Mindful June 2016

Are you a neat freak? If you haven’t used something in three years, where do you put it? 55% DONATE IT TO CHARITY, while 22% let it petrify at the bottom of a closet somewhere. 6% chuck it immediately—no need for drawn-out goodbyes! And 7% insist there’s a use for everything! Everyone else sells their stuff or puts it in storage. Who does most of the cleaning in your household? • “A little bit of everyone, but it usually falls on my husband because he is a neat freak. Poor guy.” • “I do. My two dogs refuse to assist.” • “I am a nun so we all do our share as members of a community.” What takes up the most room in your house? 31% FILL UP THE NOOKS…

Editor-in-Chief barry@mindful.org Our must-read story this issue: “Telling Stories, Breaking Barriers” on the power of honest talk to heal deep wounds and bring us together. On page 54. We all just want to be happy, right? Yes, but… There is a hitch. If I’m asked, “Are you happy?,” I start rapidly running down a list of what’s been happening (things are going well for my children, or not, money is OK, or not…) and what looms ahead (the house is falling apart, the car is falling apart, hell, I am falling apart). That simple question transports me into evaluative head games about the past and the future, until finally I blurt something out. “Yes, I’m OK, sort of.” Happiness is a strangely elusive concept. It means too many things to…

“It’s not just your spiritual hippie friends saying you should try meditation, now it’s your doctor and your therapist,” says Lodro Rinzler, cofounder of MNDFL, a new meditation studio in New York. As research pours in from places like Harvard and MIT on the benefits of mindfulness, people across the country are seeking secular spaces to explore the practice. Meditation studios are popping up from Texas and Georgia to Massachusetts and Florida. “At MNDFL, we want to do one thing really well, which is to get New Yorkers meditating,” says Ellie Burrows, cofounder and CEO of MNDFL. The bright, thoughtfully decorated studio offers more than a dozen different classes and features 27 certified teachers. It has attracted a diverse community of new and seasoned meditators, people suffering through pain, and…

mindful When a woman contacted online retailer Zulily to return a winter coat, they refunded her money and told her to donate the coat instead of returning it. Last year the Cochin International Airport in Southern India became the world’s first fully solar-powered airport. We know Twitter can be distracting and mindless, but Tweeters also detect earthquakes more quickly than the US Geological Survey, which is why it teamed up with the social media site to more efficiently and effectively monitor earthquakes. Ever heard of a “solidarity fridge?” No? That’s because the town of Galdakao, Spain, is the first to install one. To minimize food waste, citizens bring leftovers to an outdoor fridge and anyone can take from it. At the Human Library, the books are people! The global project,…

WIRED TO CONNECT The Surprising Link Between Brain Science and Strong, Healthy Relationships Amy Banks, with Leigh Ann Hirschman • Tarcher Perigee Relationships happen between individuals, but also between neural pathways in your brain. Left unchecked, old habits and thinking patterns affect the way you interact with your closest friends and partners. Using a system called “C.A.R.E.” that identifies various brain regions, Banks offers a way to investigate those patterns and lay down new tracks that support healthier, happier relationships. GRATITUDE Oliver Sacks • Knopf Few people can claim to have changed the way large numbers of people think about themselves and their fellow humans. Neurologist Oliver Sacks did so repeatedly. By bringing a child’s curiosity to brains that veered from the “norm,” he asked us to think of them…

Is actor Kirk Douglas alive or dead? When did Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman get divorced? What’s U2 frontman Bono’s real name? Unless you’re a close personal friend of any of these celebrities, knowing the answer has no meaningful effect on your life—yet if you’re anything like the office full of people I tried this on you’re at least a little itchy to whip out your phone or dash over to your computer for answers. There’s even a website (or two… or three… ) devoted entirely to informing you which famous people have shuffled off this mortal coil. Curiosity. It has “its own reason for existing,” physicist Albert Einstein wrote, and is, according to 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson, “the first passion and the last.” We all know what killed…