Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer
The creation of new categories, as we will see throughout this book, is a mindful activity. Mindlessness sets in when we rely too rigidly on categories and distinctions created in the past (masculine/feminine, old/young, success/failure).
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One need not work through deep-seated personal conflict to make conscious those thoughts that are
mindlessly processed. However, such thoughts will not, on their own, occur to the person for reconsideration. In that way, they too are inaccessible. But if we are offered a new use for a door or a new view of old age, we can erase the old mindsets without difficulty.
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When children start a new activity with an outcome orientation, questions of “Can I?” or “What if I can’t do it?” are likely to predominate, creating an anxious preoccupation with success or failure rather than drawing on the child’s natural, exuberant desire to explore. Instead of enjoying the color of the crayon, the designs on the paper, and a variety of possible shapes along the way, the child sets about writing a “correct” letter A.
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Just as mindlessness is the rigid reliance on old categories, mindfulness means the continual creation of new ones.
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It is easy to see that any single gesture, remark, or act between people can have at least two interpretations: spontaneous versus impulsive; consistent versus rigid; softhearted versus weak; intense versus overemotional; and so on.
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Even if their reasons are hard for us, as observers, to discern, people
are rarely intentionally stingy, grim, choosy, inflexible, secretive, lax, indiscreet, rash, or fussy, for example. No one tries to cultivate unpleasant qualities. Take the same list and imagine yourself in a situation where the word might be applied to you. If you bought someone a present on sale, for instance, would you then see yourself as stingy or thrifty? If you took your children out of school early one Friday in spring, would you see yourself as irresponsible or fun-loving? Virtually all behavior can be cast in a negative or a more tolerable or justifiable light.8
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The consequences of trying out different perspectives are important. First, we gain more choice in how to respond. A single-minded label produces an automatic reaction, which reduces our options. Also, to understand that other people may not be so different allows us empathy and enlarges our range of responses.
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Second, when we apply this open-minded attitude to our own behavior, change becomes more possible. When I used to do clinical work, it often seemed odd to me that many people in therapy not only had strong motivation to change (hence their visits to me), but the desired behavior was already in their repertoires. What was stopping them? In looking back, now I realize that, often, they were probably trying to change behavior (for example, “being impulsive”) that they actively enjoyed, but from another point of view (“being spontaneous”). With this realization, changing one’s behavior might be seen not as changing something negative but as making a choice between two positive alternatives
(for example, “being reflective” versus “being spontaneous”).
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Among other effects, increased mindfulness appears to reduce the depression associated with old age. Larry Perlmuter and I looked at whether we could decrease depression as well as increase self-knowledge and memory through a behavioral monitoring tech- nique.2 This technique, in which subjects take note of
the choices they make in daily activities, had already been shown to be an effective way to increase mind- fulness.3 It rests on an assumption about the nature of choice: The opportunity to make choices increases our motivation.
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Had the rich stranger in Chapter 2 who needed a three-by-seven-foot piece of wood simply unhinged his own front door, observers of the scavenger hunt might have thought, “What a creative solution!” Many, if not all, of the qualities that make up a mindful attitude are characteristic of creative people. Those who can free themselves of old mindsets (like the man on the train), who can open themselves to new information and surprise, play with perspective and context, and focus on process rather than outcome are likely to be creative, whether they are scientists, artists, or cooks.
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We can look at the world and ask how things differ (make distinctions) or how they are the same (make analogies). The first approach results in the creation of new categories, the second usually involves shifting contexts, both of which we have described as mindful activities. We have discussed the mindful nature of novel distinction-making at some length. Thinking by analogy is equally important to both mindfulness and creativity.
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The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
ARNOLD TOYNBEE
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In each of these cases, a mindset of fatigue was lifted by a shift in context initiated by someone else-the
investigator or a friend. Mindful individuals use the phenomenon of second wind to their own advantage in a more deliberate way. Staggering different kinds of paperwork, changing to a different work setting, and taking a break to jog or make a phone call are all ways to tap latent energy by shaking free of the mindset of exhaustion.
