I’m a gamer, so I like to have goals. like special missions and secret objectives. So here’s my special mission for this talk: I’m to try to increase the life span of every single person in this room by seven a half minutes. Literally, you will live seven and a minutes longer than you would have otherwise, just because watched this talk.
Some of you are looking a bit skeptical. That’s okay, because check it out — have math to prove that it is possible. It won’t make much now. I’ll explain it all later, just pay attention to the number at the bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. That be my gift to you if I’m successful in my mission.
Now, you a secret mission too. Your mission is to figure out how want to spend your extra seven and a half minutes. And I think 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, know what she wants us to do with those minutes, she us to spend them playing games. Now this is a totally reasonable assumption, given that I have quite a habit of encouraging people to spend more time playing games. example, in my first TED Talk, I did propose that we spend 21 billion hours a week, as a planet, playing video games.
Now, 21 billion hours, it’s lot of time. It’s so much time, in fact, that the 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 to regret — that I hear it literally everywhere I go. For example, true story: Just a few ago, this cab driver, upon finding out that a friend and I in town for a game developers’ conference, turned around and said — and I quote — “I games. Waste of life. Imagine getting to the end of life and regretting all that time.”
Now, I want to take this problem seriously. I want games to a force for good in the 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 this question a lately. When we’re on our deathbeds, will we regret the time spent playing games?
Now, this may surprise you, but it turns out is actually some scientific research on this question. It’s true. Hospice workers, people who take care of us at the end our lives, recently issued a report on the most frequently expressed regrets people say when they are literally on their deathbeds. And that’s what want to share with you today — the top five regrets of the dying.
Number one: wish I 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. four: I wish I’d had the courage to express true self. And number five: I wish I’d lived life true to my dreams, instead of what others expected of me.
Now, as as I know, no one ever told one of the hospice workers, “I I’d spent more time playing video games,” but when I hear these top regrets of the dying, I can’t help but hear five human cravings that games actually help us fulfill.
For example, I I hadn’t worked so hard. For many people, this means, I wish I’d spent more with my family, with my kids when they were up. Well, we know that playing games together has tremendous family benefits. A recent from Brigham Young University School of Family Life reported that parents spend more time playing video games with their kids have much stronger real-life relationships them.
“I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.” Hundreds millions of people use social games like FarmVille or Words With Friends 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 in our social network that we would otherwise grow distant from, we weren’t playing games together.
“I wish I’d let myself be happier.” Well, I can’t help but think of the groundbreaking clinical recently conducted at East Carolina University that showed that online can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes of game play a day was enough to create dramatic boosts 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 we might become. You can see that in this alter ego by Robbie Cooper of a gamer with his avatar. And Stanford has been doing research for five years now to document how playing game with an idealized avatar changes how we think and act in real life, making us more courageous, ambitious, more committed to our goals.
“I wish I’d led a life to my dreams, and not what others expected of me.” games doing this yet? I’m not sure, so I’ve left a Super question mark. We’re going to come back to this one.
But in meantime, perhaps you’re wondering, who is this game designer to 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 to die.
Now let me tell 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. My told me that in order to heal my brain, I had rest it. So I had to avoid everything that my symptoms. For me that meant no reading, no writing, no games, no work or email, no running, no alcohol, caffeine. In other words — and I think you see where 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 to one in three, and it happened to me. brain started telling me, “Jane, you want to die.” said, “You’re never going to get better.” It said, “The will never end.”
And these voices became so persistent and so persuasive that I started to fear for my life, which is the time that I said to after 34 days — and I will never forget this moment — I said, “I am either going kill myself or I’m going to turn this into a game.”
Now, why 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 tough challenges more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re more likely to reach out to others for help. I to bring these gamer traits to my real-life challenge, so created a role-playing recovery game called Jane the Concussion Slayer.
Now this became my new identity, and the first thing I did as a slayer was call twin sister — I have an identical twin sister named Kelly — and tell her, “I’m playing game to heal my brain, and I want you play with me.” This was an easier way to ask help.
She became my first ally in the game, my husband Kiyash joined next, together we identified and battled the bad guys. Now was anything that could trigger my symptoms and therefore slow down the healing process, things bright lights and crowded spaces. We also collected and power-ups. This was anything I could do on even my worst day to feel just little bit good, just a little bit productive. Things like cuddling my dog for 10 minutes, or getting of bed and walking around the block just once.
Now game was that simple: Adopt a secret identity, recruit allies, battle the bad guys, activate the power-ups. But with a game so simple, within just a couple days of starting play, that fog of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. It felt like miracle. Now it wasn’t a miracle cure for the headaches or the cognitive symptoms. That for more than a year, and it was the hardest of my life by far. But even when I had the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, stopped suffering.
