.”
Now, I want to take this problem seriously. want games to be a force for good in world. I don’t want gamers to regret the time they spent playing, that I encouraged 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 some scientific on this question. It’s true. Hospice workers, the people who take care us at the end of our lives, recently issued a report the most frequently expressed regrets that people say when they are literally on deathbeds. And that’s what I want to share with today — the top five regrets of the dying.
Number one: I wish I hadn’t worked hard. Number two: I wish I had stayed in touch with friends. Number 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 to my dreams, instead of what others expected of me.
Now, as as I know, no one ever told one of hospice workers, “I wish I’d spent more time playing video games,” but when I hear these top regrets of the dying, I can’t help but hear deep human cravings that games actually help us fulfill.
For example, I wish hadn’t worked so hard. For many people, this means, I wish I’d more time with my family, with my kids when they were up. Well, we know that playing games together has tremendous family benefits. A recent study 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 of millions of use social games like FarmVille or Words With Friends to stay in daily with real-life friends and family. A recent study from the of Michigan showed that these games are incredibly powerful relationship-management tools. They us stay connected with people in our social network we would otherwise grow distant from, if we weren’t games together.
“I wish I’d let myself be happier.” Well, here can’t help but think of the groundbreaking clinical trials recently conducted at East Carolina University that showed that games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes of online game play a was enough to create dramatic boosts in mood and long-term increases happiness.
“I wish I’d had the courage to express my self.” Well, avatars are a way to express our true selves, our heroic, idealized version of who we might become. You see that in this alter ego portrait by Robbie of a gamer with his avatar. And Stanford University has doing research for five years now to document how playing a with an idealized avatar changes how we think and in real life, making us more courageous, more ambitious, more committed to our goals.
“I wish I’d a life true to my dreams, and not what others expected of me.” games doing this yet? I’m not sure, so I’ve left a Mario question mark. We’re going to come back to 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 on my deathbed. But recently I did spend three months in bed, wanting die. Really wanting to die.
Now let me tell that story. It started two years ago, when I my head and got a concussion. The concussion didn’t heal properly, and after 30 days, I 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 rest it. So I had avoid everything 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 words — and I think you see where this 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, it happened to me. My brain started telling me, “Jane, you want die.” It said, “You’re never going to get better.” It said, “The pain will end.”
And these voices became so persistent and so that I started to legitimately fear for my life, which the time that I said to myself after 34 days — and I will never forget moment — I said, “I am either going to kill myself or I’m going turn this into a game.”
Now, why a game? I from researching the psychology of games for more than decade that when we play a game — and this is the scientific literature — we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, determination, more optimism, and we’re more likely to reach out others for help. I wanted to bring these gamer to my real-life challenge, so I created a role-playing recovery game called Jane the Slayer.
Now this became my new secret identity, and first thing I did as a slayer was call twin sister — I have an identical twin sister named Kelly — and tell her, “I’m a game to heal my brain, and I want you to play with me.” was an easier way to ask for help.
She became my ally in the game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together identified and battled 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. We also collected activated power-ups. This was anything I could do on even my worst day to just a little bit good, just a little bit productive. Things like cuddling my for 10 minutes, or getting out of bed and around the block just once.
Now the game was that simple: Adopt a identity, recruit your allies, battle the bad guys, activate the power-ups. But even with game so simple, within just a couple days of starting to play, fog of 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. That lasted for more a year, and it was the hardest year of my life by far. even when I still had the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, I stopped suffering.
Now 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 everyone wants to “the slayer,” so I renamed the game SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing people all over the world who were adopting their own secret identity, recruiting their own allies, and they getting “super better,” facing challenges like cancer and chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. people were playing it for terminal diagnoses like ALS. And I tell from their messages and their videos that the was helping them in the same ways that it me. They talked about feeling stronger and braver. They about feeling better understood by their friends and family. And they even about feeling happier, even though they were in pain, even though 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 possible. Well, it turns out there’s some science here, too. Some people get 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 not something we hear about. We usually hear about post-traumatic stress disorder. But scientists now that a traumatic event doesn’t doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we use it as a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead lives.
