Being Socially Mindful

Most of us think of mindfulness as an individual experience. However, researchers have recently begun to explore a concept called social mindfulness. This concept expands the notion of mindfulness to include an awareness of how our actions and decisions impact others’ decisions and available choices. For example, let’s consider a decision to avoid taking the last peanut butter cookie from a plate full of chocolate chip cookies. This decision gives others the opportunity to choose either type of cookie. Conversely, if we had chosen the last peanut butter cookie, then we would have limited the choices for others.

Being socially mindful is more than being polite. It’s also more than just being aware of others. It is being aware that our decisions may limit or eliminate choices for others. It refers to our focus on making decisions that recognize our shared humanity and interdependence. It is easy to see how this type of focus is especially critical today, where the decisions we make for ourselves can have life or death consequences for others.

STEPS TO INCREASE SOCIAL MINDFULNESS

We encourage you to expand your practice of mindfulness to include being aware of how your decisions impact others. To help you get started in this practice, take a moment to review the following steps to see how you can be more socially mindful:

• Tune into your attention. If you are like most people, when you take a moment to consider where your attention is focused, you are likely to find that it is focused inward. Most likