Dr. Ellen Langer

And the hard part is that everything you mindlessly took in when you were younger is firmly there guiding your behavior when you're older.

And just think about it.

Do you want your 30-year-old self

what you're doing to be dictated by your 15-year-old self or your 30-year-old self to dictate what's coming when you're 40 and 50 and 60.

And we're oblivious to all of this.

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.