How mindful are you of your own mindfulness? Sounds like a silly question and yet the research supports the impact of positive mindfulness and shows it can even turn back the clock. For example, Ellen Langer, professor of psychology at Harvard University, and researcher who has spent over 40 years researching mindfulness, conducted the “counter-clockwise” experiments and demonstrated that elderly men could improve their health by simply acting as if they were 20 years younger. Who would not want that?

Langer says that by “simply paying attention to what is going on around us, rather than operating on autopilot, we are able to reduce stress, unlock creativity and boost performance.” Below are some other important mindfulness points provided by Langer:

How does mindfulness work?

“Mindfulness is the process of actively noticing new things. It’s focusing on the positive and not the negative. When you do this, it puts you in the present. It makes you more sensitive to context and perspective. It’s the essence of engagement, and it’s energy-begetting, not energy-consuming. The mistake most people make is to assume it’s stressful and exhausting—all this thinking. But what’s stressful is all the mindless negative evaluations we make and the worry that we’ll find problems and not be able to solve them. When you’re mindful, rules, routines, and goals guide you; they don’t govern you.”

When Do I Use Mindfulness?

“No matter what you’re doing—eating a sandwich, doing an interview, working on some gizmo, writing a report—you’re doing it mindfully or mindlessly. At the very highest levels of any field—Fortune 500 CEOs, the most impressive artists and musicians, the top athletes, the best teachers and mechanics—you’ll find mindful people, because that’s the only way to get there.”

How Do I Practice Mindfulness?

“One tactic is to imagine that your thoughts are totally transparent. If they were, you wouldn’t think awful things about other people. You’d find a way to understand their perspective.

And when you’re upset about something—maybe someone turned in an assignment late or didn’t do it the way you wanted—ask yourself, “Is it a tragedy or an inconvenience?” It’s probably the latter. Most of the things that get us upset are.

I also tell people to think about work/life integration, not balance. “Balance” suggests that the two are opposite and have nothing in common. But that’s not true. They’re both mostly about people. There are stresses in both. There are schedules to be met. If you keep them separate, you don’t learn to transfer what you do successfully in one domain to the other. When we’re mindful, we realize that categories are person constructed and don’t limit us. Remember, too, that stress is not a function of events; it’s a function of the view you take of events. You think a particular thing is going to happen and that when it does, it’s going to be awful. But prediction is an illusion. We can’t know what’s going to happen. So, give yourself five reasons you won’t lose the job. Then think of five reasons why, if you did, it would be an advantage—new opportunities, more time with family, et cetera. Now you’ve gone from thinking it definitely will happen to maybe it will happen, and if it does, you will be OK.

Life consists only of moments, nothing more than that. So, if you make the moment matter, it all matters. You can be mindful, you can be mindless. You can win, you can lose. The worst case is to be mindless and lose. So, when you’re doing anything, be mindful, notice new things, make it meaningful to you, and you’ll prosper.”

What About When There is a Conflict Between People’s Thinking?

“There’s an old story about two people coming before a judge. One guy tells his side of the story, and the judge says, “That’s right.” The other guy tells his side of the story, and the judge says, “That’s right.” They say, “We can’t both be right.” And the judge says, “That’s right.” We have this mindless notion to settle disputes with a choice between this way or that way, or a compromise. But win-win solutions can almost always be sought.”

From “Mindfulness in the Age of Complexity” by Ellen Langer from Mindfulness (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series; Harvard Business Review Press; 2017)