Mindfulness and Mystery: Sleuthing Toward Interpersonal
Awareness
We love mysteries.
We enjoy using our minds to gather clues and solve problems of
all kinds. Whether it's the latest crime show on television, a
news story, your company's top-secret product launch, or where
you left your glasses, you are captivated by questions that have
significance for you.
In fact, we can learn a great deal by becoming mindful of the
types of mysteries that fire up our brains. By using multiple
intelligences theory as a framework, we can create greater
awareness of the areas that naturally appeal to us as
playgrounds for mindfulness.
For example, if you find that you are frequently intrigued by
dramas--gossip, soap operas, office politics, novels, or shows
like "Survivor" or "The Bachelor"--pay attention to that. What
it tells you is that you have a natural inclination to flex your
interpersonal intelligence, or "people" smarts.
You seek clues to help you understand and anticipate the
motives, reactions, and choices of others. You have an ability
to see personality traits clearly and recognize behavior
patterns, and you apply this knowledge to new situations and
characters.
All the world is a stage to you, and you are fascinated by the
players and plots.
If you enjoy observing dramas, you might as well use them as
triggers for mindfulness, right? So, for example, you could
select a particular cue to notice and heighten your awareness of
when, how, and why it appears.
If you choose a gesture like someone putting their hand on their
forehead, you could use this as your secret prompt to pay
attention to what follows immediately AFTER that. An exclamation
of exhaustion? A self-critical statement? A swear word?
You can do this during your conversations with others, but it's
also easy to do when you are watching people in any setting--at
a party, in a movie, on television.
What can you learn about this person in particular and people in
general by paying attention to this gesture? What are the subtle
differences between people using this gesture, and between
instances when the same person uses this gesture?
Remember, to develop mindfulness we need to notice new things,
draw distinctions, shift our perspective, and stay focused on
the moment.