What Really Matters: A Recipe for a Meaningful Life with Jennifer Aaker

What I want to do right now is talk about some of our research around what creates a truly meaningful life.

And what I decided to do is bring in a little bit of content from four different ten week classes in the next 50 minutes to share with you.

From the work on AI.

We have a class on designing AI for wellbeing.

This is taught with Valley in the engineering school and the business school.

Second class is sustainable human behavior which is taught in the dorm school as well as the Gsb with Suchi Wong.

And then a little bit of work from our humorous area in business class, as well as some of our work in the power of story class, which is lives in the business school, but also is one of the classes that's really unlocked more globally within the lead program at Stanford.

So I'm going to talk really fast and ask you a few questions and will integrate all of this work into sort of the next 50 minutes.

First, don't need to tell you we are living in what feels to be surreal, very unusual times.

And there's a confluence of factors that are driving that.

We're feeling this in the day to day.

Certainly, we know that A.I.

has fueled massive change.

And whenever you get that sort of nonlinear acceleration of change within our businesses in our lives, you can feel uncertain.

What is that?

What is the meaning of humanity being human?

By the way, I actually put that into GPT yesterday.

What is the difference between a human and I?

You know, because you like to have a conversation with GPT about that fun fact.

What GPT reports is, you know, basically six or seven differences consciousness for now at least spirituality, emotion, creativity, a sense of moral decision making and a sense of purpose.

So I wanted to see those ideas because several of those themes will come up in today's conversation.

The second is that trust is at an all time low, and it's not just trust in institutions, it's also trust in our leaders.

It's trust in data.

And this global trust deficit has been only increasing in the last two decades.

We also know that general well-being is on the decline, that that burnout has been reported at high, extraordinarily, high levels, that that that mental well-being, especially among our teens, has been on the decline.

You see work by Jonathan Haidt and others that that isolate some of the factors that are drawing this.

So it's it's a precipice of of time.

We're on this precipice of making decisions of how we want to live and how we want to lead and in different ways moving forward.

So I'm going to talk and unify this class, this discussion around this idea of what is purpose, which I'll define as a sense of fulfillment that comes from living a life of meaning.

What's what's so clear in this room is the meaning that is created from the connections, from this overall sense of what we're doing and why and where we're moving forward in the future.

And so this is not a talk that will come in ways that are surprising to you because what you're doing in the day to day is, in fact, so meaningful.

But I'm hoping that some of the insights from this, this talk might seed a way of living and maybe sharing with your kids or your parents or your friends and teammates what what really matters in a moment of time where A.I.

has really been fueling a lot of our our growth individually and from a corporate perspective.

So in this class, designing AI to cultivate human well-being, how do humans thrive?

Dave And I start by asking students why they take the class.

This is a recent quote.

I'm taking this class to better understand what creates a meaningful life so we can build technology that enhances the human experience.

And that student got an A I just at the beginning, just like, why are you taking it?

It's not a technology based class, meaning you're not understanding the mechanisms of AI, but you're understanding how to do.

How do we build algorithms that actually help us look from a long term perspective how humans thrive?

And on day one, for the final project, we asked the students to envision their life in 50 years.

Well, the advances unleashed by A.I.

in terms of how we spend time, how we live life, how we consume time, will it free us to devote more of ourselves to meaningful activities that may include creativity, self-aware ness, kindness to others, empathy, wisdom, a sense of spirituality or purpose?

Can we use A.I.?

This it discussed to to be more human, to be better humans.

And we need to think boldly and broadly not only what is possible to build, but how do we build and promote a sense of purpose, equanimity, and love.

One of the clearest ways to understand what really matters in our life is to understand the regrets of the dying.

I've been lucky enough to be raised by my parents, and my mom has been a hospice volunteer as well as a teacher.

But a servant volunteer for most all of my life.

So we would spend most of our time around the dinner table with two sisters talking about what people regret in their last days of life or wish for, because that was her job to listen and to see if she could at least maybe help those wishes come true.

Because we're a fun family and that's what fun families do.

They talk about, you know, wishes about what people did during their life.

And I wanted to clarify.

This work, I think is so important are the insights that come from this work are so important because not just so much because it helps us sort of reverse engineer, you know, how we might actually live our life, but at the individual level.

But it also gives us a sense of collective critical insight about how we want to live our future.

Not here, obviously just at Stanford, but in in the world vitally.

So I wanted to share four of the most common regrets or wishes that people mentioned authenticity.

They wish that they had been more authentic, more them, and that's hard to do.

