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I grew up with my identical twin,

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who was an incredibly loving brother.

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Now, one thing about being a twin is,

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it makes you an expert
at spotting favoritism.

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If his cookie was even
slightly bigger than my cookie,

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I had questions.

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And clearly, I wasn't starving.

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(Laughter)

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When I became a psychologist,
I began to notice favoritism

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of a different kind;

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and that is, how much more we value
the body than we do the mind.

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I spent nine years at university
earning my doctorate in psychology,

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and I can't tell you how many people
look at my business card and say,

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"Oh -- a psychologist.
So, not a real doctor,"

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as if it should say that on my card.

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[Dr. Guy Winch, Just a Psychologist
(Not a Real Doctor)]

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(Laughter)

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This favoritism we show the body
over the mind --

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I see it everywhere.

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I recently was at a friend's house,

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and their five-year-old
was getting ready for bed.

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He was standing on a stool
by the sink, brushing his teeth,

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when he slipped and scratched his leg
on the stool when he fell.

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He cried for a minute,
but then he got back up,

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got back on the stool, and reached out
for a box of Band-Aids

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to put one on his cut.

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Now, this kid could barely
tie his shoelaces,

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but he knew you have to cover a cut
so it doesn't become infected,

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and you have to care for your teeth
by brushing twice a day.

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We all know how to maintain
our physical health

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and how to practice dental hygiene, right?

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We've known it since
we were five years old.

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But what do we know about maintaining
our psychological health?

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Well, nothing.

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What do we teach our children
about emotional hygiene?

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Nothing.

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How is it that we spend more time
taking care of our teeth

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than we do our minds?

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Why is it that our physical health
is so much more important to us

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than our psychological health?

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We sustain psychological injuries
even more often than we do physical ones,

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injuries like failure
or rejection or loneliness.

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And they can also get worse
if we ignore them,

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and they can impact our lives
in dramatic ways.

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And yet, even though there are
scientifically proven techniques

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we could use to treat these
kinds of psychological injuries,

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we don't.

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It doesn't even occur to us
that we should.

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"Oh, you're feeling depressed?
Just shake it off; it's all in your head."

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Can you imagine saying that
to somebody with a broken leg:

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"Oh, just walk it off;
it's all in your leg."

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(Laughter)

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It is time we closed the gap

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between our physical
and our psychological health.

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It's time we made them more equal,

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more like twins.

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Speaking of which,
my brother is also a psychologist.

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So he's not a real doctor, either.

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(Laughter)

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We didn't study together, though.

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In fact, the hardest thing
I've ever done in my life

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is move across the Atlantic
to New York City

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to get my doctorate in psychology.

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We were apart then
for the first time in our lives,

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and the separation was brutal
for both of us.

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But while he remained
among family and friends,

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I was alone in a new country.

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We missed each other terribly,

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but international phone calls
were really expensive then,

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and we could only afford to speak
for five minutes a week.

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When our birthday rolled around,

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it was the first
we wouldn't be spending together.

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We decided to splurge,

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and that week,
we would talk for 10 minutes.

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(Laughter)

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I spent the morning pacing around my room,
waiting for him to call --

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and waiting ...

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and waiting.

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But the phone didn't ring.

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Given the time difference, I assumed,

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"OK, he's out with friends,
he'll call later."

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There were no cell phones then.

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But he didn't.

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And I began to realize
that after being away for over 10 months,

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he no longer missed me
the way I missed him.

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I knew he would call in the morning,

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but that night was one of the saddest
and longest nights of my life.

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I woke up the next morning.

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I glanced down at the phone,

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and I realized
I had kicked it off the hook

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when pacing the day before.

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I stumbled out of bed,

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I put the phone back on the receiver,
and it rang a second later.

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And it was my brother,

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and boy, was he pissed.

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(Laughter)

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It was the saddest and longest
night of his life as well.

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Now, I tried to explain
what happened, but he said,

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"I don't understand.

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If you saw I wasn't calling you,

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why didn't you just pick up
the phone and call me?"

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He was right.

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Why didn't I call him?

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I didn't have an answer then.

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But I do today,

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and it's a simple one:

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loneliness.

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Loneliness creates a deep
psychological wound,

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one that distorts our perceptions
and scrambles our thinking.

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It makes us believe that those around us
care much less than they actually do.

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It make us really afraid to reach out,

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because why set yourself up
for rejection and heartache

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when your heart is already aching
more than you can stand?

