Opening Your Mind to the Possible Can Improve Health & Performance

Number 140

In 1979, psychologist Ellen Langer and some of her Harvard colleagues conducted a landmark experiment intended to explore whether elderly people can start to act and feel healthier and younger if their environment is changed.

In what has become known as the “counterclockwise” study, elderly men were sent on a retreat where they lived for a week as though it was 1959. They read 1959 magazines, enjoyed 1959 music and TV shows, and were consistently encouraged to behave like people who were 20 years younger than their actual ages.

The researchers shaped an environment in which the participants were not treated as old, whatever their age. The men were encouraged to think of themselves as in their prime, as they had been in 1959. At the end of the week, they showed dramatic improvements in their hearing, memory, dexterity, appetite and general well-being. They stood taller, walked faster and spoke with more confidence.

Langer revisits the study in her 2009 book, “Counterclockwise – Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility.” She writes that in 1981 she had hesitated to fully describe her observations during the study, fearing that sharing her full story might cause the experimental results to be rejected. But now in this book, after 30 years of exploring how well-being is linked with mindset, she more fully describes the experience and its implications.

Drawing on not only her own research but also much other data, Langer makes an effective case that our beliefs and expectations impact how we perform, how our bodies function, and even how we age. And she challenges the idea that the limits we assume for ourselves are necessarily real.

Langer introduces us to “the psychology of possibility,” which “takes our desired ends as the starting point for change.” She says that once we realize that current “facts” are not immutable, possibilities present themselves. And, if instead of asking whether we can change, we ask how we can do it, then we can begin finding out.

One way that you might play with Langer’s suggestions is to challenge your self-assessment when you feel that your energy is low. She says that sometimes fatigue is a “psychological construct,” and that when we think we are tired we actually may be responding to external cues, like the time on the clock. So imagine how you would feel with more energy, start acting as if your energy level is indeed higher, and see what happens.