NDP Episode 164: Mindfulness Practice Is the Key to Human Success

Are you familiar with Jon Kabat-Zinn? In short, he’s one of the people who has made meditation mainstream. While I generally don’t like words like ‘mainstream’ and ‘conformity’, anything that makes helpful tools more accessible to the masses is good in my book.

Known as one of the creators of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Kabat-Zinn has written a bunch of books and helped teach meditation to all sorts of regular people. This article is inspired by Kabat-Zinn’s book, “Coming to Our Senses”.

This talent of being able to teach complex and often polarizing subjects to ‘regular people’ is the type of thing we need right now. 

This is one of the reasons I left academia. Scientists are really bad and explaining their findings to regular people. When I was a scientist and polled my colleagues, they nearly unanimously agreed that this type of dissemination — the sharing of complex knowledge with regular people — was NOT a scientist’s job. I suppose journalists and writers are ‘supposed’ to do these things?

I tried to explain this in my fourth episode, “Quiet vs Distraction”. But this is an issue that continues to be central to my work. 

Anyway, Kabat-Zinns uses the term ‘mindfulness’ to describe a meditation-like state we can maintain for most of our lives. More importantly, his writings and teachings help regular people learn how to do this.

Mindfulness practice is about focusing our awareness to pay better attention to our individual and communal lives. Paying attention, I argue, is the key to human success — and the answer to all of our problems.

I truly believe this. Until we figure out how to pay attention we are not going to progress as a species. 

I also believe that most, if not all, human problems are related to our lack of awareness.

This includes collective problems like: 

Disease. War. Income inequality. Racism. Prejudice.

As well as individual problems including:

Anxiety. Suicide. Relationship issues. General dissatisfaction with life.

In this episode, I argue that we cannot move forward as humans until we learn to be mindful. I think the solution to all human problems starts with self-awareness, moves on to awareness of our connectivity, and finally permits real progress. 

That’s a massive oversimplification if ever there was one, but it also perfectly describes my work and where I am headed. 

Until we learn to care for ourselves, we cannot possibly hope to protect our planet.

Until we can identify what we are feeling. . . what we value. . . what we truly need . . . we can’t possibly solve problems of modernity.

I think mindfulness is a way of reconnecting with ourselves and each other. The problem is one of marketing. How do we introduce mindfulness and ‘awareness management’ to people across cultures without scaring people away? 

If you are picking up what I’m laying down please let me know. This community is growing and we need to know each other.

You can follow my writing here on Medium or at www.chrisburcher.com. Subscribe and follow my podcast or YouTube channel if you prefer oral and written formats. 

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