Christina:

Think about the word mindfulness for a moment. It sounds like you're thinking a lot, right? Your mind is full, but doesn't mindfulness have something to do with meditation. That's about emptying your mind, right? Isn't mindfulness basically about meditating a whole lot until you get incredibly practiced at being peaceful all the time?

Well, not really. Mindfulness is at the polar opposite of mindlessness - logical, right? And it turns out that living mindfully is simply about adopting a way of being aware, engaged, and interested in everything that fills our present moment, understanding that these things themselves are neither good or bad, for us or against us, or themselves shifting us toward or away from joy.

It's up to us to notice everything and decide what it means, and it can change the way every moment of our life feels. Dr. Ellen Langer, a social psychology professor at Harvard University, is widely considered the mother of mindfulness. Researching the topic since the 1970s, she has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest, the Liberty Science Center Genius Award, and the Distinguished Contributions of Basic Science to Applied Psychology Award from the American Association of Applied and Preventative Psychology. She's the author of the book that arguably introduced the concept of mindfulness of the public consciousness, Mindfulness, now in its 25th anniversary edition.

I am very happy to have her with me now to talk about what mindfulness really is, how we can get there, and how it can help us get through this and every moment with more joy.

So welcome Ellen.

Ellen:

Nice to be here with you.

Christina:

Where am I speaking to you from today?

Ellen:

I'm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in my house, quarantining like the rest of the world.

Christina:

Well, I'm so excited about this conversation. I mean,of course you being the mother of mindfulness and mindfulness being a huge topic, particularly as we try to move through COVID with some of our wellbeing intact and even maybe potentially find a place of flourishing during this season. So thank you so much for being with me today.

Ellen:

My pleasure.

Christina:

So you said, “When we make the moment matter, it all matters.”

Ellen:

Right.

Christina:

I love that quote so much.

Ellen:

I think people need to understand is that all we have is moments and most of us stress, all of our stress is based on the future. And as people should be aware now, if they weren't before the future is unpredictable, people are stressed because they think of things as unpredictable now, but things were always unpredictable.

And so people tend to confuse the stability of their mindsets, what they're thinking, with what's actually happening. Everything has always been changing, looks different from different perspectives. And because of that, we never know.

Interestingly, Christina is that when we look back, everything makes sense. You know? So you find that Jane and Joe are getting divorced and you say, yeah, I knew it. because you start thinking of the fight they had at a party and how rude they were to each other The last time you saw them and so forth going forward. if somebody said at the party, well, do you think they're going to get divorced? You’d say like, no, everybody fights, you know, and so on.

So we confuse the certainty of things that have already happened with the uncertainty going forward. I do this little exercise in my decision class at Harvard. These are, is an advanced class and they also start off like most people believing that everything is predictable. So I say to them, okay, I've been teaching a version of this course for 40 years. I have never missed a class.

What is the likelihood that I'm going to be here next week? And we go around the room and everybody answers. And they say things like 98% 90 as if there's some calculation that they're doing, because they know they shouldn't say a hundred percent, but essentially that's what they're saying. Then I say, okay, now I want everyone to give me, and we'll go around the room again, give me a good reason why I might not be here next week. The first person invariably says, well, I'm always here, so I deserve the time off. The next person says my dog has to go to the vet. And then they all give very good reasons. And I say, okay, now, what do you think the likelihood is of my being here next week? And the hundred percent drops to 50%.

Okay. So going forward, we don't know. And I think in these times, the times of the pandemic, it's important for people to realize that the certainty that they had wasn't real, so that they're less uncomfortable with the uncertainty. You know, things will play out. However they play out. There will be advantages for all of us, disadvantages. And those advantages or disadvantages are not real. You know, they're a function of the way we frame the event. So if Christina, if you and I went out to dinner and the food was wonderful. Great. You and I go out to dinner and the food is awful. Great. I'll eat less. Okay. So my experience of events depends on the way I frame the event.

