Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content

What if we could significantly improve our physical health through our mind? Social psychologist Dr. Ellen Langer has seen it happen first hand in countless studies at Harvard University and beyond. Dr. Langer, known as the ‘mother of mindfulness,’ joins Ricki to discuss how reshaping our perspective day to day can help us get in better shape, strengthen our decision making, and even improve chronic health conditions.

Check out Dr. Langer’s most recent book, ‘The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health’: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705365/the-mindful-body-by-ellen-j-langer/

Watch the Simpsons’ episode inspired by Dr. Langer’s study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9etT76QaKc

Follow Ricki Lake @rickilake on Instagram. And stay up to date with us @LemonadaMedia on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors.

Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Dr. Langer, Ricki Lake

Ricki Lake  00:02

This is The High Life with me, Ricki Lake, where we find out how my guests crack the code to living a full and vibrant life. So you can too. Now I have always been a big believer in positive thinking. When I’m optimistic and focus on the good things rather than the bad things feel easier, and I’ve gone through, as most of you know, many, many dark periods in my life, and having a glass half full attitude has gotten me through some very tough moments. I didn’t realize that there were decades worth of scientific studies behind this phenomena, and the woman responsible for many of these studies is Dr. Ellen Langer. Dr.Langer is an absolute legend in the field of positive psychology, the idea is that if you think positively, things will improve in your overall health and well being. She started all of that. She is known as the mother of mindfulness because of the impact she has had on the field of social psychology and Mind Body research. She is also a researcher, an artist and a social psychologist and a tenured professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University, the first woman to hold that position. Dr Langer has written more than 13 books, and her latest book, The mindful body thinking our way to chronic health, explores the power of our minds in affecting our overall health. Welcome to the show, Dr. Langer.

 

Dr. Langer  01:19

My pleasure. Nice to see you Ricki.

 

Ricki Lake  01:21

It’s a pleasure. Thank you. And how can I refer to you? Dr Langer, or do you prefer Ellen?

 

Dr. Langer  01:26

My grandkids call me cosmic leader.

 

Ricki Lake  01:29

Okay.

 

Dr. Langer  01:30

I don’t care. You know, I It’s up to you. But since I tend to be fun and silly, maybe if you call me Doctor or professor, okay, it still gives the gravitas to what I’m saying.

 

Ricki Lake  01:43

Got it? This is the closest I’ll ever get to Harvard. Okay, well, I I start with my guests. I asked this first question, and you can tell me anything. What is bringing you joy lately?

 

Dr. Langer  01:56

Oh, that’s an interesting question, because for me, each moment is like each other, I sort of, I think I marked the edge of the optimism continuum. And what people don’t understand. It’s not a matter of being positive, because if you try to be positive, that means you’re allowing for the opposite, for negative, as if they’re both real. And it turns out, things in and of themselves, they’re not positive then nothing. It all depends on how we frame them. Now, the more mindful you are, the more potential understandings. And if there’s an event that you can understand in six ways, and one of those ways makes you crazy, and the others please you, why would you choose that negative version? So the optimism, the positivity, comes from a choice, but not because the event itself is good. It’s the perspective. Yeah, exactly because, you know, people are stressed. They think, you know something is going to happen, and when it happens, it’s going to be awful. And one can attack both of those parts. First, we don’t know what’s going to happen. So if you simply give yourself three reasons, a thing might not happen, you’re immediately less stressed. Maybe it’ll happen, maybe you won’t. But let’s do the other part. But let’s assume it does happen. How is that actually a good thing? Right? And when you know, once you can do that, then life just is, and so I wake up, you know, smiling. I was very lucky as a child, my parents were wonderfully supportive. And probably you seem to me a little like this. Also Ricki, that in my family, my father would say periodically, cheer down. No one ever had to tell me to cheer up, really.

 

Ricki Lake  03:42

So you just and, do you believe that’s like, is it nature? Is it nurture?

 

Dr. Langer  03:46

I think virtually everything is nurture, and that’s why I keep writing all of these books, to show people how they, too, can change their lives. And the essence of the mindful body is not just happiness, but our health, basically, is just a thought away.

 

Ricki Lake  04:05

Yeah, well, there’s we got to go backwards, because here’s the thing, not all of us went to Harvard. I’m like, the lay person. Okay, so I want you to, like, talk to me like I’m a 12 year old. So how did you get into this field?

