I’m a gamer, I like to have goals. I like special missions and secret objectives. So here’s my special mission 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 will live seven and a half minutes than you would have otherwise, just because you watched talk.
Some of you are looking a little bit skeptical. That’s okay, because check it out — 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 at the bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. That will be my to you if I’m successful in my mission.
Now, you a secret mission too. Your mission is to figure out how you want to spend your extra 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 designer, you might be thinking to yourself, I know what she wants to do with those minutes, she wants us to spend playing games. Now this is a totally reasonable assumption, given that I have made a habit of encouraging people to spend more time playing games. For example, in my TED Talk, I did propose that we should spend 21 billion hours a week, as planet, playing video games.
Now, 21 billion hours, it’s lot of time. It’s so much time, in fact, that number one unsolicited comment that I have heard from people all over the since I gave that talk, is this: Jane, games great and all, but on your deathbed, are you going to wish you spent more time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea is so pervasive — games are a waste of time that we will come to — that I hear it literally everywhere I go. For example, true story: a few weeks ago, this cab driver, upon finding out that a friend I were in town for a game developers’ conference, turned around said — and I quote — “I hate games. of life. Imagine getting to the end of your life and all that time.”
Now, I want to take this seriously. I want games to be a force for good in the world. I don’t want to regret the time they spent playing, time that I encouraged 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 there 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 expressed regrets that people when they are literally on their deathbeds. And that’s what I want to 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 my 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 lived a life to my dreams, instead of what others expected of me.
Now, as far as I know, no one ever told of the hospice workers, “I wish I’d spent more time video games,” but when I hear these top five regrets of dying, I can’t help but 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. A recent from Brigham Young University School of Family Life reported parents who spend more time playing video games with their kids much stronger real-life relationships with them.
“I wish I’d stayed in touch my friends.” Hundreds of millions of people use social games FarmVille or Words With Friends to stay in daily contact with real-life friends family. A recent study from the University of Michigan that these games are incredibly powerful relationship-management tools. They help stay connected with people in our social network that would otherwise grow distant from, if we weren’t playing together.
“I wish I’d let myself be happier.” Well, here I can’t but think of the groundbreaking clinical trials recently conducted East Carolina University that showed that online games can pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes of online game a day was enough to create dramatic boosts in mood long-term increases in happiness.
“I wish I’d had the courage express my true self.” Well, avatars are a way to our true selves, our most heroic, idealized version of who might become. You can see that in this alter portrait by Robbie Cooper of a gamer with his avatar. And University has been doing research for five years now to how playing a game with an idealized avatar changes how think and act in real life, making us more courageous, ambitious, more committed to our goals.
“I wish I’d led life true to my dreams, and not what others expected of me.” Are doing this yet? I’m not 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, who is this game designer to talking to us about deathbed regrets? And it’s true, I’ve never worked in a hospice, I’ve never been my deathbed. But recently I did spend three months in bed, wanting to die. wanting to die.
Now let me tell you that story. It started two years ago, when hit my head and got a concussion. The concussion didn’t properly, and after 30 days, I was left with like nonstop headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss, mental fog. My doctor told me that order to heal my brain, I had to rest it. So I had avoid everything that triggered my symptoms. For me that meant reading, no writing, no video games, no work or email, running, no alcohol, no caffeine. In other words — I think you see where this 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 happens to one in three, and it to me. My brain started telling me, “Jane, you want to die.” It said, “You’re never going get better.” It said, “The pain will never end.”
And these voices became so persistent and so that I started to legitimately fear for my life, which is the that I said to myself after 34 days — I will never forget this moment — I said, “I am either going to myself or I’m going to turn this into a game.”
Now, why a game? I knew researching the psychology of games for more than a decade that when play a game — and this is in the scientific literature — we tackle tough with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re likely to reach out to others for help. I wanted to these gamer traits to my real-life challenge, so I a role-playing recovery game called Jane the Concussion Slayer.
Now became my new secret identity, and the first thing I did 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 you to play with me.” This was an way to ask for help.
She became my first ally in the game, 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. We also collected 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 like my 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 simple, within just a couple days of starting to play, that of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. It felt like a miracle. Now wasn’t a miracle cure for the headaches or the symptoms. That lasted for more than a year, and it the hardest year of my life by far. But even I still had the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, stopped suffering.
Now what happened next with the game me. I put up 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 like cancer and chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. Even people were playing for terminal diagnoses like ALS. And I could tell from their messages and their 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 by friends and family. And they even talked about feeling happier, even they were in pain, even though they were tackling the challenge of their lives.
Now at the time, I’m thinking myself, what is going on here? I mean, how could a so trivial intervene so powerfully in such serious, and some cases life-and-death, circumstances? I mean, if it hadn’t for me, there’s no way I would have believed it possible. Well, it turns out there’s some science here, too. Some people get stronger and after a traumatic event. And that’s what was happening to us.
