Mindfulness is the absence of Mindlessness . Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard, advocates this pragmatic definition of mindfulness in her 1995 book “mindfulness”. Based on her research experiments over the last 25 years, she lists three kinds of mindlessness, their causes and costly effects. The kinds of mindlessness she found include (1) trapped by categories, which is when people mindlessly rely on defined categories as opposed to creation of new categories (which Langer in turn defines as mindful activity), (2) automatic behavior, which is when people tend to mindlessly rely on known and learned behavior without actually noticing whether it makes sense or not for a given situation , (3) acting from a single perspective, which
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Adding to that, Brown & Ryan define mindfulness is “inherently a state of consciousness” . Shapiro and Carlson suggest mindfulness as an inherent human capacity, and a skill witch can be trained and cultivated. They further assert “Mindfulness is fundamentally a way of being, it is a way of inhabiting our bodies, our minds, and our moment-by-moment experience” . Further to this definition describing mindfulness as a state of being, Shapiro et. al. list three core elements of mindfulness: intention, attention and attitude . For intention, they assert the “knowing why” of paying attention, involving reflecting on own values, goals, hopes and “setting one’s heart compass in the direction one want to be heading”. They claim that reflecting on one’s values, motivations and intentions is an essential element of mindfulness. For attention, Shapiro et. al. use the definition which is in line with many scholars, which is to attend one’s experiences in the present moment, in the here and in the
Adding to that, Brown & Ryan define mindfulness is “inherently a state of consciousness” . Shapiro and Carlson suggest mindfulness as an inherent human capacity, and a skill witch can be trained and cultivated. They further assert “Mindfulness is fundamentally a way of being, it is a way of inhabiting our bodies, our minds, and our moment-by-moment experience” . Further to this definition describing mindfulness as a state of being, Shapiro et. al. list three core elements of mindfulness: intention, attention and attitude . For intention, they assert the “knowing why” of paying attention, involving reflecting on own values, goals, hopes and “setting one’s heart compass in the direction one want to be heading”. They claim that reflecting on one’s values, motivations and intentions is an essential element of mindfulness. For attention, Shapiro et. al. use the definition which is in line with many scholars, which is to attend one’s experiences in the present moment, in the here and in the