What is mindfulness? Being mindful consists of being aware of the present moment and being in touch with one’s thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations while noticing novel stimuli in the environment. It encompasses the ability to live in the present moment with awareness, regardless of the circumstances. For example, amidst the stress of upcoming exams, the practice of mindful living helps one first to recognize and acknowledge one’s anxieties and remind oneself that the exam is in the future, not the present. All one can do is to put one’s best foot forward, to study, and to let go of the fear of failing.
Contrary to popular belief, mindfulness is not spiritual in nature or bound to context—one does not need to be still or sit in the lotus position to practice mindfulness. In 2016, Nilsson and Kazemi conducted a systematic review, filtering out 33 different definitions of mindfulness from 308 peer-reviewed articles published between 1993 and 2016. The following four elements have surfaced repeatedly: awareness and attention, present-centeredness, external events, and cultivation (Nilsson & Kazemi, 2016). Cultivation, the last of “The Big Five” components of mindfulness, consists of selectively placing attention onto stimuli that fill one with gratitude and joy, or other positive emotions. These elements have plenty of benefits. For example, being aware of and paying attention to the present moment may help one better understand one’s emotions, cope better with difficult thoughts, feel calmer, boost one’s attention and concentration, and improve one’s relationships (Mindfulness, 2021).
Regarding mental health, studies have shown that mindfulness-based approaches can significantly reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression in clinical as well as non-clinical populations (Khoury et al., 2013). This may be of particular interest to students as mental health concerns have risen at institutions of higher education, like Harvard, within the past few years. In July 2020, Harvard University published the Report of the Task Force on Managing Student Mental Health (2020), which declared that 22% of students reported having concerns about depression and 9% of students received a clinical diagnosis of depression in 2018. Yet, Harvard’s Counseling and Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are often overburdened and cannot meet their demand. A cross-sectional survey investigating the mental health of students at the large Texas A&M University during the COVID-19 pandemic lends support to findings from Harvard College’s campus (Wang et al., 2020). The 2,031 recruited students filled out two standardized questionnaires assessing depression and anxiety. Analyses reveal that an alarming 48.14% of participants showed a moderate-to-severe level of depression, 38.48% showed a moderate-to-severe level of anxiety, 18.04% had suicidal thoughts, and only 43.25% indicated that they were able to cope adequately with the stress related to the current situation (Wang et al., 2020).
To increase mindfulness, one must first be able to recognize mindless behaviors—those that are automatically executed without paying attention to the present moment. However, awareness of mindless behaviors is not as simple as it seems. According to theories of neural processing of perception, ideal mindful processing consists of absorbing the unique stimuli from our environments, coding them, and responding with a stimuli-specific action (Ou, 2017). However, as our everyday lives are governed by routine, we have learned to respond semi-automatically to incoming information, which predisposes our behavioral patterns to generalizations. Instead of paying attention to nuances in our environments, we become less attuned to them and learn to categorize similar events. For example, if a student sees signs of disappointment on their professor’s face as the professor returns an exam, they may perceive the stimulus as negative, immediately concluding that their grade must be sub-par. This facial expression is then generalized and associated with worse grades, so that the next time the professor walks in the door with a similar face, the same bodily sensations arise, even though the professor’s expression may have only been caused by external factors, like stress at home.
In her book Mindfulness, Dr. Ellen Langer—professor of psychology at Harvard—proposes that the most pressing components at the root of mindlessness are repetition, premature cognitive commitment, and education for outcome. The more often one executes a task, the less likely one is to remember the series of steps it is composed of: “As we come to know, we learn to be mindless,” Dr. Langer notes (Mindfulness Health, 2022). A typical example of this phenomenon is driving or walking to a destination and forgetting how one arrived there. Walking and driving are highly practiced actions and thus require less attention. This theme of automation is also apparent in the second root of mindlessness: premature cognitive commitments, defined as making one’s mind up about a situation or a person on the first encounter. As a result, in a second encounter, one already has a preconceived notion of what may happen in a given situation and will no longer be fully present. This is also encapsulated by the third root of mindlessness, education for outcome. Starting at a young age, students are often taught to focus on the outcome, a grade for a project, for example, instead of focusing on the process. Research has shown that process-based, as opposed to outcome-based, feedback is more conducive to learning (Gjrde et al., 2017).
With this understanding of the common patterns of mindlessness, appreciating the small moments in life more and being better grounded in the present are increasingly important. Instead of jumping to conclusions, or premature commitments, one can try to look at a situation from a different perspective. Dr. Langer noted in one of her lectures on Health Psychology that “outcomes are nothing except the way we perceive and attribute them” (Mindfulness Health, 2022). Thus, changing one’s perception can ultimately change one’s feelings about a given situation. A first step toward doing so can be as simple as noticing novel details in routine daily tasks—eating, brushing one’s teeth, cleaning one’s room, or even just walking to class.
About the Author
Bianca Braun is a senior at Harvard College concentrating in Psychology.
