Why You Should Give the Gift of Mindfulness this Year

by Jeremy David Engels

The start of another year can feel magical to many of us. Even though the days remain short and dark, the flip of the calendar can make it seem new beginnings with new resolutions are possible.

Mindfulness scholars and teachers like me call resolutions “habit breakers,” as they can overcome patterns that no longer serve individuals. However, research suggests that many resolutions fail by the end of January.

But a key to ensuring that resolutions stick is to choose one that will make a meaningful difference in your life. Seeing a real, tangible benefit can provide inspiration to keep going when all of life is telling us to let things go back to how they were before.

Living more mindfully is a common New Year’s resolution. This year, try gifting it to others.

The meaning of mindfulness

Mindfulness has been shown to have a number of meaningful health benefits – it can help reduce anxiety and promote healing in those suffering from long-term chronic illness.

The practice is based on an insight first described by ancient Buddhist texts that human beings have the capacity to observe experience without being caught up in it. This means, simply and wonderfully, that it is possible to observe ourselves having a craving, or a happy thought, or even a scary emotion, without reacting in the moment in a way that amplifies the feeling or sends the mind spiraling off into thinking about old memories or anticipating events.

This practice can help calm the mind and the body as we learn not to react to experience with likes and dislikes or judgments of good and bad. It does not make us cold or apathetic but more fully present.

(1) About the Author

Jeremy Engels is professor of communication arts and studies at Penn State University and a yoga and mindfulness teacher who explores the rituals of oneness that humans have developed to affirm their connectedness.

Engels’s scholarship investigates how human beings talk about oneness and interconnectedness – and how oneness goes wrong – becoming exclusionary, an engine of resentment, an excuse for enemyship, conflict, violence and war. He examines rhetorics, rituals and practices that might lead to a more democratic, ethical enactment of oneness. His latest book, “The Ethics of Oneness: Emerson, Whitman and the Bhagavad Gita”, (University of Chicago Press: 2021) draws on the idea that individuals are fundamentally interconnected in their shared divinity. Lessons of oneness espoused by Whitman, he says, can counter pervasive American ideals of hierarchy, exclusion, violence and domination.

Jeremy David Engels and his wife Anna at San Raphael Swell, Utah

courtesy photo

(2) Bad Listeners

Most of us take listening for granted. Yet Clay Drinko, Ph D says in an online story for Psychology Today that 96 percent of respondents to one study said they were always good listeners, while a second study showed that we retain only about half of what people say to us. And this is right after they say it, not a matter of longterm memory.

We spend about 45 percent of our communication time listening and 30 percent talking. We’re often spending our listening time thinking about what we’re going to say next or, worse still, thinking about something else entirely.

Deep listening is an immersive experience. You can’t be distracted. You can’t be thinking about yourself. All your focus has to be on the other person, their body language, subtle cues about what they’re really trying to say, and not just on their words.

Ximena Vengoechea takes a deep dive into listening in her beautifully illustrated and comprehensive book “Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Conversation” (Penguin, 2021). She explains what deep listening entails and what happens when we give listening short shrift: misunderstanding.

When we make assumptions or aren’t fully engaged with our conversation partners, misunderstandings are much more likely to occur.

Think about it. When someone interrupts you, how does it make you feel? When someone assumes they know what you’re going to say or finishes your sentence, what’s that like?

Clay Drinko, PhD

How can we improve our listening?

1. Don’t Assume Leave your assumptions at the door. Even if you think you know where a conversation is headed.

2. Be Curious Instead of grinning and bearing it, find something to be genuinely curious about.

3. Ask Questions

4. Stop Making Everything About You Instead of bringing up personal anecdotes, try to keep the conversation about the topic at hand. If your friend is talking about their dog, you definitely don’t need to talk about your dog because the conversation is about your friend’s dog. Not your dog. Got it?

5. Allow Silence Rapid-fire conversations can feel lively and engaging, but they don’t leave the space for everyone to share their thoughts. Pause and wait if you want someone to say more.

6. Monitor Body Language

7. Clarify Make sure you’re on the same page by asking if you’re on the same page. Do I have that right?

8. Remove Distractions At the very least, give people your undivided attention. Keep your phone in your pocket and do not try to multitask.

Here are three games from Drinko's book “Play Your Way Sane: 120 Improv-Inspired Exercises to Help You Calm Down, Stop Spiraling, and Embrace Uncertainty,” (Tiller Press, 2021) that will help you boost your listening.

