Health challenges can lead to a negative mindset and pessimistic outlook. In her new book, The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, award-winning social psychologist Ellen J. Langer challenges that mindset and lays out a compelling and practical alternative perspective based on her decades of research. Her theory of mind-body unity and her work on mindfulness, the practice of active noticing in day-to-day life, illuminate how to embrace a different approach that can have a significant impact on well-being.

Ellen Langer joins us from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Bio

Ellen J. Langer is the author of eleven books, including the international bestseller Mindfulness, which has been translated into fifteen languages, and more than two hundred research articles. She is the recipient of, among other numerous awards and honors, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest from the American Psychological Association, the Award for Distinguished Contributions of Basic Science to the Application of Psychology from the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology, and the Adult Development and Aging Distinguished Research Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association.

Langer’s trailblazing experiments in social psychology have earned her inclusion in The New York Times Magazine’s “Year in Ideas” issue and will soon be the subject of a major motion picture. A member of the psychology department at Harvard University and a painter, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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For More on Ellen Langer

Buy: The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health

Website

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Mentioned in This Podcast Episode

The Simpsons clip (2:45)

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Breaking the Age Code – Dr. Becca Levy

Thinking Better to Live Better – Dr. Woo-kyoung Ahn

The Expectation Effect – David Robson

The Second Curve of Life – Arthur C. Brooks

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Wise Quotes

On Taking Up Painting, and Rules & Playfulness

"It's been great fun for me. I wasn't limited by rules because I didn't know what the rules were. I didn't even know there were rules. I just did it. And so it was a mindful adventure. Anything can be engaged that way. If you're going to cook and stick religiously to the recipe, it's not nearly as much fun as, Oh my gosh, I don't have any sugar. That means I can't make it. Or what could I substitute it with? I don't have any cream. Should I use yogurt?  You don't have to be a genius in the kitchen. And part of it is just to go back to the way you and I claim to be, that you have to be lighthearted. You should take what you do seriously, but not take yourselves too seriously. So if I'm painting, why should I expect it to be a masterpiece? And so if I put aside the mindless evaluation, it's much easier to do it. And if you're cooking, if you don't believe this is the last meal you're ever going to eat or that everybody is going to evaluate you based on how good the meal is, then it's easy to play around. I actually believe that we should bring that playfulness to everything that we do."

On Stress and Mind-Body Unity

"I actually think stress is the major killer over and above genetics, diet - over and above everything. And stress is a psychological concept. Now, way back when, the medical world thought that Psychology was important maybe on how to be happy, who knows? But it had nothing to do with health. People don't believe that anymore. Now they know that there's a relationship between stress and health. I don't think anybody goes quite as far as I do. People talk about the Mind-Body connection. They're not connected. It's one thing. And that gives us far more control over our health."

On Mindful Contagion

"Now there's a simple understanding of mindful contagion.