I’m a gamer, so I like to goals. I like special missions and secret objectives. So here’s special mission for this talk: I’m going to try to increase the life span of every single in this room by seven and a half minutes. Literally, you live seven and a half minutes longer than you would have otherwise, just you watched this talk.
Some of you are looking a little bit skeptical. That’s okay, because check it — I have math to prove that it is possible. It won’t 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 to you if I’m successful in mission.
Now, you have a secret mission too. Your mission is to figure out you want to spend your extra seven and a half minutes. And I think you do something unusual with them, because these are bonus minutes. You weren’t going 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 games. Now this is a totally reasonable assumption, given that I have made quite a habit of people to spend more time playing games. For example, in my first Talk, I did 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 so much time, in fact, that the one unsolicited comment that I have heard from people all over the world since I that talk, is this: Jane, games are great and all, but on your deathbed, you really going to 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 hear literally everywhere I go. For example, true story: Just a few weeks ago, cab driver, upon finding out that a friend and I were in town for game developers’ conference, turned around and said — and I — “I hate games. Waste of life. Imagine getting the end of your life and regretting all that time.”
Now, I want to take this seriously. I want games to be a force for in the world. I don’t want gamers to regret the time spent playing, time that I encouraged them to spend. So have been thinking about this question a lot lately. 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 on this question. It’s true. Hospice workers, the people who take of us at the end of our lives, recently a report on the most frequently expressed regrets that people say when they literally on their deathbeds. And that’s what I want share with you today — the top five regrets the dying.
Number one: I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. two: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Number three: I wish I let myself be happier. Number four: I wish I’d the courage to express my true self. And number five: wish I’d lived a life true to my dreams, instead of what others expected me.
Now, as far as I know, no one ever told of the hospice workers, “I wish I’d spent more time playing games,” but when I hear these top five regrets of the dying, I can’t help hear five deep human cravings that games actually help us fulfill.
For example, wish I hadn’t worked so hard. For many people, this means, I wish I’d spent time 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 who spend more time playing video games with their kids have much real-life relationships 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 in daily contact with real-life friends and family. A recent study from University of Michigan showed that these games are incredibly relationship-management tools. They help us stay connected with people in social network that we would otherwise grow distant from, if we weren’t playing games together.
“I wish I’d myself be happier.” Well, here I can’t help but think the groundbreaking clinical trials recently conducted at East Carolina that showed that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating 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 I’d had the courage to express my true self.” Well, avatars are a way to our true selves, our most heroic, idealized version of who we might become. You can see in this alter ego portrait by Robbie Cooper of a gamer with his avatar. And Stanford University been doing research for five years now to document playing a game 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 led a life to my dreams, and not what others expected of me.” Are games 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 hospice, I’ve never been on my deathbed. But recently I did spend three months in bed, to die. Really wanting to die.
Now let me tell you that story. It started two ago, when I hit my head and got a concussion. concussion didn’t heal properly, and after 30 days, I was 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 to everything that triggered my symptoms. For me that meant no reading, no writing, no video games, no or email, no running, no alcohol, no caffeine. In other words — and think you see where this is going — no to live.
(Laughter)
Of course it’s meant to be funny, in all seriousness, suicidal ideation is quite common with traumatic brain injuries. It happens one in three, and 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 persuasive that started to legitimately fear for my life, which is the time that said to myself after 34 days — and I will never forget this moment — I said, “I either going to kill myself or I’m going to turn into a game.”
Now, why a game? I knew from researching the psychology of for more than a decade that when we play a game — this is in the scientific literature — we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, determination, more optimism, and we’re more likely to reach to others for help. I wanted to bring these gamer to my real-life challenge, so I created a role-playing recovery game called Jane Concussion Slayer.
Now this became my new secret identity, the first thing I did as a slayer was my twin sister — I have an identical twin named Kelly — and tell her, “I’m playing a game to heal my brain, and I you to play with me.” This was an easier way to ask for help.
She became my 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 healing process, things like bright lights and crowded spaces. also collected and activated power-ups. This was anything I could on even my worst day to feel just a little good, just a little bit productive. Things like cuddling dog for 10 minutes, or getting out of bed and walking around the just once.
Now the game was that simple: Adopt a secret identity, recruit your allies, battle the guys, activate the power-ups. But even with a game so simple, within just a couple days of starting play, that fog of depression and anxiety went away. It vanished. It felt like a miracle. Now it wasn’t a miracle for the headaches or the cognitive symptoms. That lasted more than a year, and it was the hardest of my life by far. But even when I still had the symptoms, even while I was in pain, I stopped suffering.