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In Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher and William Urey suggest ways that negotiators can generate within their own minds the kind of perspectives brought by outsiders from different disciplines: “If you are negotiating a business contract, invent options that might occur to a banker, an inventor, a labor leader, a speculator in real estate, a stockbroker, an economist, a tax expert, or a
socialist.”-‘
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If a manager is confident but uncertain–confi- dent that the job will get done but without being certain of exactly the best way of doing it–employees are likely to have more room to be creative, alert, and self-starting. When working for confident but uncertain leaders, we are less likely to feign knowledge or hide mistakes, practices that can be costly to a company. Instead, we are likely to think, “If he’s not sure, I guess I don’t have to be right 100 percent of the time,” and risk taking becomes less risky. Employees are more likely to suggest process and product changes that could be beneficial. Admission of uncertainty leads to a search for more information, and with more information there may be more options.
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Because people perceived as bright and knowledgeable tend to become managers, the sense that the boss knows the answer is pervasive and asking questions is potentially intimidating to employees. If managers make clear that they see certainty as foolhardy, it is easier to ask questions based on one’s own uncertainty. Questions provide a good deal of information for managers. Moreover, if managers seek out information from employees to answer these questions, both will probably become more mindful and innovative.
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Many of us know the energizing effects of a new job. There is an excitement in learning new things, mapping out a new territory. As the job becomes familiar, however, enthusiasm and energy wane. Burnout sets in when two conditions prevail: Certainties start to characterize the workday, and demands of the job make workers lose a sense of control. If, in addition, an organization is characterized by rigid rules, problems that arise feel insurmountable because creative problem-solving seems too risky. When bureaucratic work settings are of the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality, burnout is no stranger.
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Once the staff understood that their justification for these solutions were much weaker than they had thought, they were able to find other ways of solving the problems. By returning some control to the residents, they made their own jobs easier. For example, they came to realize that there was no firm reason to believe that a blind man couldn’t learn to smoke safely. In fact, he already knew where and how to smoke without danger. They just had to give him a chance.
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In a recent experimental investigation conducted at Lewis Bay Head Injury Facility, we offered the nurses and other caregivers a similar kind of mindfulness training. With the resultant change of outlook, and a renewed sense that new solutions were possible, the staff in this demanding and potentially depressing situation showed a significant increase in morale and job satisfaction.
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In combating prejudice, then, the issue is not simply how we might teach the majority to be less judgmental, but also how we might all learn to value a “disabled” or “deviant” person’s more creative perceptions.
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Most of us are brought up to find the answer rather than an answer to questions. We do not easily come
up with several alternatives. By requiring that the children in the first group give several different answers to each question, we were also requiring them to draw mindful new distinctions.
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One of the slides, for example, pictured a woman who was a cook. She was identified as deaf. The experimental group was asked to write down four reasons why she might be good at her profession and four reasons why she might be bad. The control group was asked to list one good and one bad reason. This group was asked six additional questions requiring only one answer in order to keep the number of answers constant. Several questions were asked of this kind about different professions. Amanda’s note: good ideas for developing integrative thinking.
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A second part of this training in discrimination presented problem situations and asked the children “how” they might be solved. They were to list as many ways as they could think of (experimental group), or they were simply asked whether they could be solved (control group). For instance, when viewing a woman in a wheelchair they were either asked in detail how this person could drive a car or simply asked, Can this person drive a car?
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A third exercise in making distinctions involved finding explanations for events. We gave the children a slide and a short written description of what was happening (for instance, a girl spilling coffee in a lunchroom).
The experimental group was told to think up several different explanations for the situation while the control group again considered only one explanation. The number of explanations required for each set of questions increased throughout the training for the experimental group. The same number of slides was presented to every child.
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Our thoughts create the context which determines our feelings.
