EPISODE 317

This episode is a must-listen, featuring the “Mother of Mindfulness,” Dr. Ellen Langer of Harvard University. She explains that mindfulness is a key to healthy aging – both mentally and physically. Dr. Langer gives helpful tips about “actively noticing” the world around you — using her “bottom up/top down” approach. As a bonus, she tells us why 1 + 1 isn’t always 2! Tune-in… and you’ll be hanging on every word from one of our most eminent psychologists!

TRANSCRIPT:

ANNOUNCER: It’s You Earned This, the Social Security and Medicare podcast, brought to you by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. And now, your host, Walter Gottlieb. 

WALTER: Hey, it’s Walter, and we have what I think is going to be a very enjoyable episode for our listeners today. The reason I know that is that our engineer, Shahab Shokouhi, when we did this interview, said that he was, quote, “hanging on every word” of what this guest told us.  

And here’s why: She is known as the mother of mindfulness… the mother of mindfulness! Her name is Dr. Ellen Langer. She’s a professor of psychology at Harvard University. She is the author of several books, including the bestseller Mindfulness, and her newest book, The Mindful Body. 

Now here’s what’s so cool about this. Dr. Langer says that mindfulness, or “focused attention,” can have an impact on aging. That’s right. It can impact our aging and our health. She conducted a study about 40 years ago where a group of men went back in time 20 years — mentally anyway — and talked as if they were 20 years younger. And guess what? It improved things like their hearing, their energy, and their physical strength. Now you see why this episode is going to be so interesting to our listeners, especially our older listeners. 

So, let’s dive in with Professor Ellen Langer. 

Dr. Langer, how are you?

DR. LANGER: I’m doing well. And you, Walter? 

WALTER: Well, it’s not a great day here in Washington for the issues we advocate for, but luckily, we’re going to talk about things that are not in that realm, and that’s a nice break for us on this podcast. How are things in Cambridge?

DR. LANGER: Cold. Other than that, everything was fine. 

WALTER: Okay, so let’s dive in. John Kabat-Zinn has been called the “father” of mindfulness, but you are known as the “mother” of mindfulness. Did the two of you work together, collaborate, or know each other?

DR. LANGER: No, no, no. 

WALTER: No?

DR. LANGER: No. I mean, we know each other, but no. And John studies mindfulness resulting from meditation. I did very early research on meditation, but essentially mindfulness, as I study it, has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is a practice you undergo, hopefully to result in post-meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness, as we study it, is more immediate. 

WALTER: How do you define mindfulness, Ellen?

DR. LANGER: Mindfulness, according to our work, is the simple act of actively noticing. And you notice things that you thought you knew, you come to say, “gee, I didn’t know them very well at all.” 

And what that does is put you in the present. It’s very sweet. There are lots of people out there who say, “Be in the moment,” which is nice, but it’s an empty instruction, because when you’re not there, you’re not there. You’re not there to know you’re not there. And this is the way to be there, just actively noticing. 

WALTER: So, how do we actually become more mindful?

DR. LANGER: There are two ways of becoming mindful. One is top-down, one is bottom-up. So, bottom-up is you actively notice things you thought you knew, you come to see you didn’t know it at all, and then your attention naturally goes to them. So, if you walk outside, say you’ve lived where you are for 20 years, you walk outside, notice three new things. Notice three new things about the person you live with or a close friend. Go to the supermarket and notice. 

And all the time you’re doing this, suddenly you see that things are actually quite new because everything is always changing. Everything looks different from a different perspective. The better way — it’s a little harder — is to accept that we don’t know anything for sure. 

WALTER: Buddhism has a lot to say about impermanence and uncertainty. Does that factor into your concept of mindfulness?

DR. LANGER: Uncertainty is the rule, not the exception. And when you know you don’t know, then you naturally pay attention. 

So, if you were going to come to visit me in Cambridge, you wouldn’t have to practice anything! You’ve never been to my house, so you’ve noticed. You’d say, “Did she do those paintings? What is that thing over here? What books is she reading?” It would just naturally happen. And the fun thing is, this act of noticing is the essence of engagement. It’s what you’re doing when you’re having fun.