 

Dr. Langer  04:18

Yeah, that’s an interesting question. As I said, I grew up in a very supportive household, and so I was always happy, and then I’d be face to face with people who weren’t, and I just naturally say, well, but why don’t you look at it this way? And so this became a career, I guess, after me.

 

Ricki Lake  04:36

Because I’m the same way. Dr Langer, I feel like I’m also I’m someone who’s super cheerful. I see the glass is half full. Here’s the thing you say. It’s nurture. My sister and I. It’s just the two of us. Okay, we’re 14 months apart. My younger sister, she is the opposite. We both grew up in the same.

 

Dr. Langer  04:53

Not the same, environment. First of all, is she your younger sister?

 

Ricki Lake  04:57

She’s my younger sister.

 

Dr. Langer  04:59

Yeah. So her environment consists of an older sister, an older sister who’s cheerful, and probably the only way she could distinguish herself was to be on the other side. Ah. Now the you know, the effects of the environment are very, very subtle. You know, when you think about is the older sister. The intellectual environment consists of two adults and that child. Now the younger sister has two adults, but it’s all watered down by, you know, another.

 

Ricki Lake  05:28

By the attention that the older child is getting.

 

Dr. Langer  05:30

Not just the attention, but just if we say, you know that here you’ve got all of these really smart people around you, experienced older and then your younger sister has, you know, somebody who doesn’t know what she’s doing, because at that age, you didn’t, and it’s a very different environment. Then I think that by believing this, regardless of some ultimate truth that may reveal itself, it leads us to behave differently. You know, if you don’t believe, there’s a way to affect a change in things, you’re not going I was born this way. So student of mine did a wonderful study with about people’s beliefs in genetics. You know, your nature, part of you. And what she did was to tell people she This is Ali from Stanford. Now she assessed people’s genetic background and did they have the gene for energy versus fatigue? And so you either one of these people who’s very energetic genetically, or you’re not energetic. And then she told half of the people that they were energetic or that they weren’t energetic, all right, so you are, and you’re told you are, you are, you’re told you’re not.

 

Ricki Lake  06:41

sSo that reinforces everything, yeah.

 

Dr. Langer  06:44

People’s belief determine their behavior, rather than that genetic difference.

 

Ricki Lake  06:50

Can you tell me about the placebo test that you did?

 

Dr. Langer  06:54

Yeah, sure, they placebo. I mean this, you know. So a lot of my work and a lot of the experiments that are described in the mindful body are all about my theory of mind, body unity. And if you just think about it, you know people in the past thought they were two separate things. The medical world believed, not that many decades ago, that your thoughts, your emotions, stress, had nothing to do with disease. The only way you were going to get sick was the introduction of an antigen, a pathogen, bacteria, okay? And now everybody knows that our thoughts matter, but they matter much more than people even realize. And so when you talk about mind body connection, you have the problem, how are they connected? And I say, these are just words. Let’s put the human back together, the mind and body, and see it as one thing, and let’s see how far we can push that idea, how much by just changing your mind, we can change about your body. So the placebo was a very early instance of this. Everybody knows you take this nothing, a sugar pill, and for to be a placebo, it means it has no active ingredients. You take this nothing, you think it’s something, and you heal. How does that happen?

 

Ricki Lake  08:11

Yeah. How does that happen?  Tell me.

 

Dr. Langer  08:13

The mind body unity idea explains how it happens. Because if it’s one thing and you believe that you’re now, well, all of your body will will be affected. So we did a study on the nocebo. The Nocebo, so the placebo, you take nothing, you think it’s something. It does wonderful things. The Nocebo, you take something, but you think it’s nothing, and it gets rid of those, those things.

 

Ricki Lake  08:38

So can you give like, Can you be more specific, so what was it supposed to treat?