It's hard to go be authentic.

Some people kind of naturally seem to be that way, and others it's kind of awkward.

But what we talk about in our story class is this idea of just feeling authentic.

You know, those moments where you just feel authentic, and that's often a better compass toward toward mitigating that regret presence people mention.

I just wish I savored more, like just these small little moments of holding hands with my child or sharing a cup of coffee with my parents or a team member just being present.

Humor.

They wish that they had not taken themselves so seriously, and this is something that's expressed in one of the most serious moments of one's life.

They wish that they had allowed for joy and humor and not necessarily chaste happiness to bring happiness so much, but did very serious things, not taking themselves too seriously and love.

I wish I had the chance to say I love you one more time.

And I remember asking my mom like, Who is it that they want to say I love you to one more time?

And it's not always like my child or my parent or partner or whatever.

It's often like someone you know, estranged or someone you hadn't talked to in a long time, or a cousin or a sibling where there was a falling out.

So and I always thought that was so interesting because if people regretted or wanted to be able to express, I love you one more time, why not just kind of bake that into our natural conversation?

I remember when Andy, my husband, and I started dating and I told him about this work and I said, you know, instead of saying goodbye, you know, why don't we just say love?

Because, you know, goodbye is has two syllables and love only has one.

So you can save a lot of time if you just I calculate how much time you would save over your life.

Course. Very efficient.

Also, by definition, you would never have this regret.

So I of course, sign off with Excel.

So like relentlessly so do not be scared If you get a note from me that says Excel.

Excel, do not worry.

It's just my desire to never have that regret when I die.

And we never know when we will.

So what I wanted to do is talk a little bit about each of these four things.

Authenticity.

I wish I had the courage to live a life that was truer to me.

And we know that what that means changes over the life course.

But one of the best ways to understand who you are and have a sense of authenticity is story.

I'm going to share a little bit of the science.

Of story in this video.

my God is so good.

So the story is where you're basically taking people on a rollercoaster ride.

You know, you're here and then, you know, there's a conflict and then there's a resolution and there is research to show that when we know our own stories, even if we don't share those stories, we feel more not just authentic about who we are.

It's actually highly correlated with lower levels of anxiety and lower levels and depression relative to individuals who don't feel like they know their own stories.

And these correlational studies are also backed up with other studies where causation is actually indicated, where individuals are trained on what are your stories and and then they figure out what are the through lines that actually make sense of my stories and you see the same type of effect.

So we train our students the early days of the class and to to just their a six word story about themselves.

Ernest Hemingway was once known to have shared one.

He wrote Baby shoes for Sale, never worn.

So we don't know if that is a story about a couple who couldn't have a baby or if this is a story about someone who had a baby and the baby did not live.

But we make the inference of what the meaning is.

And when you your brain makes the inference of that story versus I tell you, I had a friend and she couldn't have a baby when I tell you that the chance that you'll remember that story in a year's time is negligible.

When you make the inference around the meaning of the story, you're about 22 times more likely to actually remember it in a year's time.

This is work done by Gordon Bauer, a pioneering psychologist here at Stanford.

So we always start a clock asking people to write down six word stories about their life.

And they don't have to be big, epic ones.

They can be just like sort of small ones that describe their life right now.

Here are a few.

Not quite aspiring to be quite tonight. You pass tomorrow.

tonight. You pass tomorrow.

I married the wrong guy, fixed it and getting old ring tones pissed me off.

Now again, these don't all have to be big epic stories, but all of these stories are what we call good stories because they have some transformation, right?

So not quite aspiring to be quite married.

The wrong guy fixed it.

Even getting old ring tones pissed me off, have a sort of a temporal nature What we show in the in the research is that when you just share a six word story about yourself at the beginning of class versus we do it at the end of class, and then we ask people, how connected do you feel?

How much do you want to go have a beer with the people around you?

And how well, how much did you learn the subsequent information, the order of magnitude of the individuals who actually shared a six word story at the beginning of a session is about two times greater.

All of those metrics than if you don't.

There's something about sharing a story, especially one that feels and is authentic, that allows people to understand weight.

It accelerates the closeness between individuals.

So know your signature stories and those signature stories we really define as intriguing, authentic, involving stories where people know why you're sharing it.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright came into our class about five years ago, and she had this list of ten signature stories, defined her role as secretary of state.

So the students are so excited.

And she's like, Which one do you want to pick?

Just six word titles for all of them.

And they're like, you know, can you tell the story about the Russian foreign minister?

