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Mindfulness is Mainstream

September 1st, 2011

When I first began contemplating the intersection of leadership and mindfulness as a topic for my dissertation and doctoral research, the two words had not been linked. In 2005, a Google™ search for “mindful leadership” yielded very few results, a mere 108 hits. Roughly one year later, a similar search yielded 658 hits. Today, the same search provides 53,500 hits.

What I did know in 2005 was that the concept of mindfulness was on the move. Jon Kabat Zinn had spent roughly the past 20 years turning the clinical psych world on its heels by showing how mindful meditation helped those who suffered with depression, schizophrenia and other psychological challenges, deal with them and their lives more effectively.

Today mindfulness has become almost commonplace. Mindful meditation retreats are on the agenda of colleges and universities, large and small. Books promote mindful parenting, mindful eating and mindful exercise.

Even more intriguing to me is the shift in our language to include a mindful view of the world. We create our world with our language, we draw others to new concepts based on our ability to tell stories about them, and we use language to create a shared understanding of reality. Here are but a few of the phrases that I’ve noticed that tell me mindfulness has taken hold. What others have you heard?

• “We must be mindful.” The world mindful has become synonymous for being attentive, as has mindfulness for attentiveness. Although I personally would argue the difference, they are being used interchangeably.
• “The story is unfolding, the idea is unfolding.” …a reference to the emergent nature of things.
• The term “sense-making” is becoming mainstream. It refers to the ability to naively observe in order to pay attention to context and to question assumptions and worldviews so that you make better sense of what is “out there.”
• “The answer is in the question” is another common phrase that focuses us on curious attention and second and third loop learning (learning from the questions, learning from reflection upon the question, and learning from reflecting on that reflecting).
• A plethora of “mindful” screen savers: peaceful scenes, waterfalls, streams, stacked smooth stones, trees and their reflection. (No need for explanation on this one.)
• “It is what it is”…a favorite phrase for many and a reference to the continual nature of change. Things happen because things happen, change is continuous, and what’s the sense of fighting something that’s already here?

Please be mindful and help me make this an unfolding list!