I’m a gamer, so I like have goals. I like special missions and secret objectives. here’s my special mission for this talk: I’m going try to increase the life span of every single in this room by seven and a half minutes. Literally, will live seven and a half minutes longer than you have otherwise, just because you watched this talk.
Some of you looking a little bit skeptical. That’s okay, because check out — I have math to prove that it is possible. won’t make much sense now. I’ll explain it all later, just pay attention to the number the bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. That will be my gift you if I’m successful in my mission.
Now, you have a secret too. Your mission is to figure out how you want to spend extra seven and a half minutes. And I think you should do something unusual with them, because these bonus minutes. You weren’t going to have them anyway.
Now, because I’m a game designer, might be thinking to yourself, I know what she wants us do with those minutes, she wants us to spend playing games. Now this is a totally reasonable assumption, given that I have made quite habit of encouraging people to spend more time playing games. For example, my first TED Talk, I did propose that we should 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, that the number one comment that I have heard from people all over the world I gave that talk, is this: Jane, games are and all, but on your deathbed, are you really going to wish you spent time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea is so pervasive — that games are waste of time that we will come to regret — I hear it literally everywhere I go. For example, true story: Just a few weeks ago, this driver, upon finding out that a friend and I were in town for a game developers’ conference, turned 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. want games to be a force for good in the world. don’t want gamers to regret the time they spent playing, that I encouraged them to spend. So I have thinking about this question a lot lately. When we’re on our deathbeds, we regret the time we spent playing games?
Now, this may 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 on their deathbeds. And that’s what I want to share you today — the top five regrets of the dying.
Number one: wish I hadn’t worked so hard. Number two: I I had stayed in touch with my friends. Number three: I wish I had myself be happier. Number four: I wish I’d had the to express my true self. And number five: I wish I’d lived life true to my dreams, instead of what others of me.
Now, as far as I know, no one ever told one of the hospice workers, “I I’d spent more time playing video games,” but when hear these top five regrets of the dying, I can’t help but hear deep human cravings that games actually help us fulfill.
For example, I I hadn’t worked so hard. For many people, this means, I I’d spent more time with my family, with my kids when they were growing up. Well, know that playing games together has tremendous family benefits. A recent study from Brigham Young University School Family Life reported that parents who spend more time 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 people use social games like FarmVille or Words With Friends to stay in contact with real-life friends and family. A recent study from the University of Michigan showed that these 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 I’d let myself be happier.” Well, here I can’t help but of the groundbreaking clinical trials recently conducted at East Carolina University that that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes of online game a day was enough to create dramatic boosts in mood and long-term in happiness.
“I wish I’d had the courage to my true self.” Well, avatars are a way to our true selves, our most heroic, idealized version of we might become. You can see that in this alter ego portrait Robbie Cooper of a gamer with his avatar. And Stanford University has been doing research for years 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 I’d led a life true to my dreams, and not others expected of me.” Are games doing this yet? I’m sure, so I’ve left a Super Mario question mark. We’re going to come to this one.
But in the meantime, perhaps you’re wondering, is this game designer to be 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 did spend three months in bed, wanting to die. Really wanting to die.
Now let me you 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 was with symptoms like nonstop headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss, mental fog. doctor told me that in 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, writing, no video 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 in seriousness, suicidal ideation is quite common with traumatic brain injuries. It happens to one three, and it happened to me. My brain started telling me, “Jane, you want to die.” said, “You’re never going to get better.” It said, “The pain will end.”
And these voices became so persistent and so persuasive that I started to fear for my life, which is the time that said to myself after 34 days — and I never forget this moment — I said, “I am either going to kill myself or I’m going to this into a game.”
Now, why a game? I knew from the psychology of games for more than a decade that when we play game — and this is in the scientific literature — we tackle tough challenges with creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re more likely reach out 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 a slayer was call my twin sister — I have an identical twin named Kelly — and tell her, “I’m playing a to heal my brain, and I want you to with 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 the guys. Now this was anything that could trigger my symptoms therefore slow 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 bit good, just a little bit productive. Things like my dog for 10 minutes, or getting out of bed and walking around block just once.
Now the game was that simple: Adopt a secret identity, recruit your allies, the bad guys, activate 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. felt like a miracle. Now it wasn’t a miracle for the headaches or the cognitive symptoms. That lasted for more than year, and it was the hardest year of my life far. But even when I still had the symptoms, even I was still in pain, I stopped suffering.