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I was in the grips
of real loneliness back then,

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but I was surrounded by people all day,
so it never occurred to me.

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But loneliness is defined
purely subjectively.

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It depends solely on whether you feel
emotionally or socially disconnected

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from those around you.

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And I did.

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There is a lot of research on loneliness,
and all of it is horrifying.

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Loneliness won't just make you miserable;

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it will kill you.

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I'm not kidding.

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Chronic loneliness increases
your likelihood of an early death

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by 14 percent.

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Fourteen percent!

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Loneliness causes high blood pressure,

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high cholesterol.

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It even suppress the functioning
of your immune system,

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making you vulnerable to all kinds
of illnesses and diseases.

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In fact, scientists have concluded
that taken together,

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chronic loneliness
poses as significant a risk

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for your long-term health and longevity

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as cigarette smoking.

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Now, cigarette packs come with warnings
saying, "This could kill you."

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But loneliness doesn't.

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And that's why it's so important

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that we prioritize
our psychological health,

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that we practice emotional hygiene.

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Because you can't treat
a psychological wound

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if you don't even know you're injured.

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Loneliness isn't the only
psychological wound

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that distorts our perceptions
and misleads us.

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Failure does that as well.

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I once visited a day care center,

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where I saw three toddlers
play with identical plastic toys.

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You had to slide the red button,
and a cute doggie would pop out.

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One little girl tried pulling
the purple button, then pushing it,

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and then she just sat back
and looked at the box

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with her lower lip trembling.

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The little boy next to her
watched this happen,

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then turned to his box and burst
into tears without even touching it.

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Meanwhile, another little girl
tried everything she could think of

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until she slid the red button,

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the cute doggie popped out,
and she squealed with delight.

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So: three toddlers
with identical plastic toys,

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but with very different
reactions to failure.

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The first two toddlers were perfectly
capable of sliding a red button.

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The only thing that prevented
them from succeeding

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was that their mind tricked them
into believing they could not.

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Now, adults get tricked this way
as well, all the time.

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In fact, we all have a default set
of feelings and beliefs

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that gets triggered whenever
we encounter frustrations and setbacks.

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Are you aware of how
your mind reacts to failure?

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You need to be.

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Because if your mind tries to convince you
you're incapable of something,

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and you believe it,

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then like those two toddlers,
you'll begin to feel helpless

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and you'll stop trying too soon,
or you won't even try at all.

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And then you'll be even more
convinced you can't succeed.

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You see, that's why so many people
function below their actual potential.

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Because somewhere along the way,
sometimes a single failure

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convinced them that they couldn't
succeed, and they believed it.

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Once we become convinced of something,
it's very difficult to change our mind.

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I learned that lesson the hard way
when I was a teenager with my brother.

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We were driving with friends
down a dark road at night,

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when a police car stopped us.

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There had been a robbery in the area
and they were looking for suspects.

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The officer approached the car,
and shined his flashlight on the driver,

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then on my brother in the front seat,

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and then on me.

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And his eyes opened wide and he said,

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"Where have I seen your face before?"

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(Laughter)

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And I said,

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"In the front seat."

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(Laughter)

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But that made no sense to him whatsoever,

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so now he thought I was on drugs.

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(Laughter)

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So he drags me out of the car,
he searches me,

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he marches me over to the police car,

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and only when he verified
I didn't have a police record,

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could I show him
I had a twin in the front seat.

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But even as we were driving away,

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you could see by the look
on his face he was convinced

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that I was getting away with something.

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(Laughter)

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Our mind is hard to change
once we become convinced.

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So it might be very natural
to feel demoralized

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and defeated after you fail.

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But you cannot allow yourself
to become convinced you can't succeed.

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You have to fight
feelings of helplessness.

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You have to gain control
over the situation.

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And you have to break
this kind of negative cycle

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before it begins.

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[Stop Emotional Bleeding]

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Our minds and our feelings --

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they're not the trustworthy friends
we thought they were.

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They're more like a really moody friend,

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who can be totally supportive one minute,
and really unpleasant the next.

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I once worked with this woman
who, after 20 years marriage

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and an extremely ugly divorce,

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was finally ready for her first date.

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She had met this guy online,

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and he seemed nice
and he seemed successful,

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and most importantly,
he seemed really into her.

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So she was very excited,
she bought a new dress,

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and they met at an upscale
New York City bar for a drink.

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Ten minutes into the date,
the man stands up and says,

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"I'm not interested," and walks out.

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Rejection is extremely painful.

