SELF-MASTERY

The mindfulness fallacy

The rise of mindfulness has been accompanied by a rise in people not knowing what the hell they are talking about

Mindfulness is still very popular and with the greater attention on mental health it is often seen as a solution to the stresses and strains of modern living. I have written about this quite a lot in the past and this post combines a lot of my previous thinking into one, barely coherent rambling critique. A sort of mindless-reminder-of-mindfulness piece of my mind.

Is Kevin being mindful? Is he just deep in thought? Is pipe unlit and his shoulder on fire? We may never know.

Despite its popularity there is a lot of confusion for three reasons:

• Most people know there is some sort of ‘spiritual’ link …
• But much of the recent attention is from scientific circles
• Common usage of the word just means pay attention/don’t forget

Essentially mindfulness is the awareness of what you are doing or what is going on, either in thought or action. So far, so simple right?

Well, here are a few examples of mindlessness (the polar opposite of mindfulness) and see how many you are guilty of:

• Driving somewhere familiar and forgetting how you got there
• Going into a room and forgetting why you are…