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Part of the reason they fail is that all the positive aspects of the addiction still have a strong appeal. The relaxation, the taste, the sociable quality of stopping for a cigarette remain tempting. A more mindful approach would be to look carefully at all these pleasures and to find other ways of obtaining them. If the needs served by an addiction can be served in other ways, it should be easier to shake.
One day, at a nursing home in Connecticut, elderly residents were each given a choice of houseplants to care for and were asked to make a number of small decisions about their daily routines. A year and a half later, not only were these people more cheerful, active, and alert than a similar group in the same institution who were not given these choices and responsibilities, but many more of them were still alive. In fact, less than half as many of the decision-making, plant-minding residents had died as had those in the other group. This experiment, with its startling results, began over ten years of research into the powerful effects of what my colleagues and I came to call mindfulness, and of its counterpart, the equally powerful but destructive state of mindlessness.’
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The costs of mindlessness, and the potential benefits of increasing mindfulness, became particularly clear to me while conducting research with the elderly. In 1976, with Judith Rodin, a colleague from Yale, I explored the effects of decision making and responsibility on residents in a nursing home.’ We divided the residents into an experimental and a control group. Those in the experimental group were emphatically encouraged to make more decisions for themselves. We tried to come up with decisions that mattered and at the same time would not disturb the staff. For example, these residents were asked to choose where to receive visitors: inside the home or outdoors, in their rooms, in the dining room, in the lounge, and so on. They were also told that a movie would be shown the next week on Thursday and Friday and that they should decide whether they wanted to see it and, if so, when. In addition to choices of this sort, residents in the experimental group were each given a houseplant to care for. They were to choose when and how much to water the plants, whether to put them in the window or to shield them from too much sun, and so forth.
This group was contrasted with members of a comparison group who were also given plants but were told that the nurses would take care of them. Those in the comparison group were not encouraged to make decisions for themselves but were told that the staff was there to help them in every way possible. For example, if they wanted to visit with people inside the home or
outside the home, in their room, in the dining room, or in the lounge, we suggested that they tell a member of the staff, who would help them arrange it. We tried to make the issues between the two groups as similar as possible except for the distinctions about who was responsible and in control.
Before the experiment began and three weeks after it ended, we used various behavioral and emotional measures to judge the effect of this encouragement. Measures of behavior (like participation in activities of the nursing home), subjective reports (how happy residents felt), and ratings by the staff (how alert and active they judged the residents to be) all showed clear and dramatic improvement for the group that had been given more responsibility.
Eighteen months after the study, we went back to the nursing home and took the same measures. The residents who had been given more responsibility still took more initiative, and were significantly more active, vigorous, and sociable than the others. When Judith Rodin gave a lecture at the nursing home, she found that those who participated actively and asked the most questions came from the experimental group. At that time we also measured the residents’ physical health. While, before our study began, the health evaluation ratings of the two groups (based on their medical records) had been the same, eighteen months later the health of the experimental group had improved while that of the comparison group had worsened. The most striking discovery, however, was that the changed attitudes we had initiated in these nursing home residents
resulted in a lower mortality rate. Only seven of the forty-seven subjects in the experimental group had died during the eighteen-month period, whereas thirteen of the forty-four subjects in the comparison group had died (15 percent versus 30 percent).
Because these results were so startling, we looked for other factors that might have affected the death rates. Unfortunately, we cannot have known everything about the residents prior to our experiment. We do know that those who died did not differ significantly in the length of time that they had been in the institution or, as pointed out, in their overall health status when the study began. The actual causes of death that appeared on the medical records varied from one individual to another in both groups. Thus, the larger number of deaths in the comparison group was not the result of a certain disease being more prevalent in one group than in another. The changes brought about by the experiment in the lives of the residents did seem to lead, literally and figuratively, to more living. When we look closely at our “treatment”-encouraging choice and decision making and giving residents something new to look after-it seems appropriate to see it as a way of increasing mindfulness. These results have been confirmed by much research since that time.