 

Dr. Langer  08:42

Let me tell you about our study, all right. So we asked chambermaids. You know, chambermaids, the women who are cleaning hotel and motel exercising all day long. We say, How much exercise are you getting? They say they’re not getting any exercise because they think, and according to the Surgeon General, exercise is what you do afterward, because the Surgeon General sits behind a desk like you and I are right now and Okay, so these are women who think they’re not getting any exercise now, if exercise is good for you, they should be healthier than similar others who are not getting any exercise, right, right? Okay, listen to what happens. We put them into two groups. Very simple study, and we’re going to teach one group that their work is exercise. We say making a bed is like working at this machine at the gym, washing the windows is like working at the southern machine. So we persuade them that their work is exercise. So now we have two groups. One group that knows their work is exercise, the other group that still doesn’t know it all we’ve changed are their minds. We take many, many measures before we start. The groups aren’t different. Once we get started. They’re not eating any differently. They’re not working any harder.

 

Ricki Lake  09:58

What are you measuring? What are you. During their like heart rate, like that, their their overall health.

 

Dr. Langer  10:03

Everything, yeah, then we find out that those people who simply changed their mind lost weight. There was a change in waist to hip ratio, body mass index and their blood pressure came down just by changing their mind.

 

Ricki Lake  10:17

Wow.

 

Dr. Langer  10:18

Let me that was an early I have so many of these stuff. You know the very first one, Ricky, you should know this one. It’s a famous study. And I can say it’s famous because if you tune in to the Simpsons, go to Havana, they actually talk about the study. You made it to the Simpsons. Do they credit it? I made it to wow. That’s how you know you made it, right? Yeah. So what we did for the very first of these tests of this Mind Body unity idea was to retrofit a retreat to 20 years ago. Wasn’t a Hollywood set, but as much as we could afford, it was taking people back to the past. So we have these old men now who are going to live there as if they are the younger selves. So they’re going to be discussing events of the past. We did this in 1979 so we took them back to 1959 and they’re talking about Khrushchev. They’re watching the untouchables, you know, everything from the past, but as if it’s just happening right now. This was the counterclockwise study, exactly. And now, in a week, without any medical intervention, their vision improved, their hearing improved, their strength, their memory, and they looked noticeably under.

 

Ricki Lake  11:24

Yeah. But how old were these people that you were studying?

 

Dr. Langer  11:27

Well, it’s interesting because they were more or less in their late 70s, okay, but that was when 70 was more like 90, right, right? It was a long time ago. Remember, this is back in 1979.

 

Ricki Lake  11:38

What’s that movie? What was that movie about the the old people that that went and felt younger.

 

Dr. Langer  11:43

Cocoon?

 

Ricki Lake  11:44

Yeah, cocoon. It reminds me of that, no.

 

Dr. Langer  11:49

Okay, so a more recent study, in fact, the most recent study that I did with my graduate student Peter ungo, we inflict a wound, not a big wound. I’m not a sadist, and even if I were, I don’t think the powers that be would let me do it.

 

Ricki Lake  12:02

Yeah, what kind of wound? How do you do it?

 

Dr. Langer  12:04

You know, the those Chinese cupping thing? So your arm is just colored. It’s a wound, not a big wound, but it will okay. So we have three groups in each case, you’re sitting in front of a clock, and unbeknownst to you, the clock is rigged. So for a third of the people, the clock is going twice as fast as real time. For a third of the people, it’s going half as fast as real time. For a third of the people, it’s going real time. Now, most people would assume before this study that the wound is going to heal. When it heals, it has nothing to do with looking at a clock. However, the fact of the matter was, the wound healed based on perceived time, clock, time. And we did a study with people they wake up in a sleep lab. We’ve again played with the clock so they think they got two hours more sleep than they got two hours fewer, or the amount of sleep they got. Biological and cognitive functioning seem to follow perceived amount of sleep.

 

Ricki Lake  13:09

It’s so, oh my god, it’s fascinating. So how do you explain that?

 