So she starts off and she says, I am supposed to negotiate with the Russian foreign minister.

She hears that she had bugged the US State Department, which is a serious breach of international diplomacy.

So she's wondering what to do and she decides she's going to walk in and she decides to wear a gigantic bug pen.

It was so big, like it was a four inch big bug pen.

And she shares how the tension in the room completely changed.

You couldn't help but smile and completely change this subsequent conversation.

And he he interacted with her much more like Madeleine than Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

And it was so much more productive.

And she happens to love authentically jewelry.

And so she has all of these different pens.

So the question is, what are yours?

Signature stories that illuminate something about you that actually are used as a goal to disarm or improve relationships?

Sachin Nadella.

Every Friday for his direct reports, he has someone on the 20 person team to start the meeting off with a story, a story of or where they they kind of believe how impressive an employee, a volunteer, a partner were.

And they share that story.

And it colors the tenor of the subsequent conversation with his direct reports.

You can even put these little stories in your notes.

So we have one of our guests in class who she shared yesterday.

A his is Google No Notes document where you just write down little titles, sometimes puts on a a picture and he just takes he takes notes of those those different signature stories to share them, a cocktail parties or other things.

And it really does humanize him and it accelerates, again, some of his goals.

By the way, I make my kids do six word stories every night.

And just like, what was it, six or a story of the day?

Like 10 seconds.

Just write it down.

And they did it.

They listened for a long time. They no longer do.

But like for a very long time they do it.

And it encourages our kids to look at resilience.

Look at that transformation.

Not just winning, winning, winning, achieve, achieve, achieve.

But what were the actual plot twists and changes that that might define them as a person?

So know your signature stories.

Collect the stories of others around you and understand how to make a practice of sharing those stories and creating space for your colleagues to do the same.

Number two. Presence.

I wish I just savored small moments more.

They define me more than I know.

Now this seems like it should be pretty easy, but it's often harder than we think.

Research by chef cover Casimir Gilder and I show that our meaning of happiness shifts in pretty dramatic ways over the life course.

So this is based on million data points.

We wrote up an algorithm that combs the blogosphere for all mentions of I feel and I am feeling.

So we could do a semantic analysis on that 12 million data points.

So when people say, I feel happy and excited, I get to go to this star event tomorrow, and that's what I'm looking forward to.

So we can basically pull out that data and see what people are saying when they say, I feel happy.

The way to read this slide is we start out simple.

So these are 11 to 14 year old.

Does anyone have an 11 to 14 year old? Okay.

When you say like, how are you doing?

They say, hi.

Like, what did you do today?

Nothing.

All day they did nothing.

It's impossible. But somehow.

So they don't want this rich emotional lexicon, so they don't really say anything.

So but we shouldn't fill up with the angst around 15 to 18.

They feel very angsty.

When they do feel happy, it means excitement, which is a very angsty form of happiness and feelings of confinement.

Around 20.

They don't feel known.

They don't feel like they know themselves.

They don't feel others know them.

Until we leave those feelings behind to conquer the world.

Around 25, the feeling of money, power and status or the opportunity to get those things often correlates with happiness, more so than other stages of life.

Before gradually trading ambition for balance around 30, they start to realize they haven't.

They don't have balance in their life.

They need health or spirituality or friendship.

And these other components develop leading appreciation for our physical bodies.

So at 35, they mysteriously gone downhill and they realize they need to get back.

And our children, they're only as happy as their least happy child and evolving of connectedness, connectedness for which we feel grateful, happy, calm and blessed.

And it's not that people die at 60, it's just that the sample size decreases substantially.

So I always have to like, don't worry, you're gonna be fine.

People just stop blogging because they have real relationships.

So the meaning happiness migrates from excitement.

That's what it means to conquering the world, to a sense of calm and peacefulness and presence.

But the large majority of our life is spent thinking about the future, anxious about the future, wanting to conquer the world in the future.

And it's not until later that we start not be so focused on the future.

So we spend the majority of life worried about the future, about what our future selves want, what people on their deathbed say they want.

They wish that they had been more present in the day to day.

So it's like you're drinking, you know, when you're drinking a cup of coffee or tea, and then all of a sudden you look down and it's gone like, that's your life.

You know, we don't want that to be your life.

You want to be able to appreciate the coffee and the coffee cup.

So the question is, how do we really be here for the short time that we are here on this earth?

And one way is to find beauty in mundane moments.

So I'm going to have you all close your eyes again and recall a beautiful moment you had in the last week.

So recall a beautiful moment you had in the last week.

