Ellen J. Langer - Mindfulness

To the memory of my mother and grandmother

PART ONE: Mindlessness

PART TWO: Mindfulness

Because I have written and rewritten this book many times, each time trying to make the ideas of interest to a broader audience, and each time enlisting the patient advice of friends and colleagues, I have many people to thank. Robert Abelson, Daryl Bern, Anne Bernays, Otto Brodtrick, Jerome Bruner, Marjorie Garber, Roslyn Garfield, William Goode, John Hallowell, Gerald Holton, Philip Holzman, Barbara Johnson, Jerome Kagan, Aron Katz, Phyllis Katz, Barbara Levine, Beverly London, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Helen Rees, Eric Rofes, Howard Stevenson, Phyllis Temple, Marjorie Weiner, and Lenore Weitzman have all enriched the book with their perceptive comments. It is an understatement to say that I am grateful for their help. To Elaine Noble I am especially grateful for rich insights on the relationship between mindlessness/mindfulness theory and alcoholism. The technical aspects of preparing this manuscript were carried out with great proficiency by Julie Viens, Barbara Burg, and Andrea Marcus.

Major concepts used in this book are derived from research conducted over the past fifteen years, at Yale, City University of New York, and, for the past twelve years, in the Department of Psychology at Harvard. I am therefore deeply indebted to all the people who collaborated with me on these investigations. Most especially I have profited from years of continued collaboration with Benzion Chanowitz.

My ideas sometimes get the better of me. Before I clearly explain one, another comes to mind and seizes my attention. For this reason, I imagine the reader shares my deep gratitude for Merloyd Lawrence's editorial skills, which have been invaluable in shaping this book.

I don't like the idea of a unitary subject; I prefer the play of a kaleidoscope: you give it a tap and the little bits of colored glass form a new pattern.

ROLAND BARTHES, The Grain of the Voice

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.'

Unlike the exotic "altered states of consciousness" that we read so much about, mindfulness and mindlessness are so common that few of us appreciate their importance or make use of their power to change our lives. This book is about the psychological and physical costs we pay because of pervasive mindlessness and, more important, about the benefits of greater control, richer options, and transcended limits that mindfulness can make possible.