June 2022
1 + 1 does not always = 2. The great Harvard Psychology Professor, Dr. Ellen J. Langer, defines mindfulness as “actively noticing.”
Dr. Langer’s notable example … if you dump one pile of laundry on your bed and you add another pile of laundry on top of that first pile, do you now have 2 piles of laundry? … no, you have 1.
Research over the past 40 years has taught us that many people, for most of the time, are mindless. We are all taught facts that we think are unchanging. When you think you know something, you do not pay attention.
To be mindful, we:
- Notice new things about the things we thought we knew. Then we come to see that in fact, we did not know these things as well as we thought we did, so our attention naturally shifts.
- Adapt a mindset for uncertainty. If in fact you know that you do not know, then you will naturally stay tuned in.
Does this ring a bell at work during those endless meetings? … perhaps at home when talking with family around the dinner table? … or driving from point A to point B? When people are “not there” they do not even know that they are not there.
Mindfulness is at a low in business – the blinders are on, and the ears are plugged – there are just too many distractions waiting at our fingertips, on our screens or as a result of having to quickly run to the next meeting. This is alarmingly true in so many aspects of daily business and culture today, from the policies or decisions we implement, to the recycled strategic priorities and goals we set to the specific education, course or designation that applicants MUST HAVE to be considered for a job opportunity. We are constantly trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. CEOs are shocked with some of the decisions that are being made within their organizations.
Are your leaders being paid to be mindful or mindless?
Culture starts at the top.
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