Here are the top five things that people post-traumatic growth say: “My priorities have changed.” “I’m not afraid to do what makes happy.” “I feel closer 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 top five traits of post-traumatic growth are essentially the direct opposite of the top five of the dying. Now this is interesting, right? It that somehow, a traumatic event can unlock our ability to lead life with fewer regrets.
But how does it work? How do you from trauma to growth? Or better yet, is there a way get all the benefits of post-traumatic growth without the trauma, without to hit your head in the first place? That be good, right?
I wanted to understand the phenomenon better, so I the scientific literature, and here’s what I learned. There four kinds of strength, or resilience, that contribute to post-traumatic growth, and are scientifically validated activities that you can do every day build up these four kinds of resilience, and you don’t a trauma to do it.
I could tell you what these types of strength are, but I’d rather you experience them firsthand. I’d rather we all start building them together right now. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll play quick game 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. have confidence in you.
So, everybody ready? This is your first quest. Here we go. Pick one: Stand and take three steps, or make your hands into fists, raise over your head as high as you can for seconds, go! All right, I like the people doing both. are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That worth +1 physical resilience, which means that your body can more stress and heal itself faster. We know from the research the number one thing you can do to boost physical resilience is to not sit still. That’s all it takes. Every single that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the health of your heart, your lungs and brains.
Everybody ready for your next quest? want you to snap your fingers exactly 50 times, or count from 100 by seven, like this: 100, 93… Go!
(Snapping)
Don’t up.
(Snapping)
Don’t let the people counting down from 100 with your counting to 50.
(Snapping)
(Laughter)
Nice. Wow. That’s the first I’ve ever seen that. Bonus physical resilience. Well done, everyone. that’s worth +1 mental resilience, which means you have mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. We know from the scientific research willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. So a tiny challenge without giving up, even one as absurd snapping your fingers exactly 50 times or counting backwards 100 by seven is actually a scientifically validated way to boost 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 window and look out of it. If you’re outside, find window and look in. Or do a quick YouTube Google image search for “baby [your favorite animal.]”
Do it your phones, or just shout out some baby animals, and I’ll them on the screen. So, what do we want 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 clapping that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, what we’re just there is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you have the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions curiosity or love, which we feel looking at baby animals, you need them most.
Here’s a secret from the scientific literature you. If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for every one negative over the course of an hour, a day, a week, dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully any problem you’re facing. And this is called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s my SuperBetter trick, so keep it up.
All right, pick one, last quest: Shake someone’s for six seconds, or send someone a quick thank you text, email, Facebook or Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, good. Nice, nice. Keep it up. I love it! 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 way to boost social is gratitude. Touch is even better.
Here’s one more for you: Shaking someone’s hand for six seconds dramatically the level of oxytocin in your bloodstream, now that’s the trust hormone. That means that all of 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 four quests, let’s if I’ve successfully completed my mission to give you seven a half minutes of bonus life. Now I get to one more little bit of science with you. It turns out that who regularly boost these four types of resilience — physical, mental, emotional social — live 10 years longer than everyone else. this is true. If you are regularly achieving the three-to-one positive ratio, if you are never sitting still for more than an at a time, if you are reaching out to one person you care about single day, if you are tackling 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, but we know from than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies that you can add 10 years of life by boosting four types of resilience. So every single year that you boosting your four types of resilience, you’re actually earning .128 more years of life or 46 more of life, or 67,298 more minutes of life, which means every single day, you are earning 184 minutes life, or every single hour that you are boosting your four of resilience, like we just did together, you are 7.68245837 more minutes of life.
Congratulations, those seven and half minutes are all yours. You totally earned them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. You still have special mission, your secret mission. How are you going to spend these of bonus life?
Well, here’s my suggestion. These seven and a half minutes are kind of like genie’s wishes. You can use your first wish to wish for a million wishes. Pretty clever, right? So, if you spend these seven a half minutes today doing something that makes you happy, or gets you physically active, or puts you in touch with someone care about, or even just tackling a tiny challenge, you’re going to boost your resilience, you’re going to earn more minutes.
And the good is, you can keep going like 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, than likely, you will not have any of those top regrets, because you will have built up the strength and resilience to lead a truer to your dreams. And with 10 extra years, you even have enough time to play a few more games.
Thank you.
(Applause)