All right, Now that you have that moment, I wanted to share a set of studies that I've been doing with a set of colleagues here at Stanford.

We do this and we actually in the sustainable human behavior class, we have in individuals, share a beautiful moment every single day with a four person team to draw school students and to GSP students, and they get to know each other by sharing these beautiful moments over the course of a month.

And what we find in the data is when we ask people to share that beautiful moment versus a happy moment, a grateful moment and of okay moment, all sorts of other positive valence moments that something very special happens.

Number one, those individuals train to have their brain think about is this a beautiful moment or recall a beautiful moment.

They say that they are not only significantly more present in the moment, even just asking yourself, is this my beautiful moment brings your brain to the moment and you start to savor that moment.

We also show that the time expands in those mundane moments found in beauty that there is an increased level of self-awareness.

Like now.

I understand myself actually better because happiness and gratefulness and all of these are positive emotions, but they tend to be more generic.

What brings you happiness might be the same thing that brings me happiness, or more often than beautiful moments.

But beauty.

What you seen defined is a beautiful moment is tends to be more unique to you.

And one month later, they're much more likely to recall those beautiful moments than any other type of moment that we studied.

Now, when you ask people what is your beautiful moment, as we've done with all sorts of people in the last three years, you will find that something quite unique to how they operate in the world is revealed to you.

For example, Chef Michael Mina, who has 40 restaurants.

I had a recent conversation with them and I said, Where?

Where do you find beauty? Where is a beautiful moment for you?

And he says, I find beauty in these small moments in the kitchen.

So he has these 40 restaurants that can be at all 40 restaurants.

And he goes into the kitchen and he looks at just at one thing, which is how are the tomatoes sliced?

And he finds that the best signal in the kitchen of beauty, not just in the moment, but also extended beauty, like how the dishes are going to show up is what are the tomatoes look like?

Is like, I don't need to see the dish.

I don't need to go out into the restaurant.

I just need to see what the tomatoes look like.

And what he says is, if there if there's a clean dishcloth underneath, it's not dripping and the knife is sharp and the tomatoes are cut nicely.

Everything else flows.

He also says in those moments, the team in the kitchen is is kind of like a fish in a fishbowl.

They're all kind of operating in the same cycle.

People are physically more resilient.

They're less burned out. It's better for the body.

And that is not only a great indicator of beauty across all 40 of us restaurants is a way of scaling, but it's also an indicator of being more present and also having a better chance of having well-being.

Physical and emotional.

We know last year 75% of people, not just in the US, but more generally reported burnout, which is this emotional state that leads to often disengagement.

Intentionally seeking beauty in the mundane allows us to reengage, be more present in the moment.

And it's a way to combat burnout and increase well-being.

So I encourage you to do that.

And by the way, if you want any sort of tips on how to do that, feel free to reach out to me.

And we can send you a digital care package of each of our classes, actually, but also this research.

Third is humor.

I wish I didn't take myself so seriously.

So when you ask people, did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday, 1.3 million and 1.4 million people.

We ask that, too, with the help of Gallup.

People say yes, around 16, 18, 20, and they start to say no.

Right around 23 when they go to work and they don't start saying yes again until like around 80, the average life expectancy is about 78.

So that little committed blip is not a really useful for many of us.

And so the question is why?

And we know it is associated with work where we often take ourselves so seriously.

Because when we ask the question on a weekend, you get a significant scaling effect.

So people are in fact laughing on weekends, just not during the week day.

So what's happening when people laugh together is that there's a neurological shift.

So our brain releases a cocktail of hormones.

We release endorphins, giving us a feeling similar to our runner's high.

We lower our cortisol, giving us a feeling kind of like 5 minutes of meditation, and we release dopamine, which is the hormone released during certain types of physical touch.

So as far as our brains are concerned, laughing together is similar to running, meditating and having sex all at the same time.

So it's very efficient also is fine with it.

So it's it's this thing that's just so remarkable.

And many of us have friendships for our just joint laughter defines it.

And we know that laughter is the best medicine.

It turns out.

Actually, actual medicine is the best medicine.

But laughter, you know, is a close second.

Now, what's really important as you teach humor in this class that we do is is just making people understand.

Being funny is not the same thing as having a sense of humor.

Everyone has a sense of humor.

Even if you do not think you have a sense of humor, you have a sense of humor, and there's a style associated with your humor.

So over the last decade, Naomi Bagge doing and I have run hundreds of thousands of subjects through what we call a humor typology quiz.

And we found that there's four very different styles of humor.