And so our stress is essentially of our own making. And it's very important now for people who are really, really stressed to, to understand this, because stress is probably the biggest culprit with respect to health and or the absence of health, all illness. So stress relies on two things. First, something is going to happen. And then when it happens, it’s going to be awful. So we just said, we don't know what's going to happen. Give yourself two, three, six reasons why it might not happen. So you already feel better. It was definitely going to happen, to now, it may or may not. And then think of the advantages to it actually happened. And I know that people are shaking their heads and saying, well, you know, if somebody finds out, they have the virus, how are you going to reframe that? And it turns out that first of all, very few of us will actually get the virus. But when we get the virus, there are specific things we can do. But there's data on illnesses, cancer, strokes, where when people first have the stroke or first get the diagnosis of having cancer, of course, everybody is stressed and worried, what have you? But in a very short time, many of those people first come alive. They say, Oh my gosh, I'm not going to live forever. Let me make the moments matter. And so even when it seems the worst things befall us, there's still ways in which we can come alive.

And again, as you opened our discussion conversational though I’m monopolizing it with the talking about moments. If we just make the moment matter, everything will fall into place for us, not try to figure out what are we going to do in six months or even six days just take care of right now.

Christina:

What are some steps to making the moment matter? Because I'm hearing you, there's so many different lines I want to take in terms of understanding stress a little bit better, but how do we actually, especially right now, you know, I'll give my own personal situation to provide some context. You know, I'm home with my three kids. I try to do homeschooling homeschooling in the morning with them, then move on to work. I, you know, I'm wave going through my own waves of grief throughout the day. You know, navigating changeover with my partner at home, engaging with neighbors. Like how do I, during the regular course of a day, which all the days feel like the same day. How do I make the moments matter right now?

Ellen:

Okay. You know, it's interesting. There are lots of people who say, be in the moment, be in the present. And I laugh at that in the way that you are suggesting, sweetly though, because everybody thinks they're in the moment because when you're not there, you're not there to know you're not there. So it's a very good question. How do you be in the present?

And that's what mindfulness, in the way I study it, is all about, it's the simple act of noticing new things. And as you're noticing things about the things you think, you know, first you come to say, gee, you didn't know it as well as you thought. So your attention naturally goes to it, and it becomes interesting again. And when you're noticing new things, that is the essence of being engaged. So it feels good, the neurons are firing, and we have 40 years of data showing that it's literally and figuratively enlivening. It's the best thing that one can for themselves. So when you say you're homeschooling, well, what does that mean? You know, if we, we say, what are you doing at this particular moment when you're homeschooling and how might you notice different ways of doing it and notice different things about your children and different things about the day and so on, then you'd be approaching it more mindfully,

right?

And, and even the way that people do these things, and you threw up your hands in your audience can’t see that, you know, Oh my God, homeschooling that there probably are aspects to it in your, and your home that the kids are loving and that are highly effective. So if you're looking for the ways you're failing then you're going to find them, if you look for the ways you're succeeding, you're going to find those also because success, failure, good things, bad things are not in events themselves. They're in the views we take of events. And so if we change our view of the event, and then there's no reason, I mean, you weren't taught to be a homeschooler. There's no reason why you should be perfect at this.

And we don't even know what perfect would be. You know, that if your kids sat perfectly still and learned whatever wisdom you are imparting to them, I would have some trouble with that. Because from where does your wisdom come? You know that most of education is dare I say, mindless, that. I often start lectures I give to explain this concept of mindlessness and mindfulness to people by asking them a simple question: How much is one in one? So Christina, how much is one in one?

Christina:

It is two.

Ellen:

Okay. But no, it's not two. It's only sometimes two. If you're using the base 10 number system one plus one is two. If you're using a base two number system, one plus one is written as 10th. Easier to understand if you add one pile of laundry to one pile of laundry, one plus one equals one, one water chewing gum, plus one, one of chewing gum, one plus one equals one. Okay. So the point here is that if your children were doing exactly what you were teaching them and you were teaching them all of the facts you learned in an, in a mindless way, it wouldn't be good for them. I'm fond of telling this story because remember I'm Harvard, Yale all the way through straight A's, which will take on a different meaning, when you'll see, I'm not boasting in a moment. So I was at this horse event and this man asked me if I’d watch his horse for him because he was going to get his horse a hot dog. Well, I told you I'm Harvard, Yale, I know horses don't eat me.

