Mindfulness for Everyday Life
How can we bring mindfulness into our day-to-day lives? Perhaps it's simpler than you might think, says influential psychologist Ellen Langer.
Mindfulness is the process of actively noticing new things. When you actively notice new things that puts you in the present. It makes you sensitive to context, and the act of noticing is experienced as engagement. It feels good, and it turns out after 40 years of research, that it's literally and figuratively enlivening.
The statement 'be in the present' is an empty instruction because you're not there, and you're not there to know you're not there. When you notice, you come to see that the things you thought you knew, you don't know very well. Everything is always changing, and everything looks different from different perspectives.
My talk ' Mindfulness over matter' showcases many of our studies that suggest that the limits we assume are real are artificial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XQUJR4uIGM
People often use the word mindful instead of attentive. We have a very specific understanding of mindfulness that we've tested over forty years, which is the simple act of noticing new things. So the one thing I think is important for people to realize, while meditation is fine, you don't have to meditate. There's nothing touchy-feely about this; there's nothing foreign about this. It's something all of us do, some of the time, but we're oblivious to all the time we're not doing it.
So if you left Brisbane and you came to visit me at the cape right now, in Massachusetts, you wouldn't have to practice being mindful. You get off the plane expecting everything to be new, and that's why the trip would be exciting. This act of noticing is engaging; it feels good. All of our research shows that it feels good, it's good for you, people see you as more charismatic, the things that you do bare the imprint of your mindfulness. I can't see why anybody wouldn't try to become more mindful, immediately and stay that way for their lives and teach their children too, the same.
Mindfulness is much more like flow than it is like meditation. One of the differences is that flow is seen as an unusual state, and Mindfulness is entirely available to everyone.
No, meditation is different from mindfulness. Meditation is a way to become mindful. When you meditate, you take yourself out of the world. Meditation is a practice, and for some people, it isn't easy. You may have to be still for 20 minutes twice a day.
To be mindful is very much putting yourself in the world. It's a very active state. After being mindful for a little while, you come to an understanding that uncertainty is the rule and not the exception. So when you know you don't know, you naturally tune in. Mindfulness is a way of being, rather than a practice.
To better understand the unique concept of mindfulness see my book Mindfulness. https://www.amazon.com.au/Mindfulness-25th-anniversary-Ellen-Langer/dp/0738217999
The more ingrained your mindlessness is, the harder it's going to be to change. If one came from an authoritarian background, where people believe in absolutes, it is going to be more difficult to be mindful than coming from a family or school that teaches 'there are several ways of doing it.' No matter what your background is, all of us, on some occasions, are mindful. For all of us once we realize we don't know there may be a breakthrough.
My data over forty years suggests that virtually all of us are mindless virtually all of the time. It's not entirely clear why populations all over the world are so mindless. I believe that the power structure profits from keeping everyone in their place, so if you recognize that they don't know any more than you know, you'd be less likely to stand back and let the other person make all the decisions.
I think schools are the greatest perpetrators of our mindlessness because they teach absolute facts and there are no such things as absolute facts; they are context-dependent. So they teach one and one is two, but one and one is not always two, an example I am fond of using. If you take one wad of chewing gum and add it to one wad of chewing gum, one plus one is one. When schools practice mindful learning rather than mindless, unconditional learning, then kids will be set up to experience a more satisfying life than most people are now.
The counterclockwise study was the first test of the mind-body unity idea. Mind-body unity says these are just words; let's put them back together, so whatever your mind experiences, so does your body. In the counterclockwise study, we put the mind back in time, took measurements from the body, and the results were extraordinary for these 80 to 90-year-old men. Vision improved, hearing improved, strength and memory improved. They even looked younger.
You can't easily put yourself back in time, although you can reminisce - the way to mindfully age is to give attention to variability. Sometimes you can do a specific task and sometimes you can't. People have this ridiculous notion that they can't play tennis anymore when they turn whatever older age. They cant garden, they cant do whatever it is and there's no evidence for that. Anytime you say you can't, I'd say, how do you know you cant? You begin in small steps and pay attention to when a task is a little easier, and you do it a little more this way, rather than that way. It's a way to mindfully more forward rather than mindlessly presume that age is a time of loss.
One can be mindful by taking on new adventures; one can also be mindful by paying attention to the things that they are already doing; both will yield a satisfying life.
For an in-depth examination of the power of mindfulness see https://www.ellenlanger.com/books/1/counterclockwise
No. By teaching the process of actively noticing new things (Mindfulness) you teach people to recognize that everything can be understood in multiple ways. When you recognize everything can be understood in multiple ways, then you have much more control over your experience of the world. For practitioners interested in the implications for clinical practice see:
When people suffer from depression, stress, or anxiety, they presume their symptoms will stay the same or perhaps worsen, but nothing stays the same. There are always little movements up or down, and the key to health, whether it's mental health or physical health, is to notice the improvement.
Typically people only notice when a symptom is present. If you notice when it's absent and ask, "why is it absent now?" three things happen. First, you will notice you are not suffering all the time, and you immediately feel better. Second, when you ask yourself, "why is it a little better now than the last time I checked in?" you are initiating a mindful search. Forty years of research has shown us is that this mindfulness search is good for your health. Third, is that you're much more likely to find a solution if you are looking for one.
If people knew that everything was going to be fine tomorrow, they'd be able to cope with whatever they are experiencing today. What people don't understand is that prediction is an illusion. We think we can predict. Stress, depression, all of these things rely on the thought that something is going to happen and when it happens, it's going to be awful. Both parts of that thought process need to be questioned. Give five reasons why it might not happen. Let's assume it does happen; what are three or four reasons it might be a blessing?
Even with COVID, there are many advantages. There are families that are sitting down to eat dinner together when they haven't done so in years. The air is cleaner. Many of us are in touch with people we haven’t spoken with in years, etc.
It's difficult for people to understand that they can't predict. I do an exercise with my advanced decision-making class at Harvard. To hear more about it visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XQUJR4uIGM
If you are interested in the research, these studies demonstrate the relationship between Langerian Mindfulness and mental health.