Really good stuff! Ellen Langer, Harvard professor of psychology, describes how mindfulness is simply the practice of noticing new things.
1. Recognize you don’t know. You might think you know. Ask yourself how it could be different from what you thought it would was?
2. Actively notice new things about everything around you: the physical environment, the people, the work that you’re doing.
3. As soon as find yourself feeling stressed or in any negative emotional state, you need to actively look at it in this mindful way. Ask yourself, what are the advantages of this thing that you’re fearing? As soon as this negative thing has advantages, it becomes less negative.
4. How to mindfully deal with stress:
If you’re stressed, stress relies on two things: on the assumption that something is going to happen, and when it happens, it’s going to be awful. Attack both of those. How do you know it’s going to happen? Give yourself 3, 5 reasons why in fact it might not happen. So now you’re not sure if it’s going to happen or not happen and you immediately start to feel better. Then assume it is going to happen, what are the advantages to it actually happening? And so the stress will dissipate.
Click here to listen to Ellen Langer’s interview on mindfulness.