who was an incredibly loving brother.

Now, one thing about being a twin is it makes you an expert

at spotting favoritism.

If his cookie was even slightly bigger than my cookie, I had questions.

And clearly I wasn't starving.

(Laughter)

When I became a psychologist,

I began to notice favoritism of a different kind.

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

I spent nine years at University earning my doctorate in Psychology,

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

"Oh, a psychologist, so not a real doctor."

As if it should say that on my card.

(Laughter)

This favoritism we show the body over the mind,

I see it everywhere.

I recently was at a friends' house,

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

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

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

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

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

to put one on his cut.

Now this kid could barely tie his shoelaces,

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

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

We all know how to maintain our physical health

and how to practice dental hygiene, right?

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

But what do we know about maintaining our psychological health?

Well, nothing.

What do we teach our children about emotional hygiene?

Nothing.

How is it we spend more time

taking care our teeth than we do our minds?

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

than our psychological health?

You know we sustain psychological injuries

even more often than we do physical ones.

Injuries like failure or rejection, or loneliness,

and they can also get worse if we ignore them.

And they can impact our lives in dramatic ways.

And yet, even though there are scientifically proven techniques

we could use to treat these kinds of psychological injuries, we don't.

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

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

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

"Just walk it off, it's all in your leg."

(Laughter)

It is time we close the gap between our physical and our psychological health.

It's time we made them more equal.

More like twins.

Speaking of which, my brother is also a psychologist.

So he's not a real doctor, either.

(Laughter)

We didn't study together, though.

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

is move across the Atlantic to New York city

to get my doctorate in psychology.

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

and the separation was brutal for both of us.

But while he remained among family and friends,

I was alone in a new country.

We missed each other terribly,

but international phone calls were really expensive then,

and we could only afford to speak for 5 minutes a week.

When our birthday rolled around,

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

we decide to splurge,

and that week we would talk for ten minutes.

I spent the morning pacing around my room,

waiting for him to call,

and waiting,

and waiting,

but the phone didn't ring.

Given the time difference, I assumed

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

There were no cell phones then.

But he didn't.

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

he no longer missed me the way I missed him.

And I knew he would call in the morning,

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

I woke up the next morning,

I glanced down at the phone,

and I realized I had kicked it off the hook

when pacing the day before.

I stumbled out of bed,

I put the phone back on the receiver,

and it rang a second later,

and it was my brother, and, boy, was he pissed.

(Laughter)

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

I tried to explain what happened, but he said,

"I don't understand, if you saw I wasn't calling you,

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

He was right.

Why didn't I call him?

I didn't have an answer then, but I do today, and it's a simple one.

Loneliness.

Loneliness creates a deep psychological wound.

One that distorts our perceptions

and scrambles our thinking,

It makes us believe

those around us care much less than they actually do.

It makes us really afraid to reach out,

because why set yourself up for rejection and heartache,

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

I was in the grips of real loneliness back then,

but I was surrounded by people all day,

so it never occurred to me.

But loneliness, is defined purely, subjectively.

It depends solely on whether you feel

emotionally or socially disconnected from those around you.

And I did.

There's a lot research on loneliness

and all of it is horrifying.

Loneliness won't just make you miserable, it will kill you.

I am not kidding.

Chronic loneliness increases your likelihood of an early death

by 14 percent.

Fourteen percent.

Loneliness causes high blood pressure, high cholesterol,

it even suppresses the functioning of your immune system,

making you vulnerable to all kinds of illnesses and diseases.

In fact, scientist have concluded that taken together,

chronic loneliness poses a significant a risk

for your longterm health and longevity as cigarette smoking.

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

But loneliness doesn't.

And that's why it's so important

we prioritize our psychological health.

That we practice emotional hygiene.

Because you can't treat a psychological wound

if you don't even know you are injured.

[Pay attention to emotional pain]

Loneliness isn't the only psychological wound

that distorts our perceptions and misleads us.

[Failure]

Failure does that as well.

I once visited a daycare center where I saw three toddlers

play with identical plastic toys.

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

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

and then she just sat back and looked at the box

with her lower lip trembling.

The little boy next to her, watched this happen,

then turned to his box, and burst into tears

without even touching it.

Meanwhile, another little girl tried everything she could think of

until she slid the red button,

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

So three toddlers with identical plastic toys

but with very different reactions to failure.

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

The only thing that prevented them from succeeding

was their mind tricked them into believing they could not.

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

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

that gets triggered whenever we encounter frustrations and setbacks.

Are you aware of how your mind reacts to failure?

You need to be.

Because if your mind tries to convince you

you're incapable of something

and you believe it,

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

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

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

You see, that's why so many people

function below their actual potential.

Because somewhere along the way, sometimes a single failure

convinced them they couldn't succeed,

and they believed it.

Once we become convinced of something,

it's very difficult to change our mind.

I learned that lesson the hard way.

When I was a teenager with my brother.

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

when the police car stopped us.

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

The officer approached the car,

and he shined his flashlight on the driver.

Then on my brother in the front seat, and then on me.

And his eyes opened wide, and he said,

"Where have I seen your face before?"

(Laughter)

And I said, "In the front seat."

(Laughter)

But that made no sense to him whatsoever.

So now he thought I was on drugs.

(Laughter)

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

he marches me over to the police car,

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

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

But even as we were driving away, you could see by the look on his face,

he was convinced I was getting away with something.

Our mind is hard to change once we become convinced.

So it might be very natural to feel demoralized and defeated after you fail.

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

You have to fight feelings of helplessness.

You have to gain control over the situation,

and you have to break this kind of negative cycle before it begins.

[Stop emotional bleeding]

Our minds and our feelings,

they are not the trustworthy friends we thought they were.

They are more like a really moody friend,

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

I once worked with this woman

who after 20 years of marriage and an extremely ugly divorce,

was finally ready for her first date.

She had met this guy online, he seemed nice and successful,

and most importantly, he seemed really into her.

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

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

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

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

[Rejection]

Rejection is extremely painful.

The woman was so hurt, she could't move.

All she could do is call a friend.

And here's what the friend said, "Well, what do you expect,

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

why would a handsome, successful man like that

ever go out with a loser like you?"

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

But it would be much less shocking

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

It's what the woman said to herself.

And that's something we all do.

Especially after a rejection.

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

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

we call ourselves names.

Maybe not as harshly, but we all do it.

It's interesting that we do, because our self-esteem is already hurting.

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

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

You wouldn't get a cut on your arm and decide,

"Oh, I know, I am going to take a knife and see how much deeper I can make it."