Now what happened next with the game surprised me. put up some blog posts and videos online, explaining how to play. But not everybody a concussion, obviously, not everyone wants to be “the slayer,” so I the game SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing from people all over the world who were adopting own secret identity, recruiting their own allies, and they were getting “super better,” facing challenges cancer and chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. Even were playing it for terminal diagnoses like ALS. And I could tell their messages and their videos that the game was helping them in the same ways that helped me. They talked about feeling stronger and braver. They talked about feeling understood by their friends and family. And they even talked about happier, even though they were in pain, even though they were tackling the toughest of their lives.
Now at the time, I’m thinking to myself, is going on here? I mean, how could a game trivial intervene so powerfully in such serious, and in cases life-and-death, circumstances? I 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 get stronger and happier after a traumatic event. And that’s what happening to us.
The game was helping us experience scientists call post-traumatic growth, which is not something we usually hear about. We usually about post-traumatic stress disorder. But scientists now know that a event doesn’t doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can use it as a springboard to unleash best qualities and lead happier lives.
Here are the top things that people with post-traumatic growth say: “My priorities have changed.” “I’m afraid to do what makes me happy.” “I feel closer my friends and family.” “I understand myself better. I know who I really now.” “I have a new sense of meaning and 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 the 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 does it work? How do you get from trauma growth? Or better yet, is there a way to get all the benefits post-traumatic growth without the trauma, without having to hit your head in the first place? That be good, right?
I wanted to understand the phenomenon better, so I devoured the literature, and here’s what I learned. There are four kinds strength, or resilience, that contribute to post-traumatic growth, and there are scientifically activities 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 what these four of strength are, but I’d rather you experience them firsthand. I’d rather we all start them up together right now. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll play a quick game together. This where you earn the seven and a half minutes 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, ready? This is your first quest. Here we go. one: Stand up and take three steps, or make your hands fists, raise them over your head as high as you can five seconds, go! All right, I like the people both. You are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. is worth +1 physical resilience, which means that your body can more stress and heal itself faster. We know from the research that the number thing you can do to boost your physical resilience to not sit still. That’s all it takes. Every single second that you are not sitting still, you actively improving the health of your heart, and your 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 your counting to 50.
(Snapping)
(Laughter)
Nice. Wow. That’s the 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 from the scientific research that willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets the more you exercise it. So tackling a tiny challenge giving up, even one as absurd as snapping your fingers exactly 50 times or backwards from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically 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, find a and look out of it. If you’re outside, find a window look in. Or do a quick YouTube or Google 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 to see? Sloth, giraffe, elephant, snake. Okay, let’s see what we got. Baby and baby llamas. Everybody 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 is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you have the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like 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 positive emotions for every one emotion over the course of an hour, a day, week, you dramatically improve your health and your ability successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. And this is called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s my favorite trick, so keep it up.
All right, pick one, last quest: Shake someone’s hand for seconds, or send someone a quick thank you by text, email, Facebook or Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, good. Nice, nice. Keep it up. I love it! All right, everybody, that +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 gratitude. Touch is even better.
Here’s one 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 are biochemically primed to like and want to help other. This will linger during the break, so take of the networking opportunities.
(Laughter)
Well, you have successfully completed your four quests, let’s see if I’ve completed my mission to give you seven and a half minutes of bonus life. Now I to share one more little bit of science with you. It turns out that people regularly boost these four types of resilience — physical, mental, emotional and — live 10 years longer than everyone else. So this is true. you are regularly achieving the three-to-one positive emotion ratio, if you are never sitting still more than an hour 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 longer everyone else, and 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 from more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies that you can 10 years of life by boosting your four types of resilience. So single year that you are boosting your four types of resilience, you’re actually earning .128 more of life or 46 more days of life, or 67,298 more minutes of life, which means single day, you are earning 184 minutes of life, or every single hour that you boosting your four types of resilience, like we just did together, you are earning 7.68245837 more of life.
Congratulations, those seven and a half minutes all yours. You totally earned them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. still have your 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 your first wish to wish for a million more wishes. clever, right? So, if you spend these seven and half minutes today doing something that makes you happy, or gets you physically active, or puts you in touch someone you care about, or even just tackling a challenge, you’re going to boost your resilience, so you’re to earn more minutes.
And the good news is, you keep going like that. Every hour of the day, every day of your life, all way to your deathbed, which will now be 10 later than it would have otherwise. And when you get there, than likely, you will not have any of those top five regrets, you will have built up the strength and resilience to lead a truer to your dreams. And with 10 extra years, might even have enough time to play a few games.
Thank you.
(Applause)