1. Yes, And

If you want to make sure you’re listening, try repeating the gist of what someone has said to you and then adding onto that topic. Is it clunky? It can be. But it’s the kind of drill that’s going to force you to beef up that listening.

2. Teach Me, Sensei

To get out of your head and force yourself to be more curious when in conversation, pretend everyone else is a wise old teacher, and you’re just trying to collect some wisdom nuggets. When you listen to learn, you’re much more likely to stay focused and engaged.

3. Hard-Hitting Reporter

Journalists are known for asking open-ended questions and getting their interviewees to spill all the beans, so why not pretend you’re a reporter? The next time you’re losing focus, grab an imaginary microphone and get to the bottom of whatever it is your conversation partner is saying.

Can better listening change the world?

If our listening skills were as good as we thought they were, we would have fewer arguments. More people would feel safe to share their thoughts and ideas. In turn, we’d all feel more understood.

So instead of focusing on how we can talk to make people want to listen, let’s address the disconnect head-on. Take simple steps to improve your own listening. Be the example at work and at home for the kind of listening that makes people feel appreciated and valued.

Mindfulness in a distracted world

One of the challenges of practicing mindfulness in our contemporary world is that there has been a profound transformation in human attention. The artist Jenny Odell argues that in our “attention economy” human attention has been transformed into a commodity that big corporations buy and sell. This economy rests on a technological revolution of mobile phones and social media that makes it possible for corporations to reach us with content that can capture and monetize our focus, at every moment, every day, and no matter where we may be.

The needy little devices most people carry in their pockets and wear on their wrists, incessantly beeping and buzzing and chirping, are a perpetual diversion from the present moment. The result is that it can feel as though our ability to focus, and be fully present, has been stolen.

But mindfulness can help us resist the attention economy and savor the things that make life special, like being together with those we love.

The constant need to check our phones keeps us from being fully present

Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images photo

(3) The Value of Gifts

“Thanks” (Houghton Mifflin, 2008) is a scientifically groundbreaking, eloquent look at how we benefit – psychologically, physically, and interpersonally –when we practice gratitude. It’s a crucial component of happiness that is often overlooked.

In “Thanks,” Dr. Robert Emmons, a professor at the University of California Davis and a leading scholar of the positive psychology movement, draws on the first major study of the impact of gratitude, of wanting what we have. He shows that a systematic cultivation of this underexamined emotion can measurably change people’s lives.

People who regularly practice grateful thinking can increase their set-point for happiness by as much as 25 percent. Such increases can be sustained over a period of months, challenging the previously held notion that our set-point is frozen at birth. Keeping a gratitude journal for as little as three weeks can result in better sleep and more energy.

(4) Precious Gift

In “The Art of Gratitude” (SUNY Press, 2019), Jeremy David Engels explores the idea of gratitude from the ancient Greeks to the contemporary self-help movement. Consistently, it is described as “indebtedness.” Engels contends that this is to make us more comfortable living our lives in debt, which pacifies us as citizens so that we are less likely to speak out about social and economic injustice. He proposes an alternative art of gratitude-as-thanksgiving that is inspired by Indian philosophy, particularly the yoga philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita. He argues that this art of gratitude can challenge neoliberalism by reorienting our politics away from resentment, anger, and guilt and toward a democratic ethic of thanksgiving and the common good.

The gift of mindfulness

While most mindfulness research focuses on the individual benefits of the practice, scholars like me argue (1) that we not only practice mindfulness for ourselves but that we can also practice it for others. It can help us build stronger, healthier relationships.

The sad truth is that living in the attention economy, most of us have become bad listeners (2). However, just as it is possible to watch ourselves having an experience without reacting, it’s possible to watch another person have an experience without getting tied up in reactivity and judgment. It’s possible simply to be present.

The gift of mindfulness is a practice of listening with compassion to another person describe their experiences. To give this gift means putting away your phone, turning off social media, and setting aside other common distractions. It means practicing being fully present in another person’s presence and listening to them with complete attention, without reacting with judgment, while resisting the urge to make the interaction about you.

If we judge the value of gifts based on how much they cost (3), this gift may seem worthless. But in a distracted world, I argue, it is a precious one (4)

It is not a gift that you will wrap, or put inside a card; it’s not one you will have to name as a gift or draw attention to. It’s something you can do right now.

The late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh leading a meditation walk

Steve Cray/South China Morning Post via Getty Images photo

Jeremy David Engels is a yoga instructor, author, and professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State University. Courtesy of The Conversation.