Dr. Langer  13:12

It’s because we limit ourselves with almost everything we do. In fact, I have a part of the book where I talk about better than better, because much of the time when you have a problem, and then even professionals try to help you with it. So it was bad, now it’s better, but ah, and you don’t even realize there’s a whole other way that all of this could be handled that leads us to enormous health and happiness. And I’m going to keep talking fast so I don’t give you a chance to interrupt me. One of the things that about happiness, you know, we make people more mindful, having nothing to do with meditation, and they live longer. I mean, we have wonderful findings with respect to health. As far as happiness is concerned, it’s sort of interesting to me, when I look back at all these decades of work that I’ve done, that the thing that meant the most to me was the realization that behavior makes sense from the actor’s perspective, or else, he or she wouldn’t do it. Nobody wakes up and says, you know, today, I’m going to be obnoxious, rigid and clumsy. When we see people you know and cast aspersions, see them in this negative light. What are they intending? I enjoy being spontaneous. There are times I may jump the gun and be impulsive, and you show me all, oh, gee, I don’t want to be impulsive, but as long as I value being spontaneous, I’m going to be impulse. It turns out, every single negative thing you think about yourself or anybody else, every single one has an equally strong but oppositely valence alternative. Each of those negatives has a positive. And that you see that when you’re more mindful. So imagine what this does for your sense of yourself and your relationships. I can’t stand you. You’re so damn inconsistent. Well, if I now pay attention and say your behavior makes sense from your perspective, or else, you wouldn’t do it. What is the positive version of being inconsistent? From your perspective? You’re flexible, I kind of love that about you, so I don’t want to change you anymore. And you appreciate my spontaneity, so you don’t want to change my impulsivity anymore.

 

Ricki Lake  15:34

So you appreciate me interrupting you?

 

Dr. Langer  15:37

Yes, because if you don’t, you’re never going to get a chance to say anything.

 

Ricki Lake  15:42

Exactly okay, I have so many more questions, but I gotta take a quick break. We’ll be right back.

 

Ricki Lake  15:58

You’re known as the mother of mindfulness. Now. How did you get that title, and can you define mindfulness?

 

Dr. Langer  16:03

Yeah, okay, so I’m probably considered the mother of mindfulness since I’ve been studying it since in very early 70s. So it’s a long time. And mindfulness is we study it as media. It’s a very simple process of noticing. Now it’s kind of cute. When people say, be in the present. It’s lovely, but it’s empty. The reason for that, Ricky, is that when you’re not in the present, you don’t know. You’re not in the present, you’re not there to know. And 45 years of research has shown me that virtually all of us are mindless, almost all the time, some more than others, probably, so yes, but most of us, almost all the time anyway, with a lot of room for for growth. Look, you know, I’ve been studying this for forever. I’m the mother of mindfulness, and not infrequently, I’ll do something, you know, totally mindless. The only difference is that you might get annoyed at yourself to see you’re mindless. I say yes, I’m right, and how to change it. But two ways to get there. One is bottom up, which is just notice new things. You know, if your new love, Notice five new things about him or her, the thing that you’re working on, notice, you know, three, five new things about it. Take a walk outside and as you notice the things you know, things that you thought you knew, and you see you didn’t know them well at all, your attention naturally goes to them. The other is top down, which is, and this is a harder one, but more complete. So now we don’t know anything. Everything is always changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives. Now, when you know you don’t know, then you naturally pay attention. So if you were going to come visit me in Cambridge, you’ve never been to my house, you wouldn’t have to practice anything. You’d walk in. You’d look, did she do that painting? What is that thing over there? What is she reading? You know, whatever questions would be naturally interesting to you. So often times, when I give these lectures and now with all these podcasts, to the whole world to know the answer to this one, I just hope that it generalizes. I ask people, How much is one plus one? This is the one thing that everybody thinks they know. Two. It’s two. Okay, right? But it isn’t always two. In fact, if you add one cloud to one cloud, one plus one is one. You add one wad of chewing gum to one watt of chewing gum. In the real world, it doesn’t equal two. You take one lasagna and you add one lasagna. One plus one is one. It’s just a bigger lasagna. It’s double my favorite food. Okay, but the point is that now that you know that one in one isn’t always two, all of a sudden you have a choice. How does it connect to mindfulness? Because the more the more uncertain you are, the the fewer number of these absolutes you buy into maybe this will be clear. You know, as you get older, you start to fall apart. Well, no, I mean, everybody doesn’t fall apart. You know that, as you get older, your eyesight gets worse. I don’t know my eyes. I’m 77 you know, my eyesight is still terrific.

 

Ricki Lake  19:16

You’re very lucky. I just had eye surgery yesterday.

 

Dr. Langer  19:19

Oh, wow. So you understand the relationship between how things become self fulfilling prophecies. Mm, hmm. If you’re told that when you get older, your body just starts to fall apart. So I’m 77 I hurt my wrist. What am I going to do about it? Nothing. What do you expect as you get older, you start to fall apart. You on the other hand, being in the prime of your life, young, vital.

