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 person in room by seven and a half minutes. Literally, you will live seven and a minutes longer than you would have otherwise, just because you watched this talk.
Some of you are looking little bit skeptical. That’s okay, because check it out — have math to prove that it is possible. It won’t make much sense now. I’ll explain all later, just pay attention to the number at bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. That will be my gift to you if I’m successful in mission.
Now, you have a secret mission too. Your mission is to out how you want to spend your extra seven and a half minutes. And think you should do something unusual with them, because these are minutes. You weren’t going to have them anyway.
Now, I’m a game designer, you might be thinking to yourself, I know what she wants us do 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, did propose that we should spend 21 billion hours a week, a planet, playing video games.
Now, 21 billion hours, it’s lot of time. It’s so much time, in fact, the number one unsolicited comment that I have heard from people over the world since I gave that talk, is this: Jane, games are great and all, on your deathbed, are you really going to wish you spent time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea is so — that games are a waste of time that we will come regret — that I hear it literally everywhere I go. example, true story: Just a few weeks ago, this driver, upon finding out that a friend and I were in town a game developers’ conference, turned around and said — and I quote — “I games. Waste of life. Imagine getting to the end of your life 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 spent playing, time that I encouraged them to spend. So I have been thinking about question a lot lately. When we’re on our deathbeds, will regret the time we spent playing games?
Now, this may surprise you, but it turns out there is some scientific research on this question. It’s true. Hospice workers, the people take care of us at the end of our lives, recently a report on the most frequently expressed regrets that people say when they are on their deathbeds. And that’s what I want to with you today — the top five regrets of the dying.
Number one: I wish hadn’t worked 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: I I’d had the courage to express my true self. 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 when I hear top five regrets of the dying, I can’t help hear five deep human cravings that games actually help fulfill.
For example, I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. many people, this means, I wish I’d spent more time my family, with my kids when they were growing up. Well, know that playing games together has tremendous family benefits. recent study from Brigham Young University School of Family Life reported that parents who spend more time video games with their kids have much stronger real-life relationships with them.
“I wish I’d stayed in with my friends.” Hundreds of millions of people use social games FarmVille or Words With Friends to stay in daily contact real-life friends and family. A recent study from the University Michigan showed that these games are incredibly powerful relationship-management tools. help us stay connected with people in our social that we would otherwise grow distant from, if we weren’t playing games together.
“I wish I’d let myself happier.” Well, here I can’t help but think of the groundbreaking clinical trials recently at East Carolina University that showed that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes of online game play a day enough to create dramatic boosts in mood and long-term in happiness.
“I wish I’d had the courage to express my self.” Well, avatars are a way to express our true selves, most heroic, idealized version of who we might become. You can see that in this ego portrait by Robbie Cooper of a gamer with his avatar. And Stanford has been doing research for five years now to document how a game with an idealized avatar changes how we think and act in real life, us more courageous, more ambitious, more committed to our goals.
“I wish I’d led a true to my dreams, and not what others expected of me.” Are games doing 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, perhaps you’re wondering, is this game designer to be talking to us deathbed regrets? And it’s true, I’ve never worked in hospice, I’ve never been on my deathbed. But recently 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 symptoms like nonstop headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss, mental fog. My doctor told me that in order to my brain, I had to rest it. So I to avoid everything that triggered my symptoms. For me meant no reading, no writing, no video games, no work or email, running, no alcohol, no caffeine. In other words — and I think you see where this going — no reason to live.
(Laughter)
Of course it’s meant to be funny, in all seriousness, suicidal ideation is quite common with brain injuries. It happens to one in three, and happened to me. My brain started telling me, “Jane, you want to die.” It said, “You’re going to get better.” It said, “The pain 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 forget moment — I said, “I am either going to myself or I’m going to turn this into a game.”
Now, a game? I knew from researching the psychology of games for more than a decade that when play a game — and this is in the 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 traits to my real-life challenge, I created a role-playing recovery game called Jane the Slayer.
Now this became my new secret identity, and the thing I did as a slayer was call my twin sister — have an identical twin sister named Kelly — and her, “I’m playing a game to heal my brain, and want you to play with me.” This was an way to ask for help.
She became my first ally in game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together we identified and battled the bad guys. Now was anything that could trigger my symptoms and therefore slow down healing process, things like bright lights and crowded spaces. We collected and 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 cuddling my dog for 10 minutes, or getting out bed and 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 so simple, within 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 the headaches or the cognitive symptoms. lasted for more than a year, and it was hardest year of my life by far. But even when still had the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, I stopped suffering.
Now what next with the game surprised me. I put up blog posts and videos online, explaining how to play. But everybody has a concussion, obviously, not everyone wants to be “the slayer,” I renamed the game SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing from people over the world who were adopting their own secret identity, recruiting their allies, and they were getting “super better,” facing challenges like and chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. Even people were playing it for terminal diagnoses like ALS. And could tell from their messages and their videos that the game helping them in the 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 in pain, even though they were tackling the toughest challenge of their lives.
