People talk a lot about mindfulness when it comes to personal well-being, but what about mindfulness and relationships? What can it do for your interactions with other people?
We spoke with Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer, PhD, about how mindfulness can have a powerful positive effect on how you relate to others, starting with how you think about them.
Langer has been studying mindfulness for over 45 years and been called “the mother of mindfulness.” Her most recent book is The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.
What’s your definition of mindfulness?
When people hear the word mindfulness, they tend to think of meditation, which is fine, but that’s a very different process. Meditation isn’t mindfulness. Meditation is a practice you undergo, hopefully to result in post-meditative mindfulness.
Mindfulness, as I study it, is more immediate. It’s a very simple process of noticing.
People think they notice, but the 45 years of research that I’ve done suggests that virtually all of us are mindless almost all the time. We’re not there, but when you’re not there, you’re not there to know you’re not there.
How do you become mindful in the moment?
There are two ways to become mindful.
One is bottom-up, where you actively notice new things about the things you think you know. This could be about your spouse or somebody at work or school.
When you notice new things about them, you see you didn’t know them as well as you thought you did. So your attention naturally goes there.
The other way is top-down. This is a little harder, but it’s much more inclusive.
If we recognize that everything is always changing, everything looks different from different perspectives, and we can’t know anything for sure. So uncertainty is the rule, not the exception. Now, when you know you don’t know, you naturally tune in.
How can we use these to be more mindful in a relationship?
The importance of this in relationships is that we keep thinking we know this other person. We think we know what they’re going to say or what they’re going to do, and we’re wrong as often as we’re right.
So by noticing the times the person doesn’t do or say what you were expecting, you’ll realize you don’t know them as well as you thought you did. You can’t — because you’re changing and they’re changing.
That renewed attention to the person makes them feel cared for.
What are some specific things we can do?
The first is to recognize that, no matter what behavior you’re looking at in another person, there are multiple ways of understanding it.
Essentially, people’s behavior makes sense from their perspective or else they wouldn’t do it. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, today I’m going to be aggressive, obnoxious, and gullible.
So whenever you’re casting aspersions about this person that you want to love (or that you used to love), and you recognize that you’re understanding what they’re doing as negative, you’re being mindless.
Ask yourself, from their perspective, how might that be viewed?
For example, I’m very gullible. I mean, I am so gullible, it’s hard to believe.
So I might go to you and ask you to please help me stop being gullible. So we’re both going to set out to make me not gullible. However, we’re going to fail. Because going forward, my intention is to be trusting, not gullible.
You, on the other hand, are so inconsistent that it drives me crazy. But nobody intends to be inconsistent, so what are you intending? You’re flexible.
If you wanted to stop being inconsistent, all you or I would have to do is persuade you to stop valuing being flexible. But once we see the positive explanation for why the person did what they did, neither of us wants to change.
I don’t want you to change and you don’t want to change. And this is the way we improve our self-esteem. It has an enormous positive effect on relationships.
In other words, by recognizing our own mindlessness, we recognize that another person’s behavior makes sense to them. We come up with a more positive explanation and we’re no longer judgmental.
It’s the same thing with ourselves.
Once we realize that we did what we did for some good reason (or else we wouldn’t have done it), then we no longer feel bad about ourselves.
And if you don’t feel bad about yourself, you tend to be nicer in your relationships.
What if there continue to be outcomes from the behavior that we perceive as negative? Won’t those still be frustrating?
They won’t be.
Once we categorize a person, we tend only to see those instances of them doing that thing that’s annoying. But once we change our understanding of it, much of the time we’re going to see how wonderful your being flexible is or my being trusting is. And it will no longer frustrate us.
One of the ways I suggest dealing with chronic illness can also be used in relationships. It’s called attention to symptom variability.
When you have a symptom, you think it’s going to stay the same or get worse. But nothing goes in only one direction. If you teach yourself to notice, you’ll see it doesn’t always feel worse.
When you answer the question, “Why is it better or worse now than before?”, you become more mindful, and that’s good for your health and well-being now.
So it’s good to stay in the moment by perpetually reassessing the other person?
Yes, not to hold our understandings of people still.
When you’re mindless, you’re holding everything still. When you’re mindful, you’re actively noticing change. You don’t want to pigeonhole people. You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself.
Would you encourage people in relationships to ask questions about others’ motivations? As in: “Tell me about your motivation or why you behave this way”?
Sure. I think the first thing that you might do is ask yourself, “What is the positive reason that person did that thing?”
Then you immediately feel more kindly towards them and you don’t need to ask them.
Now, sometimes people don’t know why they did it. But you have to accept the idea that nobody intentionally does these ridiculous things.
Do you think people ever do have negative intention, though?
On occasion, yes, but that’s because somewhere back in time there was some positive understanding.
So let’s say someone intentionally hurts another person with their words. Perhaps we can see that they probably felt hurt, and this is their way of communicating how hurt they were?
Yes. Once you have that understanding, would you feel as angry at the person?
Probably not.
Does that help us develop a sense of compassion for that person?
Yeah.
Can you share any other takeaways to apply mindfulness to real-world relationships?
When your intimate other comes home, the next time you see them, notice three, four new things about them.
Next time the person does something where you judge them negatively, recognize that every single negative characteristic has an equally strong but oppositely valanced alternative.
So there are two sides to the coin of every “negative” characteristic?
Two sides of the same coin, but one is relationship-strengthening, and the other is relationship-diminishing.
Any final takeaways you’d like to give readers about mindfulness and relationships?
We have 45 years of research showing that when you’re more mindful, you’re healthier, happier, your relationships are better. You’re seen as charismatic. Everything improves.
Given that it’s so easy, there’s no reason for people to hesitate to be mindful.
Sarah Garone
Sarah Garone, NDTR, CNC, is a nutritionist and freelance health and wellness writer in Mesa, AZ. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Washington Post, Insider, Everyday Health, Health.com, and SHAPE. When she's not writing, you can find her baking, running, or singing soprano in a local classical choir. She and her husband have been married for over 20 years and have three teenage children.