This Wednesday -- Quiz: How mindful are you? I'm not very.

Every Wednesday is Tip (or Quiz) Day.
This Wednesday – Quiz: How mindful are you?

As preparation for my Happiness Project, I did a lot of self-examination to figure out what goals to work toward. I knew that one quality I needed to cultivate was mindfulness – that is, my open, conscious awareness in the present.

And I have been trying to be more mindful.

But it wasn’t until just yesterday, when I read this questionnaire, that I realized just how mindless I was.

This questionnaire, the "Mindful Attention Awareness Scale," appears in an interesting paper by Kirk Warren Brown and Richard M. Ryan, The Benefits of Being Present: Mindfulness and its Role in Psychological Well-Being.

I can absent-mindedly report that I answered “yes” to every single question, except #13.

Zoikes!

The more often you answer “ no,” more mindfully you live. How do you score?

1. I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later.

2. I break or spill things because of carelessness, not paying attention, or thinking of something else.

3. I find it difficult to stay focused on what’s happening in the present.

4. I tend to walk quickly to get where I’m going without paying attention to what I experience along the way.

5. I tend not to notice feelings of physical tension or discomfort until they really grab my attention.

6. I forget a person’s name almost as soon as I’ve been told it for the first time.

7. It seems I am “running on automatic” without much awareness of what I’m doing.

8. I rush through activities without being really attentive to them.

9. I get so focused on the goal I want to achieve that I lose touch with what I am doing right now to get there.

10. I do jobs or tasks automatically, without being aware of what I’m doing.

11. I find myself listening to someone with one ear, doing something else at the same time.

12. I drive places on “automatic pilot” and then wonder why I went there.

13. I find myself preoccupied with the future or the past.

14. I find myself doing things without paying attention.

15. I snack without being aware that I’m eating.

Mindfulnss can bring many benefits. It brings clarity and vividness to present experience. It may help people end unhealthy habits and patterns. It can enhance a sense of well-being and calm troubled spirits.

This questionnaire is also useful because its questions suggest specific areas for improvement. I’m going to try to walk more mindfully; eat more mindfully; listen more single-mindedly; and not multi-task.

My Resolutions Chart will need an update!

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I was looking for a particular Louis Armstrong quotation about jazz, and I found this terrific site, Out of the Way, dedicated to jazz quotations. I spent a blissful twenty minutes mindfully enjoying it.

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Comments

[Michelle Potter]

Scary... I answered way too many of those questions with, "Only when I'm driving." I can be very mindless while driving, though I try hard to pay attention. I often end up taking the wrong freeway, missing my exit, or exiting for no reason. Ungood!

[Kim]

What a timely post. I have been working on applying mindfulness to various aspects of my life--food, finances, emotions--and achieving great personal growth as a result. Just over the past couple days I have been thinking about how I am not always "present" with the people I am with. Now it's time to really practice mindfulness when communicating or just being with people, whether in real life, on the phone, or through email/internet.

Thanks for the reminder!

[Jecca]

Eek! I was only able to say "no" to number 6 and sometimes 7 or 10.

[Lisa]

What is that picture? It is totally distracting!

[Gretchen Rubin]

The photograph is by Edward Weston, one of my favorite artists -- also, his DAYBOOKS are fascinating to read.

Michelle -- I think that one reason that I'm scared to drive is that I find it so hard to stay focused. Sometimes I'll awaken with a jerk, and realize that I've been driving for 15 minutes on automatic. Terrifying!

[Jennifer]

You do that too? I do that a lot on the interstate in long trips. I wonder how in the world I did not have an accident, because I remember none of the last 15 minutes. Acutally, I can't recall doing that in a long time.

This is a very timely post for me too... Although I haven't been calling it "being mindful" it is the same thing. Really it is about seeing the big picture. We are so preoccupied with nonsense that we don't see what is truly important.

We teach people in our SFT classes to see the big picture and to recognize something you don't like immediately so it doesn't go "unnoticed" and reak havock on you.

Also, I am reading this EXCELLENT book right now called Time Power by Charles Hobbs that makes you mindful and in control at all times. I recommend it to EVERYONE!!! It is now my favorite book.

[Jennifer]

Have you happened to watch your one minute movie lately? I just watched it for the first time. Boy does it fit with this post!

[Nancie]

I answered all but four of them with a yes...not so great. This is an area I have been trying to work on. Right now I'm reading both of Eckhart Tolle's books..the Power of Now, and A New Earth (both for the second time.) I've come to realize that if I want to live in the moment I have to be mindful. I'm also understanding how difficult that can be, and when you succeed...totally rewarding.

[Alex C.]

Mindfulness and meditation are two things that I don't think I'd be much good at, and that -- for better or for worse -- are not currently on my "to do" list of self-improvement projects.