So it feels good, and 45 years of research shows how good it is for you. 

WALTER: Now you have railed against what you call “mindlessness,” which is, I guess, the opposite of mindfulness. What do you mean by mindlessness, and why is it so harmful?

DR. LANGER: So, when you’re mindful, the neurons are firing. It’s literally and figuratively enlivening, and the opposite is the case. When you’re mindless, you’re not there, and the system, the body, shuts down. Now, when you’re mindless, you’re like a robot. And if you ask yourself: Are robots happy? Of course, robots don’t have emotions. Can robots make choices? Of course not. 

So, when we’re mindless, we let the past determine how we are right now.  So we go about our business, assuming we know things, when, I guess, the most fun definition of mindlessness is that we’re frequently in error but rarely in doubt.

WALTER: Interesting, because the traditional interpretation of mindlessness is you’re just doing something stupid or crazy. But anyway, I get what you’re saying.

DR. LANGER: Stupidity is not necessarily mindless. You know, if you come to that understanding, to some reasoning, and it can be mindful. But intelligence is not mindfulness. 

WALTER: Our audience for this podcast is generally 55 years and over, and you have said that our mindset as we get older can affect how we feel, physically and mentally.  Can you talk about that?

DR. LANGER: Sure, it’s not just how we feel. It determines our health, our longevity. 

WALTER: Ah…

DR. LANGER: There is data that says if you’re in your 20s and you have a positive view of aging, you tend to age better when you’re 50, 60, 70, 90, 100. You know that. We’ve been taught about lots of things that happen when you get older. That, again, doesn’t always happen, and they often become self-fulfilling prophecies. So, I do this fun thing with my students.

I teach Tuesday/Thursday. So, on Thursday morning, I’ll ask them, “What was the last thing I said on Tuesday?” And nobody remembers. And the point being that the young are not infrequently forgetful, it’s just that they don’t worry about it as much.

WALTER: You speak to all these young people, and I have to just ask you: are their attitudes about aging and older people kind of what we would expect these days, like are they infused with some ageism, or some fear, or some disrespect? I’m just curious.

DR. LANGER: You know, I don’t really know. I mean, I’m older, but I’m their professor, so they’re towards me. 

WALTER: True…

DR. LANGER: I think that an interesting thing is that people in their 20s really don’t know the difference between somebody 60 and somebody 80…

WALTER: For sure.

DR. LANGER: And just as if your income level is $50,000, somebody who makes two million or ten million, it’s all sort of the same thing. 

I had this interesting experience many years ago. I was at this conference. I was like 30 years old, and all the people around me were these important 50, 60-year-olds, and I started talking about memory, and I thought, “Isn’t it strange that I have such a positive view?” And all of them are sure that you suffer major memory losses. You get older. So where did my view come from? And then I realized I had a grandmother who was young, but the word grandmother means old, yeah, and so she was very vital, and so to me, that defined what old age is or could be. You know, you can be a grandmother and 80. You can be a grandmother at 30, yeah, but the word grandmother means you know…

WALTER: Yeah, somebody older. 

One thing that I found fascinating in your writing and in your work is that you said that — and this was an evidence-based observation — that if older people… I can’t remember whether it was just older men, that if older people act younger, and carry themselves as if they’re younger, and express themselves as if they’re younger, they actually become physically younger. Is that true?

DR. LANGER: Yes.

WALTER: Wow.

DR. LANGER: So, you’re talking about the Counterclockwise Study, which was the first study testing my idea about mind-body-unity. Stay with me for a minute, because this is very important…

WALTER: Sure.

DR. LANGER: So, most people believe you have a mind, you have a body. And if you have a mind and a body, the important question is: how do you get from one to the other? So, the first test we did for this was:  we retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier and had elderly men live there as if they were their younger selves. 

They spoke about past events as if they were just unfolding, for example. So, it wasn’t a Hollywood set, but it was as close as I could come on a low budget.