 

Ricki Lake  19:46

Thank you. I’m 56 and I do consider myself to be in my prom my 50s. And yeah.

 

Dr. Langer  19:53

Track of the story, and then we’ll talk about.

 

Ricki Lake  19:55

Okay, sorry.

 

Dr. Langer  19:57

Okay, so at 56 Well, let’s make you younger. Let’s say, let’s take a 20 year old. Okay, so a 20 year old who hurts her wrist knows that her wrist isn’t supposed to hurt, so she’s going to do things to make her wrist better. I if I believed which I don’t that as you get older, you fall apart. So I don’t do anything to make my wrist better. So in a very simple way, she’s making her is better. I’m letting mine fall further and further. Obviously down the road, she’s purpose is going to be fine, and mine not.

 

Ricki Lake  20:29

Yeah, so It’s mind over matter.

 

Dr. Langer  20:31

Yes, it yes.

 

Ricki Lake  20:34

So my being mindful is another word for being open minded.

 

Dr. Langer  20:40

Yes, except that when we use these words like be in the present, be open minded, it’s not clear what we mean by them. Nobody thinks that their minds are closed. The most close go to the most closed minded, bigoted person you know, and that’s and they don’t believe that’s right. Their minds are open, alright, right? So being mindful essentially means that you’re aware that everything is always changing that you don’t know, and even when you find out that’s only a momentary truth, so to speak, that all absolutes become conditional. Everything becomes possible. So if you take something like stress, so the world believes, much of the world, not I am possibly not you, that stress is necessary, everybody is stressed. Well, no stress comes from your beliefs. Now, as we said before, if you don’t believe that something terrible is going to happen. You’re not going to be stressed. I have a few one liners for your listeners. One is, next time you’re stressed, ask yourself, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience? It’s almost never a tragedy, right? Oh my god, I missed the appointment. I banged the car. So what, and so then you regain your composure. Most things that we worry about never happen, but the worry itself wears the system down. And I think that stress is actually the major killer out there, that if, no matter what disease you had, if you were stress free and increase the amount of mindfulness rather than decrease, which usually happens when you’re told you have a chronic illness, that most of the effects of the disease would go away.

 

Ricki Lake  22:35

Dr Langer, do you know of Dr Sarno and his book healing back pain and TMS. Are you familiar with that? So, okay, so I have Nicole sacks as a former psychotherapist of mine, and she’s a protege of his work, and I had something so I lost my second husband to suicide and bipolar disorder seven years ago, and I had an experience a year later, a year and a half, almost a year and a half after his death, where I had crippling sciatica, out of nowhere, out of nowhere, and what I learned through doing this journal speak and kind of tapping into just these feelings I was having that I didn’t know I was having, and it went away. It took six weeks, and it was like the brain, nervous system, body connection, that I was able to kind of realize that I had this UN unknown rage towards my hut, my husband, who took his life. Does any of that sound familiar with the work that you do?

 

