A 12-Minute Meditation for Observing Thoughts Show notes: Find more from Barry Boyce here: Barry Boyce, Author at Mindful Find Barry’s course, Come As You Are, here: Come As You Are—Mindfulness Course And more from Mindful here: Welcome Everything: The February 2022 issue of Mindful magazine. More episodes of 12 Minute Meditation Real Mindful, a mindful conversation podcast Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected]....

Follow these instructions to find out: Set a timer for 30 minutes Carve out some dedicated time for this practice. This is because the initial part of your writing is a bit of a detox—you’re releasing superfluous thoughts. And as time goes by, you’ll find your train of thoughts will begin to expand…with a bit of curiosity and experience! Keep your eyes closed If you’re able to touch-type at your computer keyboard, great....

An Awareness Practice You Can Do Anywhere This is a short practice intended for doing in the middle of the day, wherever you are out in the world, for settling. It’s done with eyes open. So let’s begin. more on mindfulness Elisha Goldstein September 24, 2021 Mindful Staff January 5, 2022

“Traditionally, we’ve assumed that leaders have high IQs, are gregarious, and have dominant personalities,” Cote says. But his study indicates that “being able to process other people’s emotions” may be just as important. Aspiring leaders, Cote suggests, would do well to foster the abilities that make up emotional intelligence. According to author Daniel Goleman, who coined the term in his bestseller of the same name, emotional intelligence means the ability to perceive, use, understand, and regulate emotions....

The World Health Organization reported that stress costs American businesses about $300 billion per year. Are we at a turning point? If so, it appears CEO’s have an opportunity to lead the way. As Vice president of General Mills, Deputy General Counsel, Janice Marturano was able to harness an opportunity to get employees meditating. As she explains to Huffington Post Live host Alicia Menedez, the results were suprising, even with a brief daily practice....

Online, you can learn about events, research projects, and courses related to areas of contemplative research—everything from health and well-being to professions, education, and design. To take a look at the website, click here.

Carsten Knox, Mindful‘s former associate editor, sat down with Judson Brewer, former medical director of Yale’s Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, to talk about the app and research around smoking cessation. Brewer is now Dr. Judson Brewer, former medical director at Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic. He’s now director of research at Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical School. Carsten Knox: Where did the idea to apply mindfulness to quitting smoking come from?...

“The exact causes of the problem may not be known, but people now feel that they are far from themselves and are on a hedonic treadmill,” he said. When asked about solutions to address these issues, Ruane suggested mindfulness-based interventions. He mentioned a recent study being conducted in the UK on mindfulness and bringing people back to work. He also pointed to American examples of mindfulness research and mindfulness initiatives in the private sector....

The day after Sam’s arrival, he said good morning to Opal and grabbed her and kissed her on the head. It was a speedy gesture that obviously stemmed from simple affection—his affection for Jesse and I and, perhaps, his wanting for Opal to be as fond of him as we are. He has a big personality—outspoken, gregarious, the whole package. Opal pulled away and made a grunting sound— I could tell she was a bit shocked....

Years ago, I was in a long-distance relationship with a lover who lived a province away. The monthly flight to see him offered 90 minutes of delicious anticipation. I loved walking through the arrival gate and nervously scanning the crowd for his blue-eyed, salt and pepper good looks—eyes meeting eyes, the moment alive with possibilities. Time seemed to slow down as I melted into his delighted smile and hungry embrace....

Clarity, focus, creativity, and compassion: these are the fundamentals of mindful leadership. In this live online workshop, the Institute for Mindful Leadership explains how to cultivate our innate abilities to lead, and to live, with excellence. The workshop will use the Institute’s proven curricula which has been taught to leaders around the world for nearly a decade and recently featured at the 2013 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and the 2014 World Economic Forum in Tianjin, China....

I can’t reinforce enough the critical importance of seeing happiness practices as something to continue to play with and learn from, rather than using them to achieve some desired end state. You might be able to taste happiness if you see it as a performance, but only with a learning mindset will you find more mastery with it. Here are 5 Practices for Daily Happiness: Be Playful We need playtime and we need it daily!...

The good news is that we can intervene in moments of anger, as we learn that letting anger control us is often the greatest enemy of all. So the next time you are in a situation that sparks a reaction of anger, try out this practice of self-intervention.

Chances are you will not. No one is interested in talking to someone who is not present. Worse yet is if they are not present and they are focused on technology. One research study showed that the mere presence of a cell phone impaired the sense of connection in a face-to-face conversation. However, if you meet someone who is completely attentive to you and actively engaged in the conversation, you are much more likely to find them likable and interesting....

Editor-in-Chief Barry Boyce: Well, for many years we have received messages from people saying that mindfulness is not political, it shouldn’t be political, and please keep politics out of Mindful magazine and mindful.org. Generally these are common responses to things we might do in our Mindful or Mindless column, where we might ridicule, or be critical of somebody who was overpulloting, or seemed to celebrate contraception being made more available to college students for example....

Resilience is the ability to get back up after adversity. Due to the unpredictability of life, there will always be joys and sorrows. Resilient people are able to greet change and difficulty as an opportunity for self-reflection, learning, and growing. Well-being and resilience are skills one can learn and cultivate. It is such a valuable skill set that world leaders are beginning to recognize its significance. More than 150 world leaders attended the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, where they spoke about adopting a new sustainable development agenda, among this agenda was well-being for the world....

These are just some of the self-defeating narratives that can play on repeat in our minds when we’re stressed out. In challenging times, when we feel overwhelmed and under resourced with the problems we face, we tend to fall back on negative behaviors that can feel comfortable but prevent us from focusing on solutions with a clear and stable mind. Try this quick mindful minute practice and honestly ask yourself the following questions....

Jeffrey Brantley, MD, DFAPA, trained in and practiced psychiatry, in both community mental health settings and in private practice for approximately 18 years. He became Board Certified in psychiatry in 1984, and was elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association in 2008. He is a Consulting Associate in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke Medical Center. Dr. Brantley is one of the founding faculty members of Duke Integrative Medicine, where he started the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program in 1998....

Turning attention into engagement is similar. Think of it as “directed presence” or as cultivating presence in the midst of the activities we engage in both at work and at home. Psychologists have a name for this state of full engagement. They refer to it as, ‘flow.’ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the first psychologists to carry out research on this experience, talks about it in his book Flow. He describes flow as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it....