WALTER: There we go.

DR. LANGER: It was remarkable, Walter. In a week’s time, their vision improved, their hearing improved, their memory, their strength, and they look noticeably younger, just by allowing themselves to be who they were, without the mindset saying, “Oh, you’re decrepit now that you’re much older. “

WALTER: It’s fascinating. So, if older men today were to play Fortnite and drink Whiteclaw and say things like “rizz” and “slay,” will that improve their health?

DR. LANGER: And well, it could. I mean, it depends on what those words meant to them way back when. But these men were in their 70s when I ran this study in 1979; that’s when 70 was more like today’s 90 or 100.

WALTER: Right… But I mean, and what I’m asking, Ellen, is if I, as somebody in their 60s, want to do this now?

DR. LANGER: Yes, you could. Yes, Walter. You go to your high school reunion, your 50-year reunion, right, and there’ll be a renewed vitality for you. But the main idea: you say what you want. People don’t need to go back in time. The point of the study was that who we are right now is being misunderstood. Our capabilities are severely limited by our mindsets. If I took you to this retreat, Walter, and fooled you into thinking you’re younger, and brought you back to 40, you’re still not 40… 

WALTER: Right.

DR. LANGER: So that means in your present day, you’re able to do all of these things. It was really a study to show that we’re capable of much more than most of us think. 

WALTER: I get what you’re saying and, in my case, the most maddening thing at my age is not being able to remember people’s names.

DR. LANGER: It’s funny how people talk about “forgetting” things. To forget something, you have to learn it in the first place — otherwise, you didn’t forget it, you just never knew it. At my age, you can introduce me to ten people who are all impressive and important, and honestly, I don’t care. I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t feel obliged to remember everyone’s name. If I actually need to know your name, trust me, I’ll have plenty of chances to learn it.

So let’s say you’ve introduced me to your friend Steve…

WALTER: Right.

DR. LANGER: And an hour later, I think, “Oh my goodness, I’ve forgotten his name.” I didn’t forget it… I didn’t care to learn it in the first place.

WALTER: Ouch!

DR. LANGER: Ouch… yeah, but maybe your friend Steve? I respond differently to. 

WALTER: Well, I’m going to text Steve right now and tell him what you said!

No, but I am fascinated by what you’re saying. So, you’re saying that if I, as Walter, when I meet somebody, the name goes in one ear and out the other, I don’t even need to feel bad about that?

DR. LANGER: That’s exactly right, unless you say, “Oh, I should have learned it.” But why should you have learned it? 

WALTER: Because two minutes after I’m introduced, I’m like, “What was your name again?” 

DR. LANGER: Even after ten seconds…

WALTER: Yeah!

Dr. Langer, you also studied the effect of what you called “negative aging cues,” and that meant exposure to phrases like “slowed-walking speed” and “lower-performance.” These actually have a profound negative effect on how we age, as opposed to more positive language. Tell us more about that.

DR. LANGER: Imagine that if I went into let’s say… Neiman Marcus. And I go to buy a miniskirt. It’s very age-inappropriate. Hopefully, they won’t let me out of the store…

WALTER: *Laughs*

DR. LANGER: But there are cues that we use to tell us how old we are. So, we did some research where we took people who were in uniform — because when you’re in uniform, you’re missing that age-related cue. And they (men and women in uniform) age better. 

WALTER: Huh…

DR. LANGER: If you have somebody… this is good for some people, bad for others. If you get a boy-toy as a spouse, or a girl-toy, you know. 

So, you’re married to somebody 20 years younger than you are. The younger person is brought into the older person’s world and begins to receive cues that they are older than they actually are.

And the reverse for the older person. When they’re with that younger person, we find that people who have a spouse 20 years younger are better, and those who have a spouse 20 years older are worse.

WALTER: Oh goodness, what about people whoo have a spouse roughly the same age?