Dr. Langer  23:34

Yeah. I mean, I think that there are many things that we can do that in if in doing them, we think we’re going to become better, we will become better. You know, some of the most exciting research out other people’s labs come from Sham surgeries. So they take people who have Parkinson’s, for example, they go for surgery. The surgery helps them. They heal at least two years out, they take people who think they’re getting the real surgery, but instead they’re getting a sham procedure where the head is actually cut open, but nothing surgical is really happening, and then it’s sewn back up. They also, two years out, are healed so and those things come from our beliefs. Wow, so. And I say the power of this is extraordinary, you know. So you put all of this together, and from many different labs, you know, lots coming from ours. For the last 45 years, there’s research that’s remarkable on imagined exercise I know, which is a nice counterpoint to the chambermaid study I mentioned to you a moment ago. Here you’ll have one group lifting weights, literally, then you have another group that’s imagining themselves lifting weights, and the imagined group ends up with the same. And muscle growth. You’re kidding, you know, and but all of this speaks to so many things that we can do where it doesn’t occur to us. You know, when you’re told you have a chronic illness, for most people, they get depressed. They reduce the amount of joy and excitement in their lives, and that joy and excitement is mindful when the neurons are firing, and that’s good for your health. You could be doing, you know, you can’t, if you’re really ill, spend time in the gym, but you could do this imagined exercise. And then we have a psychological treatment, which I call attention to symptom variability. That’s just a fancy word for noticing change. And noticing change just means being mindful, okay, realizing that things are changing. All right? So when somebody is given a diagnosis of a chronic illness, for most of us, we think our symptoms are going to stay the same or get worse. Nothing only moves in one direction. Nothing the stock market right now is doing wonderfully, but it doesn’t go up in a straight line, right? Goes up and it goes down a little and and we say it’s going up when the up is more than the down. Same thing with pain, if any symptom, nobody is in pain of equal measure all the time. You’re just not so what we do is we call people and we ask, okay, how is it now? Whatever the symptom is, is it better or worse than the last time we spoke? And why? Because several things happen with this. The first, as soon as you know you have some treatment that you can engage in yourself. You don’t feel helpless. And you know, when you give in a chronic diagnosis of a chronic illness, first thing we feel is helpless. God knows how long it’s going to be till we can go see the doctor. So now we’re feeling we can do something for ourselves. Second, as soon as you see that the symptom is now a little better. That feels good. Then you start realizing, you know, maybe, maybe there is some hope third, that by asking the very important question, why is it better now than before? Or you can even ask, why is it worse? That initiates a mindful search, alright, so let’s say you think you’re stressed all the time. No one is stressed all the time. So I’m going to call you periodically and ask you, so how is it now? Is it better or worse than the last time? So we keep doing this, and eventually you come to see Ricky, you know you’re maximally stressed when you’re talking to Ellen Langer?

 

Ricki Lake  27:39

Well, because you’re focusing on it, because you’re right, yeah.

 

Dr. Langer  27:42

But if that’s the case, the answer is simple, don’t talk to me, right? Okay, so what happens is that by looking for how, why it’s better now than before, um, the neurons are firing and it’s good for your health, and you’re more likely, I believe, to find a solution if you’re looking for.

 

Ricki Lake  28:02

Okay, I have so many more questions, but I got to take a quick break. We’ll be right back.

 

Ricki Lake  28:16

My sister suffers from ulcerative colitis. She has horrific symptoms. Your answer to her is, what?

 

Dr. Langer  28:25

Well, I’d say, read the book, because there’s going to be a lot in it that should be helpful, and then try this attention to variability. So in the study, we call the person periodically, you know, but you can do it yourself. Set your smartphone to ring in an hour when it rings, ask yourself, so how is the symptom? Is it better or worse than the last time? Now, set it for an hour and 40 minutes, three hours and 10 minutes doesn’t matter, and you just keep asking yourself the question and notice and that noticing itself is good for you. And then you may see why. There’s why it’s more or less, you know, sometimes people over attribute their symptoms to a disorder, so arthritis, and if we if you did this, you might see that it was that gardening that’s caused all the pain, not the arthritis. And as soon as you see that, then, you know, it’s easy to make changes, not to stop gardening, but to perhaps do it differently.

 

Ricki Lake  29:26

So this, this research, the attention to symptom variability, treatment, what were the improvements exactly, with all of these people in the study.

 

Dr. Langer  29:33

The symptoms went away virtually for all of those disorders, all of them. Yeah, now it’s like anything else when you say horses don’t eat meat. This is research, so surely it’s not. Every single horse is not eating meat, no matter how little meat is mixed with how much green and so on. All research are probability statements. But the mere fact that even for some people that were able to get positive. Of results, and it’s more than just for some or else we couldn’t publish these studies. You know, should give everybody cause to pause and move in that direction, because there’s no downside while you’re waiting for whatever treatment, the medical and also, it’s information you can give to a doctor.

 

Ricki Lake  30:20

I agree, what do you think about manifestation?

 

Dr. Langer  30:25

We read different books, and what does manifestation mean?

 

Ricki Lake  30:28

I mean, I call myself a manifester. I think you, you’re rolling your eyes at me over it. But I, I do think that being positive.

 

Dr. Langer  30:37

No, I think, No, but Sure, look, you know, Ricki then, being positive. You know, it turns out that the more mindful we are, the more attractive other people find us to be. We’re seen as authentic, caring, trustworthy, not only that, that are, the more mindful we are, the more mindful the people around us become. You know, when people realize that you’re not likely to bite off their heads, they they know they approach, they’re more likely to take some risks and so on. And, you know, and grow so, no, I think there are many, many outward manifestations of of our mindfulness.

