I’m a gamer, I like to have goals. I like special missions secret objectives. So here’s my special mission for this talk: I’m going to try to increase the life of every single person in this room by seven a half minutes. Literally, you will live seven and half minutes longer than you would have otherwise, just because you watched this talk.
Some of are looking a 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 the bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. 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 should do something unusual with them, because these are bonus minutes. You weren’t to have them anyway.
Now, because I’m a game designer, you might be to yourself, I 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 games. For example, in my first TED Talk, I did that we should spend 21 billion hours a week, as a planet, video games.
Now, 21 billion hours, it’s a lot time. It’s so much time, in fact, that the number unsolicited comment that I have heard from people all over the world I gave that talk, is this: Jane, games are and all, but on your deathbed, are you really to wish you spent more time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This idea is pervasive — that games are a waste of time that we will come to regret — that hear it literally everywhere I go. For example, true story: Just a few weeks ago, this cab driver, finding out that a friend and 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 and regretting all that time.”
Now, I want to take problem seriously. I want games to be a force for good in the world. don’t want gamers to regret the time they spent playing, time I encouraged them to spend. So I have been thinking about question a lot 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 is actually some scientific on this question. It’s true. Hospice workers, the people take care of us at the end of our lives, recently issued a report the most frequently expressed regrets that people say when are literally on their deathbeds. And that’s what I want share 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 my friends. Number three: I wish I had let myself be happier. Number four: I wish I’d had courage to express my true self. And number five: wish I’d lived a life true to my dreams, instead of what expected of me.
Now, as far as I know, no one told one of the hospice workers, “I wish I’d spent more playing video games,” but when I hear these top five regrets of dying, I can’t help but hear five deep human cravings games actually help us fulfill.
For example, I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. For people, this means, I wish I’d spent more time with family, with my kids when they were growing up. Well, we know that playing games together has family benefits. A recent study 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 with them.
“I I’d stayed in touch with my friends.” Hundreds of millions of people use social like FarmVille or Words With Friends to stay in daily contact real-life friends and family. A recent study from the University of Michigan showed that these are incredibly powerful relationship-management tools. They help us stay connected with people in our network that we would otherwise grow distant from, if we weren’t playing games together.
“I I’d let myself be happier.” Well, here I can’t help but think the groundbreaking clinical trials recently conducted at East Carolina University that showed online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes of online play a day was enough to create dramatic boosts mood and long-term increases in happiness.
“I wish I’d had the courage to my true self.” Well, avatars are a way to express our true selves, our heroic, idealized version of who we might become. You can see that in this alter ego portrait by Cooper of a gamer with his avatar. And Stanford University has been research for five years now to document how playing a game with an idealized avatar changes we think and act in real life, making us more courageous, more ambitious, more committed our goals.
“I wish I’d led a life true to my dreams, and not what others expected me.” Are games doing this yet? I’m not sure, so I’ve a Super Mario question mark. We’re going to come back to this one.
But in meantime, perhaps you’re wondering, who is this game designer to be talking us about deathbed regrets? And it’s true, I’ve never worked in a hospice, I’ve been on my deathbed. But recently I did spend months in bed, wanting to die. Really wanting to die.
Now let me tell you story. It started two years ago, when I hit my head and got a concussion. The concussion didn’t properly, and after 30 days, I was left with symptoms like nonstop headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss, fog. My doctor told me that in order to heal my brain, I to rest it. So I had to avoid everything that triggered my symptoms. me that meant no reading, no writing, no video games, no or email, no running, no alcohol, no caffeine. In words — and I think you see where this is — no reason to live.
(Laughter)
Of course 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. My started telling me, “Jane, you want to die.” It said, “You’re never going to better.” It said, “The pain will never end.”
And these became so persistent and so persuasive that I started to fear for my life, which is the time that said to myself after 34 days — and I will never forget this — I said, “I am either going to kill or I’m going to turn this into a game.”
Now, why a game? I knew from researching the psychology games for more than a decade that when we play a — and this is in the scientific literature — we tough challenges 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 this became new secret identity, and the first thing I did as slayer was call my twin sister — I have an identical twin sister named Kelly — tell her, “I’m playing a game to heal my brain, I want you to play with me.” This was an way to ask for help.
She became my first in the game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together we identified and the bad guys. Now this was anything that could trigger my symptoms and slow down the healing process, things like bright lights and crowded spaces. also collected and activated power-ups. This was anything I do on even my worst day to feel just a little bit good, just a little productive. Things like cuddling my dog for 10 minutes, getting out of bed and walking around the block 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, just a couple days of starting to play, that of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. felt like a miracle. Now it wasn’t a miracle cure for the or the cognitive symptoms. That lasted for more than a year, and was the hardest year of my life by far. even when I still had the symptoms, even while was still in pain, I stopped suffering.
