Mindfulness

My daughter recommended this book about six months ago but it didn't grab me. Now I wonder what I was on. I've savored it over the past couple of weeks and I'm so happy I own a copy because I found underline-able wisdom in each chapter.

Langer's studies showed up in several recent reads including [b:Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End|20696006|Being Mortal Medicine and What Matters in the End|Atul Gawande|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1408324949s/20696006.jpg|40015533], so I found myself smiling with recognition on occasion. With curiosity and insight Langer presents study after study revealing our unintened mindlessness and its farreaching and often dilitorious effects and the simple ways to move toward mindfulness and show more its notable benefits.

As I study and write about the ways healthy people move through change, intention is my by-word. Mindfulness, as defined by Langer, seems a perfect alternate word choice for intention. I'm sure I'll refer to this work again and again.

Here's the first article I wrote referencing Langer's wisdom. show less

Whilst this contains a significant overlap with the, more recent, Counterclockwise it is still a worthwhile book to read.

Ellen Langer's style is so readable it is easy to forget that the briefly cited anecdotes are actually a simplified version of years of research that has been published in the top journals.
A very useful, scientific and yet practical guide to applying mindfulness to every day life.

Langer provides a good summary for laypersons. Mindfulness for Langer refers to being aware of the present and one's thinking and environment but she is not referring to mindfulness in the sense of a meditative type of mindfulness. The research is interesting and should prompt thoughtful readers to become more aware of ways in which they tend to view the world, solve problems, and make decisions. Langer hopes that after reading the book people will become more aware and learn to lead more productive and satisfying lives.

Wie die Kategorien, die wir über die Welt bilden, auf unsere Rolle in der Welt zurückwirken. (Und warum Alte länger leben, wenn sie nur so tun, als wären sie gesund.) - Die Harvard-Psychologin fasst in ihrem Standardwerk eine Reihe spannender Experimente über die Implikationen von Bewusstheit zusammen. Sehr lesenswert.

This book is DRY. So I mindfully decided to put it down and try something with some life in it.

The mindless following of routine and other automatic behaviors lead to much error, pain and a predetermined course of life, contends Langer, Harvard professor of psychology, in this thought-provoking study in which she "translates" for lay readers the findings of her research, much of it among the elderly. With anecdotes and metaphors, she explains how the mindless--as opposed to the mindful--develop mindsets of categories, associations, habits of thought born of repetition in childhood and throughout schooling. To be mindful, she notes, stressing process over outcome, allows free rein to intuition and creativity, and opens us to new information and perspectives. Langer discusses the negative impact of mindsets on business and social show more relations, showing special concern for the elderly, who often suffer from learned helplessness and lack of options. Encouraging the application of mindfulness to health, the author affirms that placebos and alternative, mind-based therapies can help patients and addicts move from unhealthy to healthy contexts. First serial to Health magazine; QPBC, Library of Science, Behavioral Science, Natural Science and Psychotherapy and Social Science Book Clubs selections. Publishers Weekly show less

This book is DRY. So I mindfully decided to put it down and try something with some life in it.