Resilience Agenda Radio – Talking About Transforming Mindlessness to Mindfulness with Ellen Langer – Ep. 16

When our everyday becomes routine, it's easy to fall into the trap of mindlessness. 

We're joined by Harvard's very own "mother of mindfulness", Dr. Ellen Langer who walks us through the different ways we often find ourselves battling with the ability to rightfully differentiate a tragedy or an inconvenience.

Listen on as Dr. Langer shares the strategies that we can incorporate in our lives, in order to reframe the way we categorize the good and bad, to help us go from being mindless to being mindful.

What You Will Learn:

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Today’s Guest: Dr. Ellen Langer

Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University where she was the first woman to be tenured in the department. She has written extensively on the illusion of control, mindful aging, stress, decision-making, and health. She is the founder of The Langer Mindfulness Institute and consults with organizations to foster mindful leadership, innovation, strategy and work/life integration.

A passionate and compelling lecturer who presents at organizations worldwide, Langer has authored over 200 research articles and six academic books. Her work has led to numerous academic honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the recipient of four Distinguished Scientist Awards and the Liberty Science Genius Award.

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Resources

Website: http://ellenlanger.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EllenJLanger

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenjlanger/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellen-langer-9a187711/

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Quotes by Ellen Langer

"No matter what you're doing, having an interview, reading a book, eating lunch or playing a sport, you're doing it either mindfully or mindlessly and 45 years of research that we've done suggests the difference is enormous. It's making them [people] aware of how mindless they are, you know that when you're mindless, you're not there."

"The problem in this world, as I said, one of the many problems is that people think they should know. And so even when they don't know, they then pretend.
So I'm here to free everybody of that misconception. No one knows. And if you make a universal attribution for not knowing, I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows – it's okay not to know."

"[When something happens] You need to ask yourself, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience?"