Now what happened next with the surprised me. I put up some blog posts and videos online, explaining how to play. not everybody has a concussion, obviously, not everyone wants be “the slayer,” so I renamed the game SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing from people all over the world were adopting their own secret identity, recruiting their own allies, and they were getting “super better,” facing challenges like and chronic pain, depression and Crohn’s disease. Even people were it for terminal diagnoses like ALS. And I could from their messages and their videos that the game was helping in the same ways that it helped me. They talked about stronger and braver. They talked about feeling better understood by their friends family. And they even talked about feeling happier, even though were in pain, even though they were tackling the toughest of their lives.
Now at the time, I’m thinking to myself, what going on here? I mean, how could a game so intervene so powerfully in such serious, and in some life-and-death, circumstances? I mean, if it hadn’t worked for me, there’s way I would have believed it was possible. Well, turns out there’s some science here, too. Some people get and happier 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 we usually hear about. We usually hear about post-traumatic stress disorder. But scientists now know that a traumatic doesn’t doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can it as a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead lives.
Here are the top five things that people with post-traumatic 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 a sense of meaning and purpose in my life.” “I’m able to focus on my goals and dreams.”
Now, this sound familiar? It should, because the top five traits of post-traumatic growth are essentially the direct opposite the top five regrets of the dying. Now this interesting, right? It seems that somehow, a traumatic event can unlock our to lead a life with fewer regrets.
But how does it work? do you get from trauma to growth? Or better yet, is there way to get all the benefits of post-traumatic growth the trauma, without having to hit your head in first place? That would be good, right?
I wanted to the 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 that you can do every day to build up four kinds of resilience, and you don’t need a trauma to it.
I could tell you what these four types strength are, but I’d rather you experience them firsthand. I’d rather we start building them up together right now. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll play quick game together. This is where you earn the seven and a half of bonus life that I promised you earlier. All you have to is successfully complete the first four SuperBetter quests. And I feel like can do it. I have confidence in you.
So, ready? This is your first quest. Here we go. Pick one: Stand and take three steps, or make your hands into fists, raise them over your head high as you can for five seconds, go! All right, I like people doing both. You are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That worth +1 physical resilience, which means that your body can withstand stress and heal itself faster. We know from the research that number one thing you can do to boost your physical resilience is to not still. That’s all it takes. Every single second that you not sitting still, you are actively improving the health of heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody ready for your quest? I want you to snap your fingers exactly 50 times, or backwards from 100 by seven, like this: 100, 93… Go!
(Snapping)
Don’t give up.
(Snapping)
Don’t let the people counting from 100 interfere with your counting 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 mental resilience, means you have more 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. So tackling tiny challenge without giving up, even one as absurd as snapping fingers exactly 50 times or counting backwards from 100 by seven is actually scientifically validated way to boost your willpower.
So good job. Quest three. Pick one: Because of the room, fate’s really determined this for you, but 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 image search “baby [your favorite animal.]”
Do it on your phones, or shout out some baby animals, and I’ll put them on the screen. So, do we want to see? Sloth, giraffe, elephant, snake. Okay, let’s see what we got. dolphin and baby llamas. Everybody look. Got that? Okay, more. Baby elephant.
(Audience) Oh!
We’re clapping for that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, what we’re just feeling there is plus-one resilience, which means you have the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like or love, which we feel looking at baby animals, when need them most.
Here’s a secret from the scientific literature you. If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for every negative emotion 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 my SuperBetter trick, so keep it up.
All right, pick one, last quest: someone’s hand 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, family, your community. Now, a great way to boost social resilience gratitude. Touch is even better.
Here’s one more secret you: Shaking someone’s hand for six seconds dramatically raises 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 advantage of the networking opportunities.
(Laughter)
Well, you have successfully completed four quests, let’s see if I’ve successfully completed my mission to give you and a half minutes of bonus life. Now I get to share one more little of science with you. It turns out that people who regularly boost these four of resilience — 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 at a time, if you are out to one person you care about every single day, if you tackling tiny goals to boost your willpower, you will 10 years longer than everyone else, and here’s where math I showed you earlier comes in.
So, the life expectancy in the U.S. and the U.K. is 78.1 years, but we know more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies that you can add 10 of life by boosting your four types of resilience. every single year that you are boosting your four types resilience, you’re actually earning .128 more years of life 46 more days of life, or 67,298 more minutes of life, which every single day, you are earning 184 minutes of life, every single hour that you are boosting your four of resilience, like we just did together, you are 7.68245837 more minutes of life.
Congratulations, those seven and a half minutes are all yours. totally earned them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. You have your special mission, your secret mission. How are you to spend these minutes of bonus life?
Well, here’s my suggestion. These seven and 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, if you spend these and a half minutes today doing something that makes happy, or that gets you physically active, or puts you touch with someone you care about, or even just tackling tiny challenge, you’re going to boost your resilience, so you’re going to earn more minutes.
And the good is, you can keep going like that. Every hour the day, every day of your life, all the 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 lead a life truer to your dreams. And with 10 extra years, you might have enough time to play a few more games.
Thank you.
(Applause)