He gets the horse a hot dog and goes, and I'm watching the horses, he comes back with the hot dog and the horse aided. And it was at that moment that I realized gee, all of these facts that I thought I knew these facts that made me as an A student better than the B student, who's better than the C student – question them all.

So what we need to do, no matter in what context we're learning, whether it's digital in the classroom, over the internet, what have you, we need to appreciate that information changes depending on context. one-on-one, yes, is two sometimes not all the time. So I think you're probably a better homeschool teacher than you think you are.

Christina:

Thank you very much.

Ellen:

We'll have to ask your children and find out.

Christina:

Absolutely. But I love that framing. And I think for people, you know, are gonna be listening to this episode in the next couple of weeks who are still deep in it. Everyone is in their own unique challenges and opportunities right now, to know that we can frame it, that the,

the way that we look at it, whether we're looking at it as a success or a failure, you know, determines how it actually is in the world, I think is if I'm understanding you correctly is an incredibly empowering idea.

Ellen:

Yes. I mean, I, it's a way for people need to understand that events don't cause stress. What causes stress are the views we take of events.

If we take a mindless negative view, yes, we're going to be stressed. If we open that up and see all the alternative ways, the information can be understood, the stress will subside.

Christina:

So based on your study of mindfulness, what are the most important practices that will help see us through COVID-19?

Ellen:

Yeah. Well, okay. So it's interesting because mindfulness, as I study it, is not a practice like meditation is a practice. I used to do research on meditation, which is fine. Meditation though isn't mindful. Meditation is something you do in order to become much more mindful. for the work that we focused on over the last 40 years, all you need to do is actively notice new things. And when you actively notice new things, then you realize you didn't know it. And it's that uncertainty that then keeps you on top of things, keeps you interested and the like. Okay so if you were going to come visit me in Mexico and you've never been to Mexico, and let's say it cost you a lot of money for your plane ticket and the virus has passed and everything is safe.

When you get off that plane, you're going to be looking to see you all the ways Mexico is different from wherever you are traveling from. You don't have to practice it. And the, the travel example when travel was fun is a good example because mindfulness, as I study, it is effortless. You should be mindful virtually all of the time. Now, why do I say that you should be mindful virtually all the time, because over 40 years, we've done 40 years of studies that show that mindfulness is the essence of wellbeing. It's good for your health. It's good for your relationships. when you're more mindful, people see it was more charismatic, more trustworthy. When you're mindful, you leave the imprint of that mindfulness on the products you produce,

So what you do tends to be better and it's easy and it's fun. So given that it's good for you, it’s easy, it’s fun, People like you better respect you more and so on, there’s no reason why we should not as soon as possible, become more mindful. And the alternative is, you know, being mindless, being like a robot.

And I think if you're going to do something, you should show up for it. Even if it's brushing your teeth or some activity that you do every day, be there while you're doing it and you'll do it better. And the time, and then the neurons are firing and the activity itself becomes more meaningful. Now, problem with a pandemic for lots of people who are in quarantine, is that all the things they do in the house, they've done largely mindlessly to get them done, to get out of the house or to get these things done so they can get on with their work. That's no longer pressing and so on. And so it doesn't occur to them that they, they might reinvent those activities. But the bottom line is that if you're going to do it, be there for it. And there are a very clear benefits to, to being that fashion. You know, you might, the example that comes to my mind is you're having cereal. And so you reach for the box, you pour it into a bowl, you pour the milk and you do all of this mindlessly, because you're thinking about something that you're going to have to do with work.

If you do this, then if there was a little metal object that happened to find its way into the box, because plants are not perfect, right? When the box is packaged and so on, you're going to break a tooth, or choke, or something. There's always something that can happen. So when you're mindful, you're averting the danger, not yet arisen. When you're mindful, you're there, so you can take advantage of opportunities to which you'd otherwise be blind.

