Dr. Ellen Langer

So years of research, close to 50 years of research, has shown me virtually all of us are mindless almost all the time.

And when you're mindless, you're not aware that you're not there.

Okay, so you're not there, but you don't know that you're not there.

And so if you were to say, do horses eat meat?

You'd say, no, horses don't eat meat.

It would just be a natural response, but it would be wrong, at least in some contexts.

Dr. Langer, when you become more mindful, what benefits do you see in your life?

Well, the first thing is that you're engaged.

You're awake.

You're no longer responding like a robot.

So you are.

And, you know, I wrote a book a while ago on becoming an artist and shared the journey.

And as you start to paint or do some new activity, if you let yourself become totally engaged, it's exhilarating.

And then let's say the phone rings and all of a sudden your mood changes.

And so you realize, wow, how you are more typically.

People take as a baseline being mindless.

When you're not feeling energetic, excited, or at least peaceful, you're not being mindful.

So to feel any of those things, when you're happy, a robot isn't happy, a robot isn't relaxed, a robot isn't serene.

So anytime you're feeling not like a robot, you're experiencing the joys of being mindful.

And again, it's so easy.