So I'm going to ask you which style you think you are dominantly.

First, do the standup.

And they are bold and irreverent natural entertainers.

They come alive in front of a crowd.

They're pretty extroverted.

Then there is Sweethearts.

They're warm, inclusive, understated.

They keep it PG 13.

They may not think they are funny, but they actually are.

If you look at their humor, it's very includes more warm than their snipers.

They're dry, edgy, sarcastic masters of the unexpected dig.

It's kind of hard to make them laugh, but when you do, you feel really good.

And then there's magnets and they are uplifting and expressive and charismatic.

They walk into the room. It kind of lights up.

They might use humor too much.

They laugh are they're very generous with their laughter.

They're unafraid to be silly, a little bit more physical with their humor.

So I'm going to have you quickly stand up if.

Your dominant style is a stand up.

So stand up if you're dominant.

If you really are two styles, you can stand up twice.

Okay Fantastic.

But you will be petrified to know that when I asked that question on Monday, like half of my class stand it up stood up.

So we're like, Wow, we're going to get roasted in this class.

Fantastic.

Stand up. If your dominant style is a sweetheart.

Okay, a fair amount, maybe one third stand up.

A very dominant cell is a sniper.

my goodness.

Look at you all.

You volunteers, you are also snipers.

All right.

And magnet, stand up if you're a magnet.

Fantastic.

All right, sit down.

So we got a pretty good distribution in this room.

Now, what's really important about this is that we find that when you understand your own humor style, that you not only understand what makes you laugh and what lights you up, but you can also understand and start to read the room on others.

So, for example, with my kids, I make them do this humor style quiz.

You can go to humor seriously dot com and take this two minute quiz which I force my kids to do after they stop doing a six word story exercise ad because I will never, never give up.

We will always do surveys in our house.

So at 1.1 of my son had a lot of serial killer jokes, which is worrisome because as a mom, you're thinking, how am I going to find therapy for this?

Now what turns out is a sniper sweetheart, and all of a sudden the jokes kind of landed in a very different way at the dinner table.

And I was more generous with my laughter, and he was more generous with my laughter as he understood me.

It completely changed the dinner conversation.

So you read your room, understand what it is for others in your life, but also understand that each humor style has its own different downside or risk.

So, for example, on the right hand side, standups and snipers, individuals often tease as a sign of affection.

So I'm making fun of you because I like you.

It's a sign of affection, yet it doesn't always land that way.

And so they can easily inadvertently alienate or offend.

And on the other side you see magnets and sweethearts that are often quite inclusive in their humor and they can really bring individuals together, and yet they're at risk to overindex on self-deprecation, which is a very powerful tool.

Self-deprecation, but it's really effective at high status level, at lower status levels, it can really boomerang.

So just understanding what are the strengths and weaknesses of each of these humor styles allows you to actually shift your style in the moment, to meet the moment where it should be so much about being competent is knowing when humor is needed, just like in the Secretary of State Madeleine Albright story.

So the other thing is to tell truth with levity.

This is not, again, about being funny.

This is just about stating the truth, but with a little bit of levity.

So all you do is you notice what's true.

Take sort of a journal and just make notes what is true in your life, and then think about sharing it with a misdirection.

LAUGHTER springs neurologically from the unexpected and.

It's not about becoming a comedian.

It's just about looking at the world in a different way.

So, for example, there's two types of travelers Raise your hand if you are.

my God, I forgot to pack underwear again.

Raise your hand if that's your person. Okay.

And then raise your hand if you are the.

I brought an year. Okay.

my gosh.

I'm going to travel with all of you because that is fantastic.

What a reliable group or who recognizes this is Sarah Cooper, who is a comedian.

She's coming into our class on Tuesday.

And she when she came to our class last year, she drew this Delta's new seating chart, which is economy, comfort, economy, economy, discomfort, economy, agony economy to the reckoning.

Where is your God now?

Economy, sales down Economy. And just to I want to bring us all back to March 20, 28, which I apologize to do.

But let's just be with me for a second.

And one of our co lecturers, Conner Demon Yeoman, who's also a CEO of a big volunteering organization, upskilling people called Merritt America.

He was on his first all hands meeting.

It happened to be on Zoom because COVID hit.

He was very nervous about doing this and he didn't know what to do.

You know, he had 100 faces staring at him on Zoom and he said his interest speech and then he supposedly pass the baton to his co-CEO to take over.

And he leaves his screen chair on.

And so everyone's petrified.

And he goes to Google, he opens up Chrome and he types in things that inspirational CEOs say.