Christina:

Fascinating, because there is a lot of people, myself included who want to mindlessly distract themselves from what is happening right now. So would it be true…?

Ellen:

Now that’s the thing…, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I have. So I might as well continue. All right. People think they want to be mindless because they think the alternative is worry. So I'd rather not think about anything than be worried about something, but we've just said that that worry is itself mindless. So I'm not suggesting that you turn your mind to all of the negative things that could happen. You know, I'd recently written about the difference between what I call mindful optimism and defensive pessimism.

So defensive pessimism, which is a style many people have. And sadly, during the time of pandemic, more people have adopted it. It's the view, the essentially the expectation that something awful is going to happen. So, expect the worst, but hope for the best. And that's problematic in two ways. First of all, you tend to get what you expect.

You're expecting the worst. Then you're stressed. That's no good for your, your health. Second is the word hope, which most people think is a positive thing. If you think carefully about it, that it really is rather negative. That hoping for something has built into it. The belief that failure is likely that you don't say, I hope I can have breakfast tomorrow.

You just expect to be able to have breakfast tomorrow. Maybe say, I hope I can have breakfast tomorrow that says, Oh, somebody is going to prevent you from having breakfast tomorrow or somebody who's going to have eaten all your food or whatever the case. And so instead of this approach, which leaves you stressed, I suggest that we don't put our heads in the sand.

We make a plan. So I'm going to quarantine myself. I'm going to clean my house. I'm going to get some exercise, whatever your plan is. And then you just do it, expecting that everything is going to be fine. Now, if things turn out to be fine, you haven't wasted any time. If you decide at the end of this, that things, weren't so fine, you're going to be stronger by adopting this view. Then if you just spent all your time being stressed, you know, prior to it. So I think, and again, the, the overwhelming strategy is just take care of right now. That's really all we have anyway.

Christina:

One of the questions I had for you is what is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our ability to be mindful, present, and self-regulating? I think we spoke a little bit about that already. How does it differ from other difficult things in our normal experience?

Ellen:

Well, I think that it differs in part because we have a sense that the whole world is going through it, you know, and, and that in some ways makes it easier, right? I mean, if it's just me,

what's wrong with me, everybody else can deal with not having a date on Saturday night, you know, or whatever the case happens to be. I don't know where that example came from at 73 years old. I never know what I'm going to say until I say it. And now people make an attribution to whatever is going on to, to the pandemic.

Christina:

We all have challenges that we're facing every day. The pandemic is obviously an incredibly unique challenge that we're facing. So I'm curious, mindful, you’ve clarified for me that the mindfulness is not a practice, but how being mindful or, you know, how some people would use it interchangeably, but to be present.

Ellen:

Well you get up in the morning and you figured out what you want to do with the day.

So for me, I get up and I get dressed and, you know, I could be in sweatpants all day long, but if it, if it's not just one day, I think that that works against our feeling good. then accomplish something. You know, if you've always wanted to paint, start painting without worrying about being good. Start cooking things, be clever, figuring out how to exercise without going to the gym. And then you're going to save a lot of money when the gym finally opens up again. you know, for me, I mentioned this the last webinar I did, I think I slept wrong. And so I had a little ache in my shoulder. I went out, and I don't have a heating pad, I went out to my small backyard. I found a rock, smooth rock. I wet it, put it in the microwave for, you know, for 10 seconds, put a cloth around it. And I had a heating pad so that, you know, there's an opportunity to say, okay, the recipe calls for this, I don't have this, what else might I use.

Now two things follow from that one is that you may learn that you can substitute yogurt for sour cream, for example. Two, you learn that when whatever you were trying to make didn’t work, so what! You know, most of the things that we waste our time caring about are just not worth the time. And I think that's one of the larger lessons that people are learning.

You know, now it's interesting with the social distancing. I think many people are having more interactions with friends than they've had before I had people. I'm sure I'm not alone in this who I haven't spoken to in 20 years, contact me, are you all right? And so on.