Now at the time, I’m to myself, what is going on here? I mean, how a 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 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 happening to us.
The game was helping experience what scientists call post-traumatic growth, which is not something we hear about. We usually hear about post-traumatic stress disorder. scientists now know that a traumatic event doesn’t doom us to indefinitely. Instead, we can use it as a springboard to unleash our best and lead happier lives.
Here are the top five things people with post-traumatic growth say: “My priorities have changed.” “I’m not to do what makes me happy.” “I feel closer to my friends family.” “I understand myself better. I know who I am now.” “I have a new sense of meaning purpose in my life.” “I’m better able to focus on my goals 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 interesting, right? It seems that somehow, a traumatic event unlock our ability to lead a life with fewer regrets.
But does it work? How do you get from trauma to growth? Or better yet, is there a way get all the benefits of post-traumatic growth without the trauma, without having to your head in the first place? That would be good, right?
I wanted to understand the phenomenon better, so I devoured scientific literature, and here’s what I learned. There are four of strength, or resilience, that contribute to post-traumatic growth, and there are scientifically validated that you can do every day to build up these four kinds of resilience, and you don’t a trauma to do it.
I could tell you these four types of strength are, but I’d rather you experience firsthand. I’d rather we all start building them up together right now. Here’s we’re going to do. We’ll play a quick game together. This is where you earn seven and a half minutes of bonus life that I you earlier. All you have to do is successfully complete the four SuperBetter quests. And I feel like you can it. I have confidence in you.
So, everybody ready? This is your first quest. Here go. Pick one: Stand up and take three steps, or make hands into fists, raise them over your head as high you can for five seconds, go! All right, I like people doing both. You are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That is +1 physical resilience, which means that your body can withstand more stress and heal itself faster. know from the research that the number one thing you can do to boost your physical resilience is not sit still. That’s all it takes. Every single second that are not sitting still, you are actively improving the of your heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody for your next quest? I want you to snap your exactly 50 times, or count backwards from 100 by seven, this: 100, 93… Go!
(Snapping)
Don’t give up.
(Snapping)
Don’t let the counting 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. that’s worth +1 mental resilience, which means you have more mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. know from the scientific research that willpower actually works like a muscle. gets stronger 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 a scientifically validated way to boost your willpower.
So good job. number three. Pick one: Because of the room, fate’s really determined for you, but here are the two options. If you’re inside, find a 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 on your phones, just shout out some baby animals, and I’ll put them the screen. So, what do we 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 for that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, we’re just feeling there is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or love, which we feel looking at animals, when you need them most.
Here’s a secret from the scientific literature for you. If can manage to experience three positive emotions for every negative emotion over the course of an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your health your ability to successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. And this called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s my favorite SuperBetter trick, so keep it up.
All right, one, last quest: Shake someone’s hand for six seconds, send someone a quick thank you by text, email, Facebook Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, looking good. Nice, nice. Keep it up. love it! All right, everybody, that is +1 social resilience, which you actually get more strength from your friends, your neighbors, your family, your community. Now, a great way to social resilience 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 trust hormone. That means that all of you who shook hands are biochemically primed to like and want to each other. This will linger during the break, so take advantage the networking opportunities.
(Laughter)
Well, you have successfully completed four quests, let’s see if I’ve successfully completed my mission to give you seven and half minutes of bonus life. Now I get to one more little bit of science with you. It turns out people who regularly boost these four types of resilience — physical, mental, emotional and — live 10 years longer than everyone else. So this is true. If you regularly achieving the three-to-one positive emotion ratio, if you never sitting still for more than an hour at a time, if are reaching out to one person you care about every single day, if you tackling tiny goals to boost your willpower, you will live 10 longer than everyone else, and here’s where that math showed you earlier comes in.
So, the average life in the U.S. and the U.K. is 78.1 years, we know from more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies that can add 10 years of life by boosting your four types resilience. So every single year that you are boosting four types of resilience, you’re actually earning .128 more years of life or 46 days of life, or 67,298 more minutes of life, which means every single day, are earning 184 minutes of life, or every single hour you are boosting your four types of resilience, like just did together, you are earning 7.68245837 more minutes life.
Congratulations, those seven and a half minutes are all yours. 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 of bonus life?
Well, here’s my suggestion. seven and a half bonus minutes are kind of like genie’s wishes. You can your first wish to wish for a million more wishes. clever, right? So, if you spend these seven and a half minutes today doing that makes you happy, or that gets you physically active, puts you in touch with someone you care about, 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 life, all the way to your deathbed, which will now be 10 later than it would have otherwise. And when you there, more than likely, you will not have any those top five regrets, because you will have built up the strength and resilience to a life truer to your dreams. And with 10 years, you might even have enough time to play few more games.
Thank you.
(Applause)