Now what happened next with the game surprised me. I put some blog posts and videos online, explaining how to play. But not has a concussion, obviously, not everyone wants to be “the slayer,” so I renamed the SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing from people all the world who were adopting their own secret identity, their own allies, and they were getting “super better,” facing challenges like cancer chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. Even people were playing it for diagnoses like ALS. And I could tell from their messages their videos that the game was helping them in the same that it helped me. They talked about feeling stronger and braver. They talked about feeling better understood their friends and family. And they even talked about feeling happier, though they were in pain, even though they were tackling toughest challenge of their lives.
Now at the time, I’m to myself, what is going on here? I mean, how could a so trivial intervene so powerfully in such serious, and in cases life-and-death, circumstances? I mean, if it hadn’t worked me, there’s no way I would have believed it possible. Well, it turns out there’s some science here, too. people 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 traumatic event doesn’t doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, can use it as a springboard to unleash our best qualities 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 really am now.” “I have a new sense of meaning purpose in my life.” “I’m better able to focus on my goals and dreams.”
Now, does this familiar? It should, because the top five traits of post-traumatic growth essentially the direct opposite of the top five regrets of the dying. Now this is interesting, right? seems that somehow, a traumatic event can unlock our ability to a life with fewer regrets.
But how does it work? How do get from trauma to growth? Or better yet, is a way to get all the benefits of post-traumatic growth the trauma, without having to hit your head in the place? That would be good, right?
I wanted to understand phenomenon better, so I devoured the scientific literature, and here’s what learned. There are four kinds of strength, or resilience, contribute to post-traumatic growth, and there are scientifically validated activities that you can do day to build up these four kinds of resilience, and don’t need 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 all start building them up together right now. Here’s we’re going to do. We’ll play a quick game together. This is you earn the seven and a half minutes of bonus life that I promised you earlier. you have to do is successfully complete the first four SuperBetter quests. And I feel you can do it. I have confidence in you.
So, everybody ready? 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 five seconds, go! All right, like the 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 heal itself faster. We know from the research that number one thing you can do to boost your physical resilience is not sit still. That’s all it takes. Every single that you are not sitting still, you are actively the health of your heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody ready your next quest? I want you to snap your fingers exactly 50 times, count backwards from 100 by seven, like this: 100, 93… Go!
(Snapping)
Don’t give up.
(Snapping)
Don’t let the people counting down 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. that’s worth +1 mental resilience, which means you have mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. We know from the scientific research that actually works like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. tackling a tiny challenge without giving up, even one as as snapping your fingers exactly 50 times or counting from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically validated way boost your willpower.
So good job. Quest number three. Pick one: Because of the room, fate’s determined this for you, but here are the two options. If you’re inside, find a window and look of it. If you’re outside, find a window and look in. Or do a quick YouTube or Google search for “baby [your favorite animal.]”
Do it on your phones, or just shout some baby animals, and I’ll put them on the screen. So, what we want to see? Sloth, giraffe, elephant, snake. Okay, let’s see what we got. Baby dolphin and llamas. Everybody look. Got 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, which means you the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or love, which we looking at baby animals, when you need them most.
Here’s a from the scientific 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 to tackle any problem you’re facing. And this is called three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s my favorite SuperBetter trick, so it up.
All right, pick one, last quest: Shake someone’s for six seconds, or send someone a quick thank you by text, email, or Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, looking good. Nice, nice. Keep it up. I love it! All right, everybody, is +1 social resilience, which means you actually get more strength from your friends, your neighbors, your family, community. Now, a great way to boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch even better.
Here’s one more secret for you: Shaking someone’s hand six seconds dramatically raises the level of oxytocin in your bloodstream, now that’s the hormone. That means that all of you who just shook hands are biochemically primed to and want to help each other. This will linger during the break, so take 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 and a half minutes of bonus life. Now I get share one more little bit of science with you. It turns that people 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 emotion ratio, if you are never sitting still for more than an hour at a time, if you reaching out to one person you care about every day, if you are tackling tiny goals to boost willpower, you will live 10 years longer than everyone else, here’s where that math I showed you earlier comes in.
So, average life expectancy in the U.S. and the U.K. 78.1 years, but we know from more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific that you can add 10 years of life by boosting your types of resilience. So every single year that you are boosting your four of resilience, you’re actually earning .128 more years of or 46 more days of life, or 67,298 more minutes of life, which means every single day, you earning 184 minutes of life, or every single hour you are boosting your four types of resilience, like we just together, you are earning 7.68245837 more minutes of life.
Congratulations, those seven and a half are all 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 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 minutes today doing something that makes you happy, or that gets you active, or puts you in touch with someone you care about, or even just tackling tiny challenge, you’re going to boost your resilience, so you’re going earn more minutes.
And the good news is, you can keep going like that. Every hour of day, every day of your life, all the way to deathbed, which will now be 10 years later than it have otherwise. And when you get there, more than likely, you not have any of those top five regrets, because you will have built the strength and resilience to lead a life truer to your dreams. with 10 extra years, you might even have enough time to play a more games.
Thank you.
(Applause)