DR. LANGER: It’s like anything else. If you have a spouse who is roughly the same age, you’ve shared the same life, so their age is not a cue for you. But if that person has presented themselves as smarter, more charming, and better looking, etc., than you… That’s going to erode your self-esteem. And when you don’t feel good about yourself — that’s the mind part of the mind-body picture that I was talking about before — then you’re going to suffer.

It’s interesting that the stress that would come from many of these relationships is much worse than I think people realize. You know, back, oh, just a few decades ago, the medical world thought your thoughts, feelings, emotions were irrelevant to your health. The only way you were going to get sick was through the introduction of an antigen.

Well, this is very, very untrue. And my own belief about stress is even more extreme than I think most people think.

You know, events don’t cause stress. What causes stress are the views we take of events. The more mindful you are, the more ways you can understand whatever is happening. And so, I would imagine that in a good relationship, you ease each other’s stress. But we know that many relationships do quite the contrary.

WALTER: Are we saying that simply having a more positive attitude about aging predicts longer health-span or life-span? What are we saying here?

DR. LANGER: Well, yes, I think it does. And not a vague notion of aging, but your own aging. Let’s say I hurt my wrist. And if I hurt my wrist and I believe, “what do you expect as you get older, you fall apart,” I’m not going to do anything, right? If I were 20 years old and I hurt my wrist, you’re not supposed to hurt your wrist at 20 years old. So, then you go and you take care of it. 

WALTER: That makes perfect sense. 

What are some practical takeaways that people can start doing now, based on everything you’ve learned, to help slow down their aging process or mitigate it using mindfulness?

DR. LANGER: Well, let me tell you. We conducted several studies with elderly participants. I hate that word now that I’m 78, but nevertheless…

WALTER: We can say seniors.

DR. LANGER: Yeah. Okay. We took seniors, and we made them more mindful in this active noticing way, and they live longer. 

WALTER: Wow.

DR. LANGER: So again, when you’re mindful, you actively notice that the body is all turned on — and that in itself is good for your health. That’s probably the most important thing people can do right now, given how many seniors there are. All the baby boomers are now of full age…

WALTER: Sure.

DR. LANGER: Everybody is running to the gym, buying health foods, and taking all the supplements… hopefully living longer and what have you. And all of that is fine.

 However, I strongly believe that rather than spend your time trying to add more years to your life, we should be adding more life to our years. And when you get older, certain things just don’t matter anymore. So, allow yourself to enjoy yourself. When you’re mindful, you recognize that you become wiser, and what does that wiser mean? That means you’re not so taken by these mindless facts that you believed when you were younger. So, you come to realize, even if you can’t articulate it, that you’re in charge of your experience of events. 

When you’re younger, other people’s labels for those events tend to drive your behavior. 

WALTER: Very interesting. I just want to make sure we’re making this as concrete as possible. So I want to ask you, Dr. Langer: on a day-to-day basis, what do you do to remain mindful?

Because I’m hoping people could get some takeaways.

DR. LANGER: So, as I said, there are two ways: top down and bottom up. Top-down is really about understanding that you don’t know. Now, people are afraid of not knowing because they think they should know. You can’t know because everything is always changing. And when you really believe that, you don’t have to do anything. You approach every situation with curiosity, understanding that maybe it’ll be this way and maybe it’ll be that way. You become much more naturally conditional in your thinking rather than absolute.

WALTER: So, in other words, it really is a mindset that you carry with you all the time. And it’s not a question of specific technique.

DR. LANGER: When you’re starting, we can talk about techniques for any time you’re feeling stressed, bored, lonely, any of these negative emotions. What you want to do is reframe them. But when you do the reframing repeatedly, oh, that’s actually not a bad thing at all. It’s kind of good. And that happens often enough that it becomes natural. You frame it positively in the first place — you don’t have to do the reframing. 

If you ask, “What should people be doing?” What they should be doing is just noticing new things about the things they thought they knew. So, Walter, how much is one plus one? This is the one fact everybody knows. How much is one plus one…? 

WALTER: Three? No, it’s two… it’s two!

DR. LANGER: No, it’s not always two…

WALTER: It isn’t?