 

Ricki Lake  31:20

Again, it goes back to perception, right? It’s like the how we see the world.

 

Dr. Langer  31:25

It’s all a matter of perception. The bottom line to a lot of this is that that idea is even bigger than most people assume.

 

Ricki Lake  31:37

How so?

 

Dr. Langer  31:38

Well you know that? People know, yeah, if you think positively, you’re going to be happy, you know. And I’m not telling people to think positively, I’m telling people to be mindful. And when you’re mindful, all of a sudden, you notice things to which other people are blind, and you avoid the pitfalls that other people fall into. And you know that no matter what happens, you know, I try to teach people how to fall up and, you know, and that’s the life I live. And I did this podcast the other day. It was, it was funny, because I was telling them about how positive, negative, this is not in the world. This is in our heads. And I said, So, for example, if we’re disconnected, I lose the internet signal, I’ll go have lunch.

 

Ricki Lake  32:30

It’s a win, win.

 

Dr. Langer  32:31

Yeah, it wasn’t going to be a big game. Well, the funny thing was that then I lost the signal on the internet. What happened?

 

Ricki Lake  32:39

And did you have a good lunch?

 

Dr. Langer  32:40

Yeah, I did, actually. But, you know, again, that goes back to, you know, how big a deal are most of the things that most of us experience. That doesn’t mean there aren’t big deals that people are going through.

 

Ricki Lake  32:52

But let me ask you something, yeah, the hurricane that a lot of the country has been dealing with now.

 

Dr. Langer  32:57

No terrible, terrible but, but, you know, focusing on the loss, okay? So I had, I had been at a friend’s house for dinner. I came home was 1130 at night in the winter, many years ago, and all my neighbors were outside because my house went up in smoke, and I lost 80% of what I owned, right? So I called the insurance agent the next day. He came over, and he said, and this is not bragging, I’m just sharing it with you. He said it was the first time in his 25 year career that the damage was worse than the call. What that means is, oh my god, oh my God. And he gets in, that’s so terrible here, alright? And then he gets there, and it was terrible, but my feeling I had already lost all of that. How is my throwing my sanity away with it?

 

Ricki Lake  33:46

So you didn’t even have a moment of like losing.

 

Dr. Langer  33:50

Of course, I’m human. It was not, you know, oh well. But, you know, dwelling on it was not going to to my mind at that time. Was not going to serve any support. And I’ll tell you, the the end of this was wonderful. So I move into the Charles hotel, my dogs and I, and it’s Christmas, and all the presents coming in and going out, we’re all burned. And okay, so who cares? So now Christmas Eve, I go out, I come back to the hotel room, and it’s full of gifts, not from the owner of the hotel, not from the management, but from the so called little people, the people who parked my cars, the waiters and waitresses, the chambermaids. I can’t tell you, Ricky, how long it took me to be able to tell that story without it bringing tears to my eyes, and I remember it every Christmas. I don’t remember anything that I lost, but every Christmas, I’m reminded of the potential goodness and, you know, in total strangers. Yeah, so even the things that seem, you know, hurricanes. You know. And what I said to myself was, everything I lost was who I was before, fun to replace some of it. No, no, not everybody is of the same. Means not everybody’s houses and the hurricane, you know, were fully insured, or, you know, or what have you. But I think also that as you get older, you come to see you really didn’t need. I mean, everybody I know my age is deacquisition rather than gaining more stuff. Like, what do I need all this for? You know and.

 

Ricki Lake  35:30

Yeah. I mean, I do think these people that are going through losing, you know, everything they own. No, it’s very it’s very hard.

 

Dr. Langer  35:37

But, you know, the the people who made it through the Holocaust, many of them made it through, not by a fear. And how could you be there without being at least somewhat afraid? How could I have my house burned down without being, you know, somewhat stressed? I mean, I’m not suggesting I’m superhuman. And these women who are being starved would sit around and talk about recipes and as a way of bonding with other people, and so.

 

Ricki Lake  36:03

Is that mindfulness? Is that what you described?