So my immediate network has, has increased and you know, and that's very nice and that also helps to hold on to what things actually matter. since you can't go shopping, you know, and if you're a clothes horse, or whatever, you see that I can wear the same pair of pants every day, wash them on occasion or whatever. And it's all fine. So maybe I didn't need all of the items. Your hair is getting long and you just put it up or, you know, or cut it yourself or realize that who cares again. you know, it's easy worrying about things when it's only you; when you know that for all women over 50, your roots are starting to show your gray hairs, Then it's more laughable.

Christina:

For sure. Or 30 If as the case may be over here.

Ellen:

I mean, sure, you know, the main, the main thing is that this is a time for us to get in touch with what actually matters to us. And let the silly things, go by the by.

I love that. some of the things I wrote down was get dressed, have a focus for the day,

you know, put your, put your attention toward something. And I also wrote down problem solving, you know, your example of the stone. I recently entrusted my hair to my husband, to cut it for me. And I will say that that was a deep new shift in our relationship. You know, it was an opportunity for us to trust one another and to yeah to risk something together.

Ellen:

Yeah. But not, not just that. And I think that's wonderful, but it's also to realize that, so what happens if you have a bad haircut, how is that going to matter? The people who love you are not going to stop loving you. The people who, who don't know you are not going to have any feeling one way or the other, I mean, and hair grows back, you know? So again, it's a matter of settling into what actually is important to us. I thought if there's time and if you're interested there, there are health things that we could also talk about with respect to this virus.

Christina:

Yes, please.

Ellen:

Yeah. Okay. So we've done a lot of research on what I call attention to symptom variability.

And it's just a fancy word for being mindful. That for most of us, when you get a diagnosis, no matter what the diagnosis is, there's a tendency to think that everything will be steady state or just get worse, but nothing moves in only one direction. There are times it's better at times it's worse. And the absence of this treatment, you know, most people only notice when they feel the symptom, the essence of his treatment is to notice when you don't feel it, which is much harder because if you don't feel it then, well, why, why am I fine right now? And so what we do is we take people who have all sorts of diseases. We obviously, or maybe not, obviously haven't had a chance to do this with the COVID-19, but we've done it with MS, chronic pain, arthritis, depression, many, many disorders. We're doing it right now with Parkinson's, stroke, and so on. So I think that if it works and has worked for the majority of those diseases, then it should also work for COVID-19. What we do is very, very simple. We just contact people at random times throughout the day, over the course of two weeks. And we ask them, how do you feel right now? And is it better or worse than before? And why?

now three things happen when you ask that why question, the first is that Gee you see, it's not steady state and you come to realize I don't have this thing all the time. So you tend to feel better.

Second, when you start looking for, why does it feel better now than before, that's mindful. And as I said, we have lots of research where that mindfulness is good for your health.

And third, if you look for a solution, you're more likely to find it. So if I think I'm stressed all the time, and then you're contacting me at random times, and I say, Oh, you know, when I'm talking to John DOE, I'm stressed. When I'm talking to Christina crook, I'm not stressed. Well, then the solution is very simple. Don't talk to John DOE or talk to John DOE the same way I do when I'm talking to Christina. Okay. So solutions present themselves. And you know, and these are some pretty big diseases, multiple sclerosis. We're doing it now with Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS, and so stress, depression, you know. when people are depressed, they think that depressed all the time. So when you're not depressed, if you're not paying any attention to it, next time you're depressed, you think, Oh, I'm still depressed.

And by doing this, and you can set your smart phones to ring at rand, I don't know if they'll ring at random times, and maybe every hour or every two hours, or have somebody call you and ask you, and then you get a handle on the way things change. So this mindlessness, whether it's about our health, our wellbeing, our use of the digital world, no matter what it is, we tend to hold things still. And our health, wellbeing, and effectiveness, results from our letting things vary the way they naturally do.

Christina:

I am curious whether that kind of practice would be helpful for people while they're moving through the pandemic. I know a lot of people are journaling or getting back into journaling in a way that they haven't before as a way of processing. Do you think that would be a helpful practice to sort of check in?