[Kristin]

I answered the questionnaire with explanations on my own site. Suffice it to say, I'm definitely not mindful! I knew that about myself, but it's a bit unsettling to have it outlined like that. It's something I have to work on. One of my Happiness Commandments (which I don't think about nearly often enough!) is "embrace being here." The meaning of that has shifted since I wrote it, but now it means exactly that -- embrace being here and now, where and when I am, rather than mentally being somewhere else all the time. I'm happier when I can focus on what I'm doing, so why don't I do that more often? Habits are just so hard to break.

[Karl Staib - Your Work Happiness Matters]

I'm a very mindful person when I focus, which I attribute to meditation and Yoga. Both tools have given me awareness that when applied works wonders.

I do have days that just don't feel good and I crawl into a shell. I'm working on staying in the moment and just being aware, but sometimes it's hard.

Do you practice any mindful techniques to open your awareness?

[Adrian]

Just listened to a podcast on Mindfulness as a form of cognitive therapy for depression, substance abuse and chronic pain. Based on the work of Kabat-Zinn, who was referred to in the article you were reading.

What I learned was that there are (at least) 2 kinds of mindfulness. The first is being aware of your internal and external environment (emotions, sensations etc). The second is being aware of your direction - what the things you are presently doing are leading towards. Although that relates to the future, it's important to realize the (likely) consequences of your decisions and actions at this moment.

The other aspects of mindfulness the podcaster highlighted were to do with how we react after we have focussed on the present moment. We should try to be patient with our feelings - instead of immediately going "Argh! What am I doing! Why am always like this?" we should just allow the feelings to tick along, and be aware of them.

Then we should try to put those feelings in perspective. Are they really as bad as we think? Or are they actually more important than we would like to think?

Finally there is choice. Just because we feel desperate, does it mean that we "must" have a drink, or rage, or any other negative reaction?

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[Eros Starr]

that's relative for me, I've try to become flexible and adaptable

The other aspects of mindfulness the podcaster highlighted were to do with how we react after we have focussed on the present moment. We should try to be patient with our feelings - instead of immediately going "Argh! What am I doing! Why am always like this?" we should just allow the feelings to tick along, and be aware of them.

The meaning of that has shifted since I wrote it, but now it means exactly that -- embrace being here and now, where and when I am, rather than mentally being somewhere else all the time. I'm happier when I can focus on what I'm doing, so why don't I do that more often? Habits are just so hard to break.

[Olivier @ mindfulness exercises]

I'm afraid that after some years of practicing mindfulness I still need to answer yes to many of those questions.
It is a simple and powerful concept (or practice) and yet so difficult to do.

[Sara Anderson]

I've been a smart, absent-minded person all my life, but I recently had a brain injury that gave me trouble with concentration and attention, so I've had to learn how to improve such things - for example, through exercises used to improve my memory or attention skills, I've realized that a lot of things I had always passed off as "bad memory" are in fact due to not having paid attention in the first place. I now take drugs that help with attention and concentration, but I am not completely nonfunctional without them. Through years of classes where I had to apply formulas to sets of numbers given to me, I'd taught myself not to remember specific figures, and they bounced right out of my brain once I heard them. Then I got a job where almost everything I worked with had a random 4-6 digit number attached to it, so I had to learn how to remember numbers. It took a few months, but I adapted.

[LizzB]

Yikes. Yeah, I'm totally on auto pilot I guess. If I start to crash who the hell is going to land this plane???

I said "no" to 5.

[EllenSka]

I'm sad for people who read this and judge themselves as "unmindful" and thus unevolved. It's like starting a running program, then watching a marathon and saying, "Man, I can't run at all!" How about, "Hey, I did half a mile today!"

The psychological profile of mindfulness doesn't much support the ways we already are mindful, just points out all the ways we AREN'T. As such, I'm not sure it's so motivating. "Do I go all dreamy in the shower and forget to shave my legs?" Yep, I sure do. But the list as it's presented makes that a bad thing.

May I propose mere noticing instead? This is an alternate possibility suggested by my Zen teacher, John Tarrant. "Hmmm, how am I doing this eating, this driving?" No judgment, no considering that "mindful" eating has to be slow and deliberate, when one could merely notice that they are currently honking down a cheeseburger.

Then see how it changes, especially when I'm not beating myself up. Just noticing.

[vanessa]

This may be a mindfulness quiz, but it also resembles many characteristics of ADHD! I don't really think they are mutually exclusive, so not liking this particular test!

[JohnB2]

I like Brown and Ryan's measure with its emphasis on trait, rather than state, mindfulness. I occasionally use this tool with patients and clients. It's relatively easy to do an exercise for five minutes and be mindful *during* the activity. What we hope is that we become more mindful in general. In other words, develop the trait of mindfulness.