References
Contrary to popular belief, mindfulness is not spiritual in nature or bound to context—one does not need to be still or sit in the lotus position to practice mindfulness. In 2016, Nilsson and Kazemi conducted a systematic review, filtering out 33 different definitions of mindfulness from 308 peer-reviewed articles published between 1993 and 2016. The following four elements have surfaced repeatedly: awareness and attention, present-centeredness, external events, and cultivation (Nilsson & Kazemi, 2016). Cultivation, the last of “The Big Five” components of mindfulness, consists of selectively placing attention onto stimuli that fill one with gratitude and joy, or other positive emotions. These elements have plenty of benefits. For example, being aware of and paying attention to the present moment may help one better understand one’s emotions, cope better with difficult thoughts, feel calmer, boost one’s attention and concentration, and improve one’s relationships (Mindfulness, 2021).
Regarding mental health, studies have shown that mindfulness-based approaches can significantly reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression in clinical as well as non-clinical populations (Khoury et al., 2013). This may be of particular interest to students as mental health concerns have risen at institutions of higher education, like Harvard, within the past few years. In July 2020, Harvard University published the Report of the Task Force on Managing Student Mental Health (2020), which declared that 22% of students reported having concerns about depression and 9% of students received a clinical diagnosis of depression in 2018. Yet, Harvard’s Counseling and Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are often overburdened and cannot meet their demand. A cross-sectional survey investigating the mental health of students at the large Texas A&M University during the COVID-19 pandemic lends support to findings from Harvard College’s campus (Wang et al., 2020). The 2,031 recruited students filled out two standardized questionnaires assessing depression and anxiety. Analyses reveal that an alarming 48.14% of participants showed a moderate-to-severe level of depression, 38.48% showed a moderate-to-severe level of anxiety, 18.04% had suicidal thoughts, and only 43.25% indicated that they were able to cope adequately with the stress related to the current situation (Wang et al., 2020).
To increase mindfulness, one must first be able to recognize mindless behaviors—those that are automatically executed without paying attention to the present moment. However, awareness of mindless behaviors is not as simple as it seems. According to theories of neural processing of perception, ideal mindful processing consists of absorbing the unique stimuli from our environments, coding them, and responding with a stimuli-specific action (Ou, 2017). However, as our everyday lives are governed by routine, we have learned to respond semi-automatically to incoming information, which predisposes our behavioral patterns to generalizations. Instead of paying attention to nuances in our environments, we become less attuned to them and learn to categorize similar events. For example, if a student sees signs of disappointment on their professor’s face as the professor returns an exam, they may perceive the stimulus as negative, immediately concluding that their grade must be sub-par. This facial expression is then generalized and associated with worse grades, so that the next time the professor walks in the door with a similar face, the same bodily sensations arise, even though the professor’s expression may have only been caused by external factors, like stress at home.
In her book Mindfulness, Dr. Ellen Langer—professor of psychology at Harvard—proposes that the most pressing components at the root of mindlessness are repetition, premature cognitive commitment, and education for outcome. The more often one executes a task, the less likely one is to remember the series of steps it is composed of: “As we come to know, we learn to be mindless,” Dr. Langer notes (Mindfulness Health, 2022). A typical example of this phenomenon is driving or walking to a destination and forgetting how one arrived there. Walking and driving are highly practiced actions and thus require less attention. This theme of automation is also apparent in the second root of mindlessness: premature cognitive commitments, defined as making one’s mind up about a situation or a person on the first encounter. As a result, in a second encounter, one already has a preconceived notion of what may happen in a given situation and will no longer be fully present. This is also encapsulated by the third root of mindlessness, education for outcome. Starting at a young age, students are often taught to focus on the outcome, a grade for a project, for example, instead of focusing on the process. Research has shown that process-based, as opposed to outcome-based, feedback is more conducive to learning (Gjrde et al., 2017).
With this understanding of the common patterns of mindlessness, appreciating the small moments in life more and being better grounded in the present are increasingly important. Instead of jumping to conclusions, or premature commitments, one can try to look at a situation from a different perspective. Dr. Langer noted in one of her lectures on Health Psychology that “outcomes are nothing except the way we perceive and attribute them” (Mindfulness Health, 2022). Thus, changing one’s perception can ultimately change one’s feelings about a given situation. A first step toward doing so can be as simple as noticing novel details in routine daily tasks—eating, brushing one’s teeth, cleaning one’s room, or even just walking to class.
About the Author
Bianca Braun is a senior at Harvard College concentrating in Psychology.
References
- Harvard University Task Force. (2020). Report of the Task Force on Managing Student Mental Health. 46.
- Khoury, B., Lecomte, T., Fortin, G., Masse, M., Therien, P., Bouchard, V., Chapleau, M.-A., Paquin, K., & Hofmann, S. G. (2013). Mindfulness-based therapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 33(6), 763–771. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2013.05.005
- Langer, Ellen. (2022). Mindfulness Health, lecture presentation, Psychology 1005: Health Psychology, Harvard College, delivered 6 September 2022.
- Mindfulness. (2021). Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/a-z-topics/mindfulness
- Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for Improving Health, Quality of Life, and Social Functioning in Adults—Vibe—2012—Campbell Systematic Reviews—Wiley Online Library. (2012). Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.4073/csr.2012.3
- Mindfulness-based therapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis—PubMed. (2013). Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://pubmed-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/23796855/
- Nilsson, H., & Kazemi, A. (2016). Reconciling and thematizing definitions of mindfulness: The Big Five of mindfulness. Review of General Psychology, 20, 183–193. https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000074
- Ou, Q. (2017). A Brief Introduction to Perception. Studies in Literature and Language, 15(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.3968/10055
