Life Coach Portland, Oregon: A Mindfulness Experiment: Are you Mindful or Mindless?

A Mindfulness Experiment: Are you Mindful or Mindless?

I tell this story, paraphrased from a study conducted by Ellen Langer, to my clients who are frustrated over never achieving their goals. It’s a good story to tell about mindlessness versus mindfulness.

A group of elderly men were asked to volunteer for a weekend study that would take them to a house where they would be surrounded with artifacts from their teenage years.

The day came for them to meet the bus just outside the Retirement Home where they resided. Their luggage was placed in the storage area under the bus while they settled into their seats.

When they arrived at the experimental home, they were dropped off and helped inside along with their luggage. The attendants in charge of the experiment had to leave them alone in the lobby in order to return to the home for a second group of attendees.

The men were given their room numbers and instructed to take their suitcases to those rooms on their own.

All of the elderly men thought they were unable to lift or handle their bags, yet one by one , as no one seemed to be coming to their rescue, they began moving their things; some moved their bags inch by inch, some moved them by opening them and taking a small amount of the contents to their room and returning to take more. Step by step they were successful.

They became resourceful.

Each one of the men managed to get their things to their designated room. They used mindfulness to create possibilities instead of mindlessly waiting for help.

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