Is mindfulness just a fad? Who needs it anyway?

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et’s start with the big picture. What’s happening in our world today? There’s a lot of chaos, a lot of difficulty, a lot of surprises, and all of that can be a bit disorienting and overwhelming. This is often described as the reality of VUCA:  volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

As human beings, we love certainty, yet that is hard to find in today’s world. Uncertainty can contribute to feelings of fragmentation, anxiety and even meaninglessness. We search for a place to land. Unfortunately, we often land on our own habits or preconceived ideas because they seem familiar. But these habits can keep us stuck in old ways of thinking and reacting. Needless to say, this does not lead to innovation or creativity in the workplace or in life.   

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Mindfulness can help us stay present and focused even when things are chaotic. Instead of worrying about things we cannot control, we can gather our distracted minds and bring our attention back to the present moment.

Often the breath is used as a focal point for mindfulness practice, however, there are many ways we can practice being present. Sometimes taking a walk or listening to music can help us settle our minds. The shift from anxious or obsessive thinking to simply breathing and being aware of our sense perceptions can help connect us to what is meaningful in life.   

Often we’re on automatic pilot. Just think about the times when you’re driving to work and suddenly you’re there. You don’t even remember what the journey was. That’s called “mindlessness.” Or sometimes our minds are so full — we’re thinking and we’re preoccupied with all of the demands of our life. We have so much on our plate that we just can’t focus. That is being “mind-full” instead of mindful. When we’re mindful, our minds are open, we’re relaxed, we have clarity and we can bring ourselves fully to the present moment.

Two primary things have shifted in the last several decades that have brought mindfulness into the mainstream. The first of these is “secularization” and the other is scientific research.

Mindfulness was practiced in Asia for more than 2,500 years and although it is an inherent human quality that can be found in many religious and philosophical traditions, it is most closely associated with Buddhism. In the early ‘70s, many Eastern teachers came to the United States and Europe to offer what they had learned over many years of traditional practice. Western students also went to Asia to practice and study. When they brought mindfulness practices back to the West they looked for ways to make them more secular — applicable to daily life and to the struggles we face in modern society.

One of the founders of the modern mindfulness movement is Jon Kabat-Zinn. He was a molecular biologist at MIT, learned mediation in Asia, and brought it back to the University of Massachusetts, where he applied a variety of mindfulness methods and tools to patients recovering from major medical procedures and dealing with chronic pain. Through experimentation and research, he helped them discover how to connect with the healing power of their own minds through simple mindfulness practices. In fact, mindfulness became such an important part of their recovery that he was able to expand his research and share what he was learning with the larger medical community. His program, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, has gained widespread acceptance and has been taught in many countries throughout the world.

In the past 20 years, more than 4,000 scholarly articles and research studies have been done on mindfulness, and of those about 10 percent of them have focused on the workplace. These workplace studies have tended to cluster around three key elements that are important to all employers:  Well-being, relationships and performance.

Well-being — the experience of inherent health and confidence, is something that we often feel when we are relaxed and alert. Workplace relationships can improve when we are more self-aware and, of course, our performance at work is certainly impacted by our ability to synchronize our body and mind — all benefits of mindfulness.

Yes, the term “mindfulness” might be just another fad, but the need for well-being, good  relationships and focused performance will never go out of style.

Susan Skjei, Ph.D., is the director of the Authentic Leadership Center at Naropa University and author of the online course Mindful at Work.  Contact her at sskjei@naropa.edu.