 

Dr. Langer  36:05

Yes, I believe so you know that what is the advantage of focusing only on the negative and the negative is not we’re never really worried about the negative. We’re worried about something in the future that this thing portends, you know, so if I don’t have a house, that means I’m going to be homeless, and it would almost follow, literally, but not necessarily. You know, all of a sudden one of your relatives invites you, and you know, life can change in many directions. You didn’t know you were going to meet the person you met during bad times and COVID. Things happen. We can’t predict what’s going to happen.

 

Ricki Lake  36:51

You obviously been exploring mindfulness for decades, since the 70s, yeah, 25 years, what kind of impact has it left on your personal life?

 

Dr. Langer  36:59

People always ask me that. And I think as a scientist, what I’m supposed to say is, I didn’t know something, and I did the study, and then, wow, it changed my life. And maybe that’s the way some science progresses. For me, to be more honest, it’s usually I experience something, and then I want to say, you know, if it’s more more general truth, if there’s some way for me to share that experience with other people, so you know, it’s not I do a study, the one thing that did make that have that major impact on me was what everybody does is sensible, or else they wouldn’t do it. And the more mindful you are, the less likely you are to be judgmental, and you’re not going to be, you know, casting aspersions about other people. You know, you’re probably not going to do it for yourself either, and isn’t that nice? So Ricky, you know, we become close friends. I don’t want you to ever forgive me. I’d rather you understand. Okay, so let me go back and tell you, because I have a lot in this book, the mindful body about language that turns everything upside down. So I was asked to give this sermon at a Harvard church. I’m Jewish and I’m not religious, but I say yes to virtually everything. So I say yes, I’ll give the sermon. What am I going to talk about? I know nothing about religion. Then I think, Okay, well, wait a minute, maybe I could talk about forgiveness. I’ll think about forgiveness. Sounds religious city, okay? I start thinking about it, and I come up with something almost sacrilegious. If you ask 10 people, is forgiveness good or bad? What are they gonna tell you?

 

Ricki Lake  38:41

They’re gonna say it’s good.

 

Dr. Langer  38:41

Right, if you ask 10 people, is blame good or bad? What are they going to tell you.

 

Ricki Lake  38:47

It’s bad.

 

Dr. Langer  38:48

But you know, you can’t forgive them unless you first blame so we’ve been saying our forgivers are our blamers? Interesting. Now, do you blame people for good things or bad things? Bad things, but things, in and of themselves, are neither good nor bad. So what do we have here? We have people who see the world negative way, who blame and then forgive, not so divine right that is to understand why the person did what they did, and that obviates the necessity for forgiveness. Don’t forgive me for being impulsive, because all I’m being is spontaneous and I’m okay. I don’t give you for being inconsistent, because what you’re being is flexible.

 

Ricki Lake  39:33

Okay, will you forgive me for interrupting you?

 

Dr. Langer  39:36

Yeah, I look forward.

 

Ricki Lake  39:38

to this has been such a pleasure. Dr Langer, you really taught me so much. Thank you so much. This book is amazing. Do you have another one down the pike? Are you going to do a 14th book?

 

Dr. Langer  39:51

Always.

 

Ricki Lake  39:51

Amazing. It’s such a pleasure, thank you.

 

Dr. Langer  39:54

My pleasure. Thank you, take care.

 

Ricki Lake  39:58

Okay, I really enjoy. Enjoyed my conversation with Dr Ellen Langer. I’m not sure she felt the same way. I think I drove her crazy. Anyway, my big takeaway from this conversation was that it’s not about thinking positively or not negatively, but to be more optimistically mindful instead, it’s going to take a moment to wrap my head around because I’m generally someone that finds the positivity in things, but I’m really going to work on this now. You can check out any one of Dr Ellen Langer’s 13 books at your local library or bookstore, and you can follow Dr Ellen Langer on Instagram, @EllenJ Langer and on her website. Ellenlanger.com thank you so much for listening.

 

CREDITS  40:38

There is much more of The High Life with Lemonada Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content, like rapid fire questions with Yep. Today’s guest, Dr Ellen Langer, you don’t want to miss it. Subscribe now in Apple podcasts. The High Life is a production of Lemonada Media. Isabella Kulkarni and Kathryn Barnes, produced our show. Our mixes by James Sparber. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Additional Lemonada support from Rachel Neel and Steve Nelson. You can find me  @Rickilake on Instagram. Follow The High Life with Ricki Lake, wherever you get your podcasts, or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.