Derek Thompson

Until I read a study that changed everything, which was this study where they had three different groups.

And they asked them to do all the same tasks.

The task was to, it's a pain tolerance test where they ask people to put their hands in very, very cold water.

And the test is to see how long they can last in that cold water.

And so in these three groups, one, they said, just don't do anything.

Just let us see your pain tolerance by seeing how long you can last in this ice cold water.

The second group were people who prayed with some kind of faith tradition.

So they were identified as Jewish or Catholic or Muslim or whatever the case might be.

They had a prayer practice.

The third group was the most interesting to me.

These were people who did not have any particular faith, but they were taught how to pray and a particular protocol on how to pray.

And they said, if you don't want to say the word God, you can substitute something else, something meaningful to you.

It can be the universe.

It can be mother nature.

It can be some of all forces.

It doesn't really matter.

You can substitute any secular interpretation of that you want.

And so that's what they did.

And what was interesting in the results of this study is that not only did the people who prayed from some kind of faith tradition show much greater pain tolerance, they could last much longer in this pain tolerance experiment than the people who didn't have any kind of faith background and weren't taught to pray, but even the people who didn't have a particular faith but learned how to pray

also enjoyed those pain tolerance benefits.