Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer

7 min readAug 5, 2021

About the author: Dr. Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University. She has been described as the “mother of mindfulness” and has written extensively on the illusion of control, mindful creativity, mindful aging, stress, health, and Personal Success.

Ellen is the author of eleven books and more than two hundred research articles written for general and academic readers on mindfulness for over 35 years.

She is the founder of The Langer Mindfulness Institute and a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, with three Distinguished Scientist Awards: The World Congress Award, the NYU Alumni Achievement Award, and the Staats award for Unifying Psychology.

In this summary, you’ll learn the crucial roles of mindfulness in leadership, innovation, productivity, creativity, personal success, and happiness.

let’s dive right in, shall we?

The Placebo effects

Ellen gathered a group of elderly patients in a nursing home-like environment, surrounded with décors, clothing, foods, and popular music from their youthful years.

Ellen then told them to use their imagination — chat, dance — pretend as if they were in their younger selves’ bodies and act accordingly.

In the following weeks, the physical exam showed that they increased muscle strength, tighter skin, better eyes-sight, and even higher bone density than before.

What happened was what Ellen observed had to do with something called the placebo effect.

It is the basis for many of the best charisma-enhancing techniques, which conclusively demonstrated how we think can affect our experience.

The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, go a long way to shape our reality.

“What we have learned to look for in a situation determines mostly what we see.” — Ellen Langer.

The more you make a conscious decision to always focus on the positive potential in any given moment, the sooner you’ll recognize the power of your thoughts.

The Mindlessness effects

If we’re mindlessly going through the motion — living on autopilot, then It’s less likely that we’ll want to improve the quality of our lives.

To emphasize what Ellen Langer said,

Mindlessness is being on autopilot. It’s where rules and routines govern what you do rather than guide what you do.

Langer notice when people are mindless, they’re trapped in a rigid perspective — uncaring how meaning changes depending on subtle differences in the context.

We’re letting routine and rules govern what you do instead of a guide to what you do.

This form of behavioral pattern tends to create a lack of awareness and exposure to validate new information.

But to see things from different perspectives, be more mindful of mindless activities and habits.

As Rosa Beth Kanter said, “Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.”

Innovation, creativity, productivity rarely manifested in a state of mindlessness.

Whether people become mindless over time or on initial exposure to information, they unwittingly lock themselves into a single understanding of information.

Typically, they ignore information that runs counter to it.

Process Before Outcome effect

Ellen suggests giving your full undivided attention to the process of doing something over the outcome.

She believes the reasons why most of us become mindless have to do with our early education.

From kindergarten on, the focus of schooling is usually a goal rather than on the process to achieve.

The teacher’s main objectives are usually outcome bases.

Generally, teachers care further about having that child write a “correct letter A” More than coaching the child to learn about meditation.

A proper process orientation also means being aware that a process precedes every outcome.

The Mindfulness effects

Mindfulness isn’t difficult. We just need to remember to do it. — Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness boosts our presence at the moment. It’s a practice that forces you to be here now, to absorb the moment, instead of escaping it or trying to alter it — through thought or action.

There are three critical qualities of a mindful state:

Creation of new categories.
Openness to further information.
Awareness of more than one perspective.

Key #1. Creating New Categories

Without psychotherapy or a crisis as motivation, the past is rarely re-classified.

A child’s profound re-creation can become the adult’s active recreation. Though adults, however, we become reluctant to create new categories.

Just as mindlessness is the rigid assurance on old categories, mindfulness means the continual creation of new ones. — Ellen Langer

Key #2: Welcoming New Information

Just as category making, the receiving of new information is the primary function of living creatures.

Ellen noted; a lack of new information can be very harmful to the human psyche.

Suppose the subconscious is exposed to patterns of stimulation that are perceived as repeated and unvarying. In that case, the sensory system will often shut down since it is not “receiving” anything new. Writes Ellen.

On the other hand, if behaviors come from a mindful state of listening or watching, welcoming new information will likely be more effective.

Key #3: More than one view

Openness — not only to new information but to different points of view. This is also an essential feature of mindfulness.

Once you become mindfully aware of other views than your own, it sets you free as the observer.

The thought of trying out different perspectives gives you options on how to respond to a situation.

Take the opportunity to step outside your comfort zone and see what happens when you start changing how you look at things.

Control over context: The Birdman of Alcatraz

The Birdman of Alcatraz was sentenced to life in prison with no hope of reprieve.

All the world was cut off from him.

One empty, grim day followed the next as he stared at the flocks of birds flying outside his window.

One morning a crippled sparrow happened to trap into his cell, and he nursed it back to health.

From there on, the bird was no longer just a bird; for him, it was a particular sparrow.

Other prisoners, guards, visitors started giving him birds, and gradually, he learned more about them.

Soon he had a veritable aviary in his cell.

He became a distinguished authority on bird diseases, noticing more about these creatures and developing more and more expertise.

Everything he did was self-taught and original.

Instead of living a dull, stale existence in a cell for forty-odd years, the Birdman of Alcatraz realized boredom could be just another construct of the mind, no more specific than freedom.

The effect of Mindful Aging

When you have a negative mindset about aging, it often depreciates growth and flexibility.

And not only that but the length of your lives may well be affected.

Ellen Langer states that, if we didn’t feel compelled to carry over these limiting mindsets, we might have a greater chance of replacing years of decline with years of growth and purpose.

So don’t feel compelled to carry over a negative mindset about aging. A change in attitude can replace years of decline with years of growth and purpose.

Research shows when older folks are exposed to more optimistic images of their youthful days, they’re prone to be more alert, more active in old age than those who weren’t exposed to the same experiment.

Based on Ellen’s research, we cannot be sure why some people age mindfully, nor can we know whether admiring views of older people stem from positive mindsets about aging or from mindfulness.

However, we know that models like this help all of us age a little better.

Because when context forces people out of their ingrained, self-imposed limits, such as the “I am old” syndrome, it makes them incredibly more mindful and enthusiastic about approaching the world freshly, with a beginner’s mind, in a way that has an enormous positive effect.

Mindfulness and Intuition

Just as it is easier to grasp mindfulness by first describing its opposite, intuition is most easily defined by comparing it to rational thought and logic.

Ellen describes an intuitive or mindful state, like being touched by new melodies when new information emerges into awareness.

Johann Bach also spoke of the effortless flow of musical ideas.

When asked how he found his melodies, he said, “the problem is not finding them, it’s–when getting up in the morning and getting out of bed–not stepping on them.”

By keeping a free mindset, we may be opened to see clearly and deeply, even if for a moment.

Distinctions and Analogies

Student of the creative process has long distinguished between two kinds of thinking: analysis and synthesis.

To put these contrasting kinds of thought more simply: we can look at the world and ask how things differ (make distinctions)

Or how they are the same (make analogies)

The first approach results in creating new categories. The second usually involves shifting contexts, both of which we have described as mindful activities.

Thinking by analogy is equally vital to both mindfulness and creativity. This ability to transcend context is the essence of mindfulness and central to creativity in any field.

The sooner you recognize the power of your thoughts, the sooner you will be able to wield them and improve your quality of life.

Thank you for reading!

This summary is not intended to replace the original book, and all quotes are credited to the author mentioned above and the publisher.

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