Dr. Ellen Langer

Now, when was the last time, Mel, you walked in an elevator and were excited about pressing the button?

The point is, we can either do things imperfectly mindfully or perfectly mindlessly.

We don't want to be able to do, we think we want to, you know, you're playing golf.

You think you want to be able to get a hole-in-one every time you swing the club.

And the first two games might be fun, but after that, there's no there there.

You know, if you want to win at, I don't know, tic-tac-toe, play it against a four-year-old.

You know, that we gravitate towards things that are going to be challenging.

And the problem is that I think we've confused what we call work and play.

And I hear people, so it's the same thing.

There's a bad, better, but there's a better than better way in my view.

So we have work and we have life, whatever that means to people.

And then somebody comes along and says, we should have work-life balance.

You shouldn't be all work and no play.

I said, no.

What you want is to have work-life integration.

You want it to be one thing.

You want to be the same person you are at work and at play.

Sometimes play, you got to take it seriously.

And when you work, you have to learn not to take yourself so seriously.

But we've been taught there are things that are hard, that are unpleasant, that we just have to get through it.