Ellen:

For sure, even you with your homeschooling, right. You've settled in, Oh my God, this is a disaster. Well, I'm sure it's not a disaster. I'm sure there are parts of it that are a disaster, other parts that are great arch that are in between and so on.

And by you doing it, you know, then you come to say, I'm not such a bad homeschooler after all. And again, we go back to, I mean, I don't want to leave it on that note because we wanted to make sure that when people are teaching that they're teaching mindfully, not giving people a set of facts and the “horses don't eat meat,” “one in one is two” sorts of information.

Christina:

Yeah. I'm finding it's been so interesting. Moving through this as a family, I feel like we've been trying to do it as mindfully as possible. Even noticing that we have very little tolerance for things that don't feel good, you know, the things that we've just done out of habit that just are not working anymore and having an intolerance for that.

And with the homeschooling, I find what is working well is leaning into our natural curiosities. You know, the kids, what is an area of the world you're interested in, or we're really enjoying this chapter book, let's just spend another hour reading it together.

Ellen:

Homeschooling also provides an opportunity to say that any activity can be the basis of learning all the subjects that one needs to learn. You know, if you're cooking well, gee, we only have a cup of sugar and then it calls for two cups of sugar. So then what do we do with the amount of flour it says to add, well, if we're using half the sugar, then what's half of a cup of flour, you know, so we can do math.

We can go online and see, how did people bake this spread a hundred years ago? And how did that vary across cultures, and you know, and so on. So we can put the bread in the oven and then learn something about, I don't know, physics, everything can be learned based on their initial interest. But it's also important to know that our interests, whether it's things, activities, or people, is a function of how we mindfully approach it. So the more mindfully you approach an activity, the more interesting the activity. So we did a study forever ago. We use the stereotype of women, not liking football and people who like classical music, not liking rap music and people like rap music not liking classical. So we had subjects and a lot of participants doing a lot of things that people hate.

We had one group just do the activity, another group, notice three new things about it. Another group, notice six new things about it. And you know, so we varied the number of things and that's just doing it mindfully. And what we found was across all the activities, the more you notice, the more you enjoyed the thing you were noticing.

So, and that happens with people also. You know, I, I, I don't like Mary for whatever reason. That's because I'm seeing Mary in a mindless way, holding her still. And now if I notice new things about Mary or your husband or kids, or what have you, then they become more interesting. Things are only uninteresting because of the way we've mindlessly learned to look at them. Everything is potentially interesting. I have this when I was giving a talk years ago on my, on Becoming An Artist book. I remember I had this slide where I have a quote from Mark Twain and it's wonderful. I don't remember the quote, sadly, tell your listeners, but basically, he's talking about water – that’s all he was talking about was water and he makes it sound exciting, and anything can be made to seem exciting. On the other hand, I remember I was traveling in Italy and there were these kids who were wearing t-shirts that said New York, which meant they weren't from New York. They had just come from New York. And so we gave them a ride that was years ago and doing such, picking up people was okay. And we asked them, how did you enjoy Manhattan?

And they said there was nothing to do. Now. There's no place else on earth. I think where there is more to do, more That's exciting. So the point is water can be fun. New York can be not fun all in the way we choose to understand things. So if you're staying in the house and you're bored, that's not because being in the house is board. What you need to do is take those things that you think you know and start paying attention to them again.

Christina:

I want to sort of steer our conversation to a close and I'm, I'm so curious to hear your perspective on the impact of the way that we engage digitally on our ability to be mindful. Is it the same? Is it, can we be as mindful online as we can Let's say offline?