Now what happened next the game surprised me. I put up some blog posts and videos online, explaining how to play. But everybody has a concussion, obviously, not everyone wants to “the slayer,” so I renamed the game SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing from people all over the world were adopting their own secret identity, recruiting their own allies, and were getting “super better,” facing challenges 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 game was helping in the same ways that it helped me. They talked about feeling and braver. They talked about feeling better understood by their friends and family. And they even about feeling happier, even though they were in pain, even though they were tackling the toughest challenge of lives.
Now at the time, I’m thinking to myself, what is on here? I mean, how could a game so trivial intervene so in such serious, and in some cases life-and-death, circumstances? I mean, it hadn’t worked for me, there’s no way I would have it was possible. Well, it turns out there’s some science here, too. Some 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 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 our qualities and lead happier lives.
Here are the top five things that people with post-traumatic say: “My priorities have changed.” “I’m not afraid to do what me happy.” “I feel closer to my friends and family.” “I understand myself better. I know who I really now.” “I have a new sense of meaning and purpose in my life.” “I’m better able focus on my goals and dreams.”
Now, does this sound familiar? It should, the top five traits of post-traumatic growth are essentially the direct opposite of top five regrets of the dying. Now this is interesting, right? It seems that somehow, a traumatic can unlock our ability to lead a life with fewer regrets.
But how does work? How do you get from trauma to growth? better yet, is there a way to get all benefits of post-traumatic growth without the trauma, without having to hit your head in the first place? would be good, right?
I wanted to understand the phenomenon better, I devoured the scientific literature, and here’s what I learned. are four kinds of strength, or resilience, that contribute to post-traumatic growth, and there are validated activities that you can do every day to build these four kinds of resilience, and you don’t need a to do it.
I could tell you what these four of strength are, but I’d rather you experience them firsthand. I’d rather we all building them up together right now. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll a quick game together. This is where you earn the seven a half minutes of bonus life that I promised you earlier. All you to do is successfully complete the first four SuperBetter quests. And I like you can do 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 your head as high you can for five seconds, go! All right, I like the doing both. You are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. is worth +1 physical resilience, which means that your can withstand more stress and heal itself faster. We know the research that the number one thing you can do to boost physical resilience is to not sit still. That’s all takes. Every single second that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving health of your heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody ready your next quest? I want you to snap your fingers exactly 50 times, or backwards from 100 by seven, like this: 100, 93… Go!
(Snapping)
Don’t give up.
(Snapping)
Don’t let people counting down from 100 interfere with your counting to 50.
(Snapping)
(Laughter)
Nice. Wow. That’s the first 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 willpower. We know from the scientific research that willpower actually works like muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. tackling a tiny challenge without giving up, even one as absurd as your fingers exactly 50 times or counting backwards from 100 by seven is actually a 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, a window and look out of it. If you’re outside, a 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, 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 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 just feeling there plus-one emotional resilience, which means you have the ability to provoke powerful, positive like curiosity or love, which we feel looking at baby animals, you need them most.
Here’s a secret from the literature for you. If you can manage to experience three emotions for every one negative emotion over the course an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. And this is 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 someone a quick thank you by text, email, Facebook Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, looking good. Nice, nice. Keep it up. I love it! right, everybody, that is +1 social resilience, which means you actually get more strength from your friends, neighbors, your family, your community. Now, a great way to boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch is better.
Here’s one more secret for you: Shaking someone’s hand for six seconds dramatically the level of oxytocin in your bloodstream, now that’s the hormone. That means that all of you who just hands are biochemically primed to like and want to help each other. This will during the break, so take advantage of the networking opportunities.
(Laughter)
Well, you have successfully your four quests, let’s see if I’ve successfully completed my mission to give you seven and a minutes of bonus life. Now I get to share one more little bit of science with you. It out that people who regularly boost these four types resilience — physical, mental, emotional and social — live 10 years longer than else. So this is true. If you are regularly the three-to-one positive emotion ratio, if you are never sitting still for more than hour at a time, if you are reaching out to one person you care every single day, if you are tackling tiny goals to boost your willpower, you will live 10 longer than everyone else, and here’s where that math I showed you earlier in.
So, the average life expectancy in the U.S. and the U.K. is 78.1 years, but 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 single year that you are 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, you are 184 minutes of life, or every single hour that you are boosting your types of resilience, like we just did together, you are earning 7.68245837 more of life.
Congratulations, those seven and a half minutes are all yours. You totally them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. You still have your special mission, your mission. How are you going to spend these minutes of bonus life?
Well, here’s suggestion. These seven and a half bonus minutes are 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 doing something that makes you happy, or that gets physically active, or puts you in touch with someone 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 is, you can keep going like that. Every hour of the day, day of your life, all the way to your deathbed, which now be 10 years later than it would have otherwise. And when you get there, than likely, you will not have any of those top five regrets, because you will 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)