DR. LANGER: You were closer with three. One plus one 1 is  if you’re using a base ten number system. If you’re using a base 2 number system, 1 plus 1 is written. Anyway… who cares about number systems. 

You take one pile of laundry: add one pile of laundry… one plus one is one.

DR. LANGER: You take one wad of chewing gum: you add one wad of chewing gum… one plus one is one.

Somebody sent me one the other day, which was fun. You take one pizza and you add one pizza. One plus one is two. But you take one lasagna and you put on top of it one lasagna: one plus one is one.. It’s just a bigger lasagna. 

So, the point is, in the real world, one plus one doesn’t equal two as often as we think it does. 

You have a choice. Virtually everything we’re taught about how we can be — how we should age, what we should do to be successful, what foods we should eat, so on and so forth — is in this absolute way, and when you think you know something in an absolute way, there’s nothing to think about, even though you’re wrong much of the time. 

WALTER: You are triggering me a little bit with that talk about different bases other than base ten. It’s taking you back to new math when I was in elementary school in the 60s.

DR. LANGER: You know, the most compelling, I think, for your listeners is: add one pile of laundry to one pile of laundry and look at what’s in front of you. One pile. 

WALTER: You’ve got one pile. It’s just a great way of what you said before, reframing. We just did an interview with the author of the book The Big 100, which is about longevity and more and more of us living to 100. Most of us are trying to add more years to our life. What is your advice to seniors when you hear something like that?

DR. LANGER: Yeah, I said to you, I think that what we should be doing instead is adding more life to our years. 

WALTER: Yes.

DR. LANGER: Right now, most of us are sealed in unlived lives. We’re doing things today that made sense yesterday that no longer make sense. We’re not questioning. We just mindlessly, robotically walk through our lives. 

So it’s not fun, you know, and I think that what’s the simplest thing people should do? They should make sure they’re enjoying themselves…

WALTER: Mm-hmm…

DR. LANGER: Because when they’re enjoying themselves, they’re necessarily being mindful. So, people need to understand, and a little rule for people might be… Next time you’re stressed, ask yourself: Is it a tragedy or an inconvenience? But it’s almost never a tragedy. 

So you can breathe a sigh of relief. 

Now, another thing if you’re stressed is…

Stress requires two things, Walter. It requires a belief that something is going to happen, right? And second, is that when it happens, it’s going to be awful. So, let’s do both of those. It turns out that prediction is an illusion. You can predict for the group. You go to a Mercedes parking lot, most of those cars will start when you turn the ignition. 

WALTER: Mm-hmm.

DR. LANGER: But are you going to bet your life savings that any one car is going to start? No, we all know there are lemons, no matter how good. 

So, the point is: prediction is an illusion. 

In my book, The Mindful Body, I talk about an experience I had where my house went up in smoke, and I lost 80% of what I owned. I had moved into a hotel, since I didn’t have a house any longer. 

It was Christmas. I went out Christmas Eve, and I came back to the room and it was full of gifts. Not from the owners of the hotel, not from the management, but from the so-called “little people.” The waiters and waitresses, the people who parked my car, the chambermaids. Walter, it took me a year or so to be able to tell that story without it bringing tears to my eyes. Every single Christmas I’m reminded of the goodness and so many people and I don’t remember what I lost in the fire. 

So even the dramatic event of the house burning, losing so much of what I own, turned out to actually be a positive experience. 

WALTER: You know, it’s a great example. It’s very refreshing to hear your viewpoint, and anything that helps us step outside of ourselves for a second and reframe seems to me to be very productive. So, thank you for joining us today.

DR. LANGER: No, it’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me. 

WALTER: And you can find Professor Langer’s book The Mindful Body online and at fine booksellers everywhere. 

You can find us online at ncpssm.org, where you can become a member of this fine organization. You can also check out the website for the podcast: youearnedthis.org. Our engineer is the aforementioned Shahab Shokouhi . Our story editor is Donna Lack, our editor-editor is Steve Lack, and I’m Walter Gottlieb saying: “You Earned This!”