Ellen:

Yes. That's a wonderful question, Christina. You know that I was in, down in South Africa and I was on this news program. And before the program started, for whatever reason I was invited, he said, before we start, can I just ask you a question, Professor Langer. I said, sure. He said, and it was a commercial, basically. He was, he said to them, a commercial for his children. What do you think about kids being on their cell phones all the time? And I laughed and I said, I'll tell you, but you're not gonna like my answer. I think that if anybody is given the alternative of an interesting, supportive, nurturing, in-person conversation, they're going to prefer that to being on the phone, and rather than prevent kids from using their phones, parents need to up their game. And in the same way, anything digital, anything digital or not digital can be approached mindfully or mindlessly. You know, you can add one on one is two mindlessly. You can read mindlessly, you can watch television mindfully. You can be using some computer program mindlessly or mindfully. Same thing with cooking. You know, you can follow a recipe and Oh my gosh, it says two teaspoons of whatever. And I only have a teaspoon in three quarters, and then you decide not to make it. Or you can approach it that a recipe was just something, somebody else in the past put together. It doesn't come down from the heavens, you know, and the same thing for the way to make use of the digital world. You know, I think that there are few things that provide more opportunities for creativity and being mindful than the, the digital world. You know, everybody can make a movie, everybody can perfect photographs, can take a drawing and learn how to, to improve it in, in, in so many different ways. But you can take the advice that all of this gives and do it mindlessly. You know, so one can paint by numbers. In which case you're not going to accrue any of the benefits to being mindful, or you can paint more mindfully, which would mean attention to the process and not worrying about evaluation or the outcome.

And that's the, by the way, the major difference between creativity and mindfulness. I could've just called mindfulness, mundane creativity 30 years ago. But I thought people have such a mindless notion of creativity because they think that all that matters or what matters a lot is the final product. You know, if Christina, you decided to pick up a paint brush and on your own,

you created the Mona Lisa, not my favorite painting by the way, but that doesn't matter, very well-respected. Nobody in the world was going to say, wow, good for you. Go girl. You just painted it, but it could be quite mindful. Okay. So that it’s the process that matters no matter what we're doing in the digital world or the more traditional world. the way you approach it, determines the effect is going to have on you.

It's also going to determine the degree to which you're likely to come upon something new. You know that if you're just mindlessly following instructions, you're, you're not going to be able to get any place that the person who gave you those instructions hadn't already gotten to.

And if you do it your own way, and this is something that I tried to teach all of my students, as many people who will listen to me, you know, essentially you can do it your way or their way, whoever they are, and you can succeed or you can fail, and so you have those four options, then. If you do it their way and you fail, to me, there's no greater cost. Whereas if you do it your way and you fail, well, at least you've done it your own way. You know, then when we remember that, the way to do things is determined only by people at a different period in time. And the more you are like the person who derives the rules, the more likely you'll succeed by those rules. But to put it differently, the more different you are from that person, the more important it is for you to find your own way of doing it.

When I lecture on this and I have a large audience, I'll look in the audience for a man, who's seems very tall. You know? So I'm 5’3” and I try to find a man 6’2” or 6’3” and invite him to the stage and we just stand next to each other, and it looks very bizarre. And then I'll put my hand next to his hand and you just see his is maybe two inches bigger than mine. And then I say, does it make sense for us to hold a golf club, a squash racquet and a pickleball racquet,

a tennis racquet the same way? No, you know, it doesn't make sense for us to do anything physically the same way. And so if he made the rules, I am never going to be as good as I can be. So you need to learn the rules of everything mindfully, which means conditionally, which means sort of this way. Maybe it could be, it would seem that. rather than this is the way. many horses don't eat meat. It doesn't mean all horses don't eat meat. one in one can be too, but it's not always, okay. So you'll learn the rules that have been passed down from the ages or given to you from the experts, and then you adjust it to what works for you, whether it's the digital world or the more traditional world.

Christina:

When someone goes into an experience, not for the experience itself, but for capturing with the intention of capturing that experience to put on the internet, what is happening there?

Ellen:

Yeah. Give me the example You're reading from.

Christina:

The, it would be, I am going, I'm going to go outside and do a dance, but I'm doing the dance with a video camera, with the intention of it being performative for an audience, or I'm going to see one of the, you know, the great wonders of the world for someone else's consumption, what's happening in that experience?