The game was us experience what scientists call post-traumatic growth, which is not something we usually about. We usually hear about post-traumatic stress disorder. But scientists now know a traumatic event doesn’t doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, can use it as a springboard to unleash our best and lead happier lives.
Here are the top five that people with post-traumatic growth say: “My priorities have changed.” “I’m not afraid to do makes me happy.” “I feel closer to my friends family.” “I understand myself better. I know who I really am now.” “I have 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, because 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 event can our ability to lead a life with fewer regrets.
But how it work? How do you get from trauma to growth? Or better yet, there a way to 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 phenomenon better, so I devoured the scientific literature, and here’s what learned. There are four kinds of strength, or resilience, that contribute to post-traumatic growth, there are scientifically validated activities that you can do every day to build up these kinds of resilience, and you don’t need a trauma do it.
I could tell you what these four types of 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 seven and a half minutes of bonus life that promised you earlier. All you have to do is successfully complete the first SuperBetter quests. And I feel like you can do it. I confidence in you.
So, everybody ready? This is your quest. Here we go. Pick one: Stand up and take three steps, make your hands into fists, raise them over your head as high you can for five seconds, go! All right, I like the people doing both. You are overachievers. good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That is worth +1 physical resilience, which means your body can withstand more stress and heal itself faster. We know from the research that the number one you can do to boost your physical resilience is to sit still. That’s all it takes. Every single second that you are sitting still, you are actively improving the health of your heart, your lungs and brains.
Everybody ready for your next quest? I you to snap your fingers exactly 50 times, or count from 100 by seven, like this: 100, 93… Go!
(Snapping)
Don’t up.
(Snapping)
Don’t let the people counting down from 100 interfere with your to 50.
(Snapping)
(Laughter)
Nice. Wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that. physical resilience. Well done, everyone. Now that’s worth +1 resilience, which means you have more mental focus, more discipline, and willpower. We know from the scientific research that willpower works like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. So a tiny challenge without giving up, even one as absurd as snapping your fingers exactly 50 or counting backwards from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically validated way to your willpower.
So good job. Quest number three. Pick one: Because the room, fate’s really determined this for you, but here the two options. If you’re inside, find a window look out of it. If you’re outside, find 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 clapping that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, what we’re just feeling is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you have the to provoke powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or love, which feel looking at baby animals, when you need them most.
Here’s a secret from the scientific literature for you. you can manage to experience three positive emotions for every one negative over the course of an hour, a day, a week, dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully any problem you’re facing. And this is called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s favorite SuperBetter trick, so keep it up.
All right, pick one, last quest: someone’s hand for six seconds, or send someone a quick thank by text, email, Facebook or Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, looking good. Nice, nice. it up. I love it! All right, everybody, that is +1 resilience, which means you actually get more strength from friends, your neighbors, your family, your community. Now, a great way to social resilience is gratitude. Touch is even better.
Here’s one more secret for you: Shaking someone’s hand six seconds dramatically raises the level of oxytocin in bloodstream, now that’s the trust hormone. That means that all of you just shook hands are biochemically primed to like and want help each other. This will linger during the break, so take advantage the networking opportunities.
(Laughter)
Well, you have successfully completed your quests, let’s see if I’ve successfully completed my mission give you seven and a half minutes of bonus life. Now I 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 everyone else. So this is true. If you are regularly the three-to-one positive emotion ratio, if you are never sitting still for 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 your willpower, you will live 10 years longer than everyone else, and here’s that math I showed you earlier comes in.
So, the life expectancy in the U.S. and the U.K. is 78.1 years, we know from more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies you can add 10 years of life by boosting four types of resilience. So every single year that you are your four types of resilience, you’re actually earning .128 years of life or 46 more days of life, 67,298 more minutes of life, which means every single day, you earning 184 minutes of life, or every single hour that you are boosting your four of resilience, like we just did together, you are earning 7.68245837 more minutes of life.
Congratulations, those and a half minutes are all yours. You totally them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. You still have your mission, your secret mission. How are you going to these minutes of bonus life?
Well, here’s my suggestion. These seven a half bonus minutes are kind of like genie’s wishes. You can use first wish to wish for a million more wishes. Pretty clever, right? So, you spend these seven and a half minutes today doing something that makes you happy, or gets you 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 news is, you can keep going like that. Every of the day, every day of your life, all way to your deathbed, which will now be 10 years later than it would have otherwise. And when get there, more than likely, you will not have any those top five regrets, because you will have built up the strength and resilience lead a life truer to your dreams. And with 10 extra years, you might even enough time to play a few more games.
Thank you.
(Applause)