I’m a gamer, so I like to have goals. I special missions and 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 by 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 bit skeptical. That’s okay, because it out — I have math to prove that is possible. It won’t make much sense now. I’ll explain it all later, pay attention to the number at the bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. will be my gift to you if I’m successful my mission.
Now, you have a secret mission too. Your is to figure out how you want to spend extra seven and a half minutes. And I think you should something unusual with them, because these are bonus minutes. weren’t going to have them anyway.
Now, because I’m a game designer, you might be to yourself, I know what she wants us to with those minutes, she wants us to spend them playing games. this is a totally reasonable assumption, given that I have quite a habit of encouraging people to spend more playing games. For example, in my first TED Talk, I propose that we should spend 21 billion hours a week, as a planet, playing games.
Now, 21 billion hours, it’s a lot of time. It’s much time, in fact, that the number one unsolicited that I have heard from people all over the world I gave that talk, is this: Jane, games are great and all, but your deathbed, are you really going 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 I were in town for a game developers’ conference, around and said — and I quote — “I hate games. of life. Imagine getting to the end of your life and regretting all that time.”
Now, I to take this problem seriously. I want games to be a force for in the world. I don’t want gamers to regret the they spent playing, time that I encouraged them to spend. So I have been thinking about this a lot lately. When we’re on our deathbeds, will we regret the time we spent playing games?
Now, may 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 the of our lives, recently issued a report on the most frequently regrets that people say when they are literally on their deathbeds. And that’s what want to share with you today — the top five of the dying.
Number one: I wish I hadn’t so hard. Number two: I wish I had stayed in touch with friends. Number three: I wish I had let myself be happier. Number four: wish I’d had the courage to express my true self. And number five: I wish I’d a life true to my dreams, instead of what others of me.
Now, as far as I know, no one told one of the hospice workers, “I wish I’d more time playing video games,” but when I hear these top five regrets of the dying, I can’t but hear five deep human cravings that games actually help us fulfill.
For example, I wish hadn’t worked so hard. For many people, this means, wish I’d spent more time with my family, with kids when they were growing up. Well, we know that playing games has tremendous family benefits. A recent study from Brigham University School of Family Life reported that parents who more time playing video games with their kids have stronger real-life relationships with them.
“I wish I’d stayed in touch with friends.” Hundreds of millions of people use social games like FarmVille or Words With to stay in daily contact with real-life friends and family. A study from the University of Michigan showed that these games incredibly powerful relationship-management tools. They help us stay connected with people in our social network that would otherwise grow distant from, if we weren’t playing games together.
“I wish I’d let be happier.” Well, here I can’t help but think of the groundbreaking clinical recently conducted at East Carolina University that showed that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes of online game a day was enough to create dramatic boosts in mood and long-term increases in happiness.
“I wish I’d the courage to express my true self.” Well, avatars are a to express our true selves, our most heroic, idealized version of who we become. You can see that in this alter ego portrait by Cooper of a gamer with his avatar. And Stanford University been doing research for five years now to document how playing a with an idealized avatar changes how we think and act in 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 Super Mario question mark. We’re going to back to this one.
But in the meantime, perhaps you’re wondering, who is this game designer be talking to 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 die. Really wanting to die.
Now let me tell you that story. It two years ago, when I hit my head and got a concussion. concussion didn’t heal properly, and after 30 days, I left with symptoms like nonstop headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss, fog. My doctor told me that in order to heal brain, I had to rest it. So I had avoid everything that triggered my symptoms. For me that no reading, no writing, no video games, no work or email, no running, no alcohol, no caffeine. other words — and I think you see where this is going — reason to live.
(Laughter)
Of course it’s meant to be funny, but all seriousness, suicidal ideation is quite common with traumatic brain injuries. 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.” It said, “The will never end.”
And these voices became so persistent so persuasive that I started to legitimately fear for my life, which is the time that I said myself after 34 days — and I will never this moment — I said, “I am either going to myself or I’m going to turn this into a game.”
Now, why game? I knew from researching the psychology of games for more than decade that when we play a game — and this in the scientific literature — we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re likely to reach out to others for help. I wanted to bring these traits to my real-life challenge, so I created a role-playing recovery game Jane the Concussion Slayer.
Now this became my new secret identity, the first thing I did as a slayer was call my twin sister — I have identical twin sister named Kelly — and tell her, “I’m a game to heal my brain, and I want to play with me.” This was an easier way to ask for help.
She became my first ally the game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together identified and battled the bad guys. Now this was anything that could trigger my symptoms and therefore slow the healing process, things like bright lights and crowded spaces. We also collected and activated power-ups. This was I could do on even my worst day to feel just little bit good, just a little bit productive. Things like my dog for 10 minutes, or getting out of bed walking around the block just once.