Ellen:

That's really no different from anything else that we're doing. You can again do it where you have a rule book: Here's how you do that dance for people to appreciate. And if you don't get beyond that, it's going to be hollow. People know, you know, have you ever been to the ballet and your eyes are riveted to this person over on the right. Then, you know, the person in the center technically is the best dancer. That's why they're in the center. But there's something at this moment while you're there, that draws you to this other person. And that's because that other person is being mindful.

So there's nothing about starting the activity to go do this performance, for example, uh that, you want to then put on the internet, you can begin it, but the way to do it is again to have the general sense of how you want it to be, and then allow yourself to invent it as you're doing it,

to make subtle changes. And then it comes alive for you. And then our data say that the audience actually knows this. We had symphony orchestras performing the same piece, but where they were instructed either, remember the time you played this when you were pleased with your performance and just try to replicate it. Versus they were told, make it new in very subtle ways that only you would know. Now they're playing classical music, so it has to be just so. we record the pieces and then we play them for people who have no idea what the study is about. People overwhelmingly prefer the mindfully played piece, the piece where you're making it new. So I'm saying whether you're baking bread, whether you're doing the performance that you're speaking of outside, that you're going to put on the internet, whether you're brushing your teeth, no matter what you're doing, you want to be there. And what the way to be there is to make it new for you. It doesn't have to be new in gigantic ways, just subtle things that will keep you noticing. And as you're noticing, you're engaging, your neurons are firing and people watching are taken by the charisma that is flowing from you.

Christina:

Oh, Ellen, I have so many more questions for you, but I'm mindful you've already given so much of your time. I want to close with this question. How do you believe our attitudes towards mindfulness and wellbeing will be altered when we come out of this crisis?

Ellen:

I don't think our attitudes about mindfulness will necessarily be altered. I think that our attitudes about so many of the things we've already talked about will be altered.

And for those who are more mindful, hopefully they'll draw larger lessons from them and see that circumstances that they were afraid were going to be awful were not so harmful. And that they were, they had resources, personal resources, strengths that they weren't aware that they had, and that can carry us forward to be better than we were before. I think that one way of feeling good about yourself is to be more generous to other people. Those who have money, you know, so I'm supporting people who, who worked for me in some capacity, but they can't show up, you know, because can afford to do that, not endlessly. And you know, but there's so many ways that we can help people. And the more you're helping other people, you know, today, I think that you'll continue doing that tomorrow.

And I think that so when we come out of this, I think we’ll be a closer world. I hope we will be. And so I, you know, I think there are gonna be a lot of positives, but again, things are neither positive nor negative. You know, I think people are probably going to gain some weight and we may change the norms and say that JF, you put on a little weight, you look better than if you're emaciated. Who knows? All I know is that all we can take care of is what's happening right now.

Christina:

I think the big thing I'm taking away from our conversation today is the whole concept of how energizing being mindful is.

Ellen:

Yeah.

Christina:

And I think that the whole concept of like, you know, wine, o'clock like just unwind with wine that becoming a sort of a, you know, normalized, I think us giving ourselves permission to just mindlessly consume, especially at the end of the day to unwind so to speak, actually isn't unwinding and that's something I've been paying attention to just over the last few weeks is how I feel after, you know, just mindlessly watching a couple of sitcoms versus watching a talk that I think is going to be intellectually difficult.

Ellen:

Christina, I'm telling you watch those sitcoms mindfully.

Christina:

Okay.

Ellen:

You can watch a talk mindless player mindfully. I give you permission to do all those silly things, but to do them mindfully and you'll prosper from it. I'm glad you mentioned it about how mindfulness is energy providing rather than consuming that, you know, for me, I go and I give a talk and I get more and more energized, which is always hard for me to end the talk. So I need the person I'm talking to, to be aware that gee, your listeners are probably, well now your listeners probably aren't doing anything but listening, right. Because there's not a whole lot that it was can do.

Christina:

It's true. Go for a walk. But thank you so much. No, absolutely mindfulness as being energizing, I think is my big takeaway today. Thank you so much for being with me today.

Ellen:

My pleasure. It was fun.