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 going try to increase the life span of every single person in room by seven and a half minutes. Literally, you will seven and a half minutes longer than you would have otherwise, just because watched this talk.
Some of you are looking a little bit skeptical. That’s okay, because it out — I have math to prove that it is possible. It won’t much sense now. I’ll explain it all later, just pay attention the number at the bottom: +7.68245837 minutes. That will be gift to you if I’m successful in my mission.
Now, you have a secret too. Your mission is to figure out how you want to spend your extra seven and half minutes. And I think you should do something unusual them, because these are bonus minutes. You weren’t going to them anyway.
Now, because I’m a game designer, you might be thinking yourself, I know what she wants us to do with those minutes, she us to spend them playing games. Now this is a reasonable assumption, given that I have made quite a habit of encouraging people to spend more time games. For example, in my first TED Talk, I did propose that we spend 21 billion hours a week, as a planet, playing games.
Now, 21 billion hours, it’s a lot of time. It’s much time, in fact, that the number one unsolicited comment that have heard from people all over the world since I gave talk, is this: Jane, games are great and all, but on your deathbed, are you going to wish you spent more time playing Angry Birds?
(Laughter)
This is so pervasive — that games are a waste of time that we will to regret — that I hear it literally everywhere go. For example, true story: Just a few weeks ago, this cab driver, upon finding out that friend and I were in town for a game developers’ conference, turned around and — and I quote — “I hate games. Waste of life. Imagine getting to end of your life and regretting all that time.”
Now, want to take this problem seriously. I want games to be a for good in the world. I don’t want gamers regret the time they spent playing, time that I encouraged them to spend. So I been thinking about this question a lot lately. When we’re our deathbeds, will we regret the time we spent 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 who care of us at the end of our lives, recently a report on the most frequently expressed regrets that people say when they are literally on deathbeds. And that’s what I want to share with 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 happier. Number four: I wish I’d had the courage to my true self. And number five: I wish I’d lived life true to my dreams, instead of what others expected of me.
Now, far as I know, no one ever told one of the workers, “I wish I’d spent more time playing video games,” but I hear these top five regrets of the dying, I can’t but hear five deep human cravings that games actually help us fulfill.
For example, I I hadn’t worked so hard. For many people, this means, I I’d spent more time with my family, with my when they were growing up. Well, we know that playing games together has tremendous family benefits. recent study from Brigham Young University School of Family reported that parents who spend more time playing video with their kids have much stronger real-life relationships with them.
“I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.” Hundreds millions of people use social games like FarmVille or Words Friends to stay in daily contact with real-life friends and family. A study from the University of Michigan showed that these are incredibly powerful relationship-management tools. They help us stay connected with people in our social network 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 think of the groundbreaking clinical trials recently conducted at East University that showed that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety depression. Just 30 minutes of online game play a day was enough to create dramatic in mood and long-term increases in happiness.
“I wish I’d had courage to express my true self.” Well, avatars are a way to express our true selves, most heroic, idealized version of who we might become. You can that in this alter ego portrait by Robbie Cooper of gamer with his avatar. And Stanford University has been doing research five years now to document how playing a game with an idealized avatar how we think and act in real life, making us courageous, more ambitious, more committed to our goals.
“I wish I’d led a life true my dreams, and not what others expected of me.” Are doing this yet? I’m not sure, so I’ve left a Super Mario mark. We’re going to come back to this one.
But the meantime, perhaps you’re wondering, who is this game to 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 months in bed, wanting to die. Really wanting to die.
Now let me you that story. It started two years ago, when I hit head and got a concussion. The concussion didn’t heal properly, and after 30 days, was left with symptoms like nonstop headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss, mental fog. doctor told me that in order to heal my brain, I to rest it. So I had to avoid everything that triggered my symptoms. For me that no reading, no writing, no video games, no work email, no running, no alcohol, no caffeine. In other — and I think you see where this is going — reason to live.
(Laughter)
Of course it’s meant to be funny, in all seriousness, suicidal ideation is quite common with traumatic brain injuries. happens to 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.” said, “The pain will never end.”
And these voices so persistent and so persuasive that I started to fear for my life, which is the time that I to myself after 34 days — and I will never forget this moment — said, “I am either going to kill myself or I’m to turn this into a game.”
Now, why a game? I knew from researching psychology of games for more than a decade that we play a game — and this is in scientific 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 real-life challenge, so I created a role-playing recovery game Jane the Concussion Slayer.
Now this became my new secret identity, and the first I did as a slayer was call my twin sister — I an identical twin sister named Kelly — and tell her, “I’m a game to heal my brain, and I want to play with me.” This was an easier way to ask for help.
She my first ally in the game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together we and battled the bad guys. Now this was anything that could trigger my symptoms and therefore down the healing process, things like bright lights and crowded spaces. We also collected and activated power-ups. This anything I could do on even my worst day feel just a little bit good, just a little bit productive. Things cuddling my dog for 10 minutes, or getting out of bed walking around the block just once.
