Here are some key quotes:
"But when we played recordings of the symphonies for people who knew nothing about the study, they overwhelmingly preferred the mindfully played pieces. So here we had a group performance where everybody was doing their own thing, and it was better. There’s this view that if you let everyone do their own thing, chaos will reign. When people are doing their own thing in a rebellious way, yes, it might. But if everyone is working in the same context and is fully present, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get a superior coordinated performance.
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I’ve been studying this for nearly 40 years, and for almost any measure, we find that mindfulness generates a more positive result. That makes sense when you realize it’s a superordinate variable. 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. When it’s the former, it leaves an imprint on what you do. At the very highest levels of any field—Fortune 50 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.
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When you’re mindful, mistakes become friends.
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One group was told to act masculine, the other to act feminine. Then half of each group was instructed to give their speech mindfully, and we found that audiences preferred the mindful speakers, regardless of what gender role they were playing out.
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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. Instead of letting people lock into their positions, go back and open it up. Have opponents play the debate from the other side so that they realize there are good arguments either way. Then find a way for both of them to be right.
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As a leader, you can walk around as if you’re God and get everybody to quiver. But then you’re not going to learn anything, because they’re not going to tell you, and you’re going to be lonely and unhappy. It doesn’t have to be lonely at the top. You can be there and be open.
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The first time you go through a checklist, it’s fine. But after that, most people tend to do it mindlessly. So in aviation you have flaps up, throttle open, anti-ice off. But if snow is coming and the anti-ice is off, the plane crashes.
Checklists aren’t bad if they require qualitative information to be obtained in that moment. For example, “Please note the weather conditions. Based on these conditions, should the anti-ice be on or off?” or “How is the patient’s skin color different from yesterday?” If you ask questions that encourage mindfulness, you bring people into the present and you’re more likely to avoid an accident.
Mindful, qualitative comments help in interpersonal relationships, too, by the way. If you’re giving a compliment, “You look great” is not nearly as effective as something like “Your eyes are sparkling today.” To say that, you have to be there, and people will recognize and appreciate it.
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People say that there’s too much information, and I would say that there’s no more information now than there was before. The difference is that people believe they have to know it—that the more information they have, the better the product is going to be and the more money the company is going to make. I don’t think it depends as much on the amount of information someone has as on the way it’s taken in. And that needs to be mindfully.
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I think what we should do is learn from the way technology is fun and compelling and build that into our work.
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What you want is a soft openness—to be attentive to the things you’re doing but not single-minded, because then you’re missing other opportunities.
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I’m thinking about maybe a mindfulness camp for children. One exercise might be to take a group of 20 kids and keep dividing them into subsets—male/female, younger/older, dark hair/light hair, wearing black/not wearing black—until they realize that everyone is unique. As I’ve said for 30 years, the best way to decrease prejudice is to increase discrimination. We would also play games and midway through mix up the teams. Or maybe we’d give each child a chance to rewrite the rules of the game, so it becomes clear that performance is only a reflection of one’s ability under certain circumstances. You know, if they allowed three serves in tennis, I would be a much better player."
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