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The woman was so hurt she couldn't move.

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All she could do was call a friend.

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Here's what the friend said:
"Well, what do you expect?

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You have big hips,
you have nothing interesting to say.

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Why would a handsome,
successful man like that

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ever go out with a loser like you?"

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Shocking, right, that a friend
could be so cruel?

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But it would be much less shocking

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if I told you it wasn't
the friend who said that.

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It's what the woman said to herself.

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And that's something we all do,

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especially after a rejection.

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We all start thinking of all our faults
and all our shortcomings,

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what we wish we were,
what we wish we weren't.

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We call ourselves names.

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Maybe not as harshly, but we all do it.

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And it's interesting that we do,

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because our self-esteem
is already hurting.

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Why would we want to go
and damage it even further?

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We wouldn't make a physical injury
worse on purpose.

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You wouldn't get a cut on your arm
and decide, "Oh! I know --

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I'm going to take a knife and see
how much deeper I can make it."

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00:12:40,368 --> 00:12:43,949
But we do that with psychological
injuries all the time.

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00:12:43,973 --> 00:12:47,068
Why? Because of poor emotional hygiene.

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00:12:47,442 --> 00:12:50,140
Because we don't prioritize
our psychological health.

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We know from dozens of studies
that when your self-esteem is lower,

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you are more vulnerable
to stress and to anxiety;

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that failures and rejections hurt more,

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and it takes longer to recover from them.

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So when you get rejected,
the first thing you should be doing

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is to revive your self-esteem,

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not join Fight Club
and beat it into a pulp.

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When you're in emotional pain,

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treat yourself with the same compassion

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you would expect from a truly good friend.

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[Protect Your Self-Esteem]

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We have to catch our unhealthy
psychological habits and change them.

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And one of unhealthiest and most common
is called rumination.

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To ruminate means to chew over.

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It's when your boss yells at you

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or your professor
makes you feel stupid in class,

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or you have big fight with a friend

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and you just can't stop replaying
the scene in your head for days,

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sometimes for weeks on end.

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Now, ruminating about upsetting events
in this way can easily become a habit,

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and it's a very costly one,

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because by spending so much time focused
on upsetting and negative thoughts,

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you are actually putting yourself
at significant risk

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for developing clinical depression,

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alcoholism,

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eating disorders,

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and even cardiovascular disease.

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The problem is,

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the urge to ruminate can feel
really strong and really important,

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so it's a difficult habit to stop.

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I know this for a fact,

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because a little over a year ago,
I developed the habit myself.

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You see, my twin brother was diagnosed
with stage 3 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

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His cancer was extremely aggressive.

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He had visible tumors all over his body.

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And he had to start a harsh course
of chemotherapy.

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And I couldn't stop thinking
about what he was going through.

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I couldn't stop thinking
about how much he was suffering,

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even though he never complained, not once.

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He had this incredibly positive attitude.

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His psychological health was amazing.

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I was physically healthy,
but psychologically, I was a mess.

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But I knew what to do.

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Studies tell us that even a two-minute
distraction is sufficient

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to break the urge to ruminate
in that moment.

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And so each time I had a worrying,
upsetting, negative thought,

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I forced myself to concentrate
on something else until the urge passed.

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And within one week,
my whole outlook changed

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and became more positive and more hopeful.

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[Battle Negative Thinking]

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Nine weeks after he started chemotherapy,
my brother had a CAT scan,

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and I was by his side
when he got the results.

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All the tumors were gone.

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He still had three more rounds
of chemotherapy to go,

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but we knew he would recover.

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This picture was taken two weeks ago.

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By taking action when you're lonely,

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by changing your responses to failure,

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by protecting your self-esteem,

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by battling negative thinking,

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you won't just heal
your psychological wounds,

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you will build emotional resilience,

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you will thrive.

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A hundred years ago, people began
practicing personal hygiene,

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and life expectancy rates
rose by over 50 percent

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in just a matter of decades.

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I believe our quality of life
could rise just as dramatically

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if we all began practicing
emotional hygiene.

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Can you imagine
what the world would be like

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if everyone was psychologically healthier?

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If there were less loneliness
and less depression?

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If people knew how to overcome failure?

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If they felt better about themselves
and more empowered?

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If they were happier and more fulfilled?

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I can, because that's the world
I want to live in.

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And that's the world
my brother wants to live in as well.

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And if you just become informed
and change a few simple habits, well --

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that's the world we can all live in.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)