And like he comes back to the zoom and everyone's like, lost it.

And and he's like, I want you to trust me.

I am here for you.

And he says that, you know, the people changed the way that they responded to that all hands, because within, you know, 30 seconds he was able to defuze and disarm all of the tension.

People later came back to him and said it changed the way that they actually could take risks and look about their look look in the future.

The research shows that leaders with a sense of humor, any sense of humor, are seen as about 28% more motivating and admired.

Their teams are about 15% more engaged.

They tend to be twice as creative when they're solving a creative challenge.

And I want to underscore, this is like any sense of humor.

My leader has a sense of humor correlates with all of these positive benefits.

So it's not only about not living a life of regret, but it's also understanding how to unlock productivity and performance within your teams, your families in life.

Harness your humor style, tell the truth with levity, and shift your mindset.

Living life on the precipice of a smile.

All right. The last is love.

I wish I had the chance to say I love you one more time.

So this may seem hard in the context of the world that we're living in.

What does love even really mean?

And one way to operationalize that or think about this is that we know from the research on meaning and purpose that people want to be valued members of a winning team on an inspired mission.

People want to be valued.

They want to feel like they're on a team.

They want that team to be winning.

And it doesn't have to be, you know, market share.

It could be whatever you define winning is.

It could be we're losing right now, but we have a path forward to winning together and need to have that inspired mission.

I remember once talking to Shantanu, the CEO of Adobe, and in this kind of offsite with his his direct reports, we said, what is your your purpose, your higher purpose, your inspiring mission?

And he said, our our purpose is to hit 5 billion in five years.

And you could see his whole team were depleted and he noticed it too, is incredibly observant.

And he immediately shifted and he said it's to unlock creativity in the world to unlock creativity in the world.

And all of a sudden the CMO sort of saw her direct relationship between what she did in the day and the day to day and driving that outcome.

It was harder to see that with 5 billion in five years.

And the CFO said later on to me that it was the first time he actually talked to his kids the dinner table about what he does at work.

They hit 5 billion in three and a half years and he I highly correlated with this conversation with his team because it was very aligned with their financial goals.

But I understand in that inspired mission, what are we all here to do and what is our unique on that team becomes so important?

Stefan Curry I think, does a really good job of harnessing this.

He argues that we win when everyone touches the ball, when we are aligned in flow and everyone has an opportunity to feel valued and involved, connected to our higher mission.

And if you follow basketball, you see there's times that correlate with their performance, you know, before the playoff opportunity.

And, and since then when when they really do feel connected to an inspire mission and everyone does know their role on the team.

So when I have you close your eyes one last time everyone close your eyes.

Think of someone who has loved you deeply.

Imagine them standing in front of you and take a deep breath in counted to.

And then as you breathe out, I want you to imagine the way they look at you.

Their eyes and their smile and notice how you feel right now.

Imagine in their presence you feel known.

An unconditionally loved.

Okay, You can open your eyes.

So in one set of studies, my coauthors and I did that loving kindness, meditation and people stayed in that state for 5 minutes with a different set of subjects.

We gave them a personal strength meditation, which had them actually just focus on their uniqueness and unique strengths.

And then we had we gave them a set of things to do afterwards.

And the individuals in the loving kindness meditation where they simply meditated on on love, they were three times more likely to do something like give up their seat to another person.

The lab kids who we did this on and train them gave about 23% more of their stickers away to others, which is a fantastic variable and other pro-social behaviors also.

And so the results here show that the mere thought of love, even if you don't express it, becomes manifested in these small, concrete and kind acts.

And we find that when love exists, grace often follows.

How you act with grace has this extraordinary impact on how people respond to you.

Now, love can be communicated in small ways you don't have to just be relentless in my XOXO, which by the way my kids do on text as well.

Or you can also just put a heart.

You can say I loved your ideas instead of saying things, instead of asking someone, What do you do?

You ask, What do you love to do?

These These prompts, these primes, these small linguistic changes, or even small habits, and just looking in someone's eyes and being present that can be enough to make someone feel valued and seen.

So I wanted to end with an invitation to be here until we are not is our best shot at living a meaningful life that will be remembered after we are gone.

That the people we unapologetically the authentic path we chart are radical presence and generosity of laughter will not just replace short run happiness and deep purpose.

We're here, but it will transcend even after we're gone.

So I'd like to sign off with love.

We are so greatly appreciative and we see you value.

You are so thankful.

And together I think what Stanford can do in our society is nothing short of really remarkable.

Thank you all so much.