Now the game that simple: Adopt a secret identity, recruit your allies, battle bad guys, activate the power-ups. But even with a game so simple, within just a couple 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 for headaches or the cognitive symptoms. That lasted for more a year, and it was the hardest year of my by far. But even when I still had the symptoms, even while I was in pain, I stopped suffering.
Now what happened next with 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 hearing from people all over the world who were adopting their secret identity, recruiting their own allies, and they were getting “super better,” challenges like cancer and chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. Even people were it for terminal diagnoses like ALS. And I could tell from their messages and their videos the game 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. they even talked about feeling happier, even though they were in pain, even though were tackling the toughest challenge of their lives.
Now at 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? mean, if it hadn’t worked for me, there’s no way would have believed it was possible. Well, it turns out there’s some science here, too. Some people stronger and happier after a traumatic event. And that’s what was happening to us.
The game helping us experience what scientists call post-traumatic growth, which not something we usually hear about. We usually hear post-traumatic stress disorder. But scientists now know that a traumatic event doesn’t us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can use it as a to unleash our best qualities and lead happier lives.
Here are top five things that people with post-traumatic growth say: “My have changed.” “I’m not afraid to do what makes me happy.” “I feel to my friends and family.” “I understand myself better. I know who I really am now.” “I a new sense of meaning and purpose in my life.” “I’m better able to focus on goals and dreams.”
Now, does this sound familiar? It should, because the 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 event can our ability to lead a life with fewer regrets.
But how does it work? How you get from 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 phenomenon better, so devoured the scientific literature, and here’s what I learned. There are four kinds strength, or resilience, that contribute to post-traumatic growth, and there are validated activities that you can do every day to build up four kinds of resilience, and you don’t need a to do it.
I could tell you what these four types of strength are, but I’d rather experience them firsthand. I’d rather we all start building them up right now. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll play a quick game together. is where you earn the seven and a half of bonus life that I promised you earlier. All you to do is successfully complete the first four SuperBetter quests. And feel like 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 three steps, make your hands into fists, raise them over your head as as you can for five seconds, go! All right, I like the 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 itself faster. We know from the research that the one thing you can do to boost your physical resilience is to not sit still. That’s it takes. Every single second that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the of your heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody ready for your next quest? I want you 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 that. Bonus physical resilience. Well done, everyone. Now that’s +1 mental resilience, which means you have more mental focus, more discipline, determination willpower. We know from the scientific research that willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets stronger more you exercise it. So tackling a tiny challenge without giving up, even one as absurd as snapping fingers exactly 50 times or counting backwards from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically validated to boost your willpower.
So good job. Quest number three. Pick one: Because the room, fate’s really determined this for you, but here are two options. If you’re inside, find a window and out of it. If you’re outside, find a window and look in. Or do a quick or Google image search for “baby [your favorite animal.]”
Do it on your phones, or just out some baby animals, and I’ll put 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. 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, means you have the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or love, which we feel looking baby animals, when you need them most.
Here’s a secret from the scientific for you. If you can manage to experience three emotions for every one negative emotion over the course of hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your health your ability to successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. this is called the 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 by text, email, or Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, looking good. Nice, nice. it 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, community. Now, a great way to boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch is even better.
Here’s more secret for you: Shaking someone’s hand for six seconds dramatically raises the level oxytocin in your bloodstream, now that’s the trust hormone. That means that all you who just shook hands are biochemically primed to like want to 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 if I’ve successfully completed my mission to give you seven and a half minutes of bonus life. Now get to share one more little bit of science with you. It turns that people who regularly boost these four types of — physical, mental, emotional and social — live 10 years longer than else. So this is true. If you are regularly achieving the three-to-one positive ratio, if you are never sitting still for more than an hour 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 than everyone else, here’s where that math I showed you earlier comes in.
So, the average life expectancy the U.S. and the U.K. is 78.1 years, but we know from more than 1,000 peer-reviewed studies that you can add 10 years of life boosting your four types of resilience. So every single year that you are boosting four types of resilience, you’re actually earning .128 more years life or 46 more days of life, or 67,298 minutes of life, which means every single day, you are earning 184 of life, or every single hour that you are boosting four types of resilience, like we just did together, you are earning 7.68245837 more of life.
Congratulations, those seven and a half minutes are yours. You totally earned them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. You have your special mission, your secret mission. How are going to spend these minutes of bonus life?
Well, here’s suggestion. These seven and 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 a half minutes today doing something that makes you happy, or that gets you physically active, puts you in touch with someone you care about, or even just tackling a challenge, you’re going to boost your resilience, so you’re going to earn minutes.
And the good news is, you can keep like that. Every hour of the day, every day of your life, the way to your deathbed, which will now be 10 years later than it would otherwise. And when you get there, more than likely, will not have any of those top five regrets, you will have built up the strength and resilience to a life truer to your dreams. And with 10 extra years, might even have enough time to play a few games.
Thank you.
(Applause)