Now the game was that simple: Adopt secret identity, recruit your allies, battle the bad guys, activate power-ups. But even with a game so simple, within just couple days of starting to play, that fog of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. felt like a 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 year of my life far. But even when I still had the symptoms, while I was still in pain, I stopped suffering.
Now what happened with the game surprised me. I put up some blog posts videos online, explaining how to play. But not everybody has a concussion, obviously, not everyone wants to “the slayer,” so I renamed the game SuperBetter.
And soon, I started hearing from people over the world who were adopting their own secret identity, recruiting their own allies, they were getting “super better,” facing challenges like cancer and chronic pain, and Crohn’s disease. Even people were playing it for diagnoses like ALS. And I could tell from their messages and their videos that the game helping them in the same ways that it helped me. They about feeling stronger and braver. They talked about feeling better understood their friends and family. And they even talked about feeling happier, even though were in pain, even though they were tackling the toughest challenge of their lives.
Now at time, I’m thinking to myself, what is going on here? mean, how could a game so trivial intervene so in such serious, and in some cases life-and-death, circumstances? I mean, if it hadn’t for me, there’s no way I would have believed it was possible. Well, it turns out there’s science here, too. Some people get stronger and happier after a event. And that’s what was happening to us.
The game was helping experience what scientists call post-traumatic growth, which is not we usually 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 best qualities and lead happier lives.
Here are the top five things that with post-traumatic growth say: “My priorities have changed.” “I’m not afraid do what makes me happy.” “I feel closer to my friends and family.” “I understand better. I know who I really am now.” “I have new 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 direct opposite of the top five regrets of the dying. this is interesting, right? It seems that somehow, a traumatic can unlock our ability to lead a life with regrets.
But how does it work? How do you get trauma to growth? Or better yet, is there a to get all the benefits of post-traumatic growth without the trauma, without having to hit your head the first place? That would be good, right?
I wanted to understand the better, so I devoured the scientific literature, and here’s what I learned. There are four kinds of strength, resilience, that contribute to post-traumatic growth, and there are scientifically validated activities that you do every day to build up these four kinds resilience, and you don’t need a trauma to do it.
I tell you what these four types of strength are, but I’d you experience them firsthand. I’d rather we all start building 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 of bonus that I promised you earlier. All you have to do is successfully complete the first SuperBetter quests. And I feel like you can do it. I have confidence in you.
So, ready? This is your first quest. Here we go. Pick one: up and take three steps, or make your hands fists, raise them over your head as high as you can for five seconds, go! right, I like the people doing both. You are overachievers. good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That is worth +1 resilience, which means that your body can withstand more stress and itself faster. We know from the research that the number one thing can do to boost your physical resilience is to not sit still. That’s all it takes. Every second that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the of your heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody ready for your next quest? I want 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 with your counting to 50.
(Snapping)
(Laughter)
Nice. Wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever that. Bonus physical resilience. Well done, everyone. Now that’s worth +1 mental resilience, which means have more mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. We know from the scientific research that willpower works like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. So tackling a challenge without giving up, even one as absurd as your fingers exactly 50 times or counting backwards from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically validated to boost your willpower.
So good job. Quest 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 a window and in. Or do a quick YouTube or Google image for “baby [your favorite animal.]”
Do it on your phones, or just shout out some 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 dolphin and baby llamas. look. Got that? Okay, one more. Baby elephant.
(Audience) Oh!
We’re for that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, what we’re feeling there is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you have the ability to powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or love, which we feel looking baby animals, when you need them most.
Here’s a from the scientific literature for you. If you can manage to experience positive emotions for every one negative emotion over the course an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your health and your ability successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. And this is called three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s my favorite SuperBetter trick, so keep up.
All right, pick one, last quest: Shake someone’s hand for six seconds, or send someone 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 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 secret you: Shaking someone’s hand for six seconds dramatically raises the level of in your bloodstream, now that’s the trust hormone. That means all of you who just shook hands are biochemically to like and want to help each other. This will linger during break, so take advantage of the networking opportunities.
(Laughter)
Well, you have completed your four quests, let’s see if I’ve successfully completed 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 out that people who regularly boost these four types of — physical, mental, emotional and social — 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 live 10 years longer than everyone else, and here’s where that math showed you earlier comes in.
So, the average life expectancy in the U.S. and U.K. is 78.1 years, but we know from more 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies that you can add 10 years 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 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 of life.
Congratulations, those seven and a half minutes all yours. You totally earned them.
Yeah!
(Applause)
Awesome. Wait, wait, wait. You still your special mission, your secret mission. How are you going to spend these minutes bonus life?
Well, here’s my suggestion. These seven and a half bonus minutes are of like genie’s wishes. You can use your first to wish for a million more wishes. Pretty clever, right? So, if spend these seven and a half minutes today doing something that you happy, or that gets you physically active, or puts you in touch someone you care about, or 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 day, every day of your life, all the way to your deathbed, which now be 10 years later than it would have otherwise. And when get there, more than likely, you will not have any of 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, might even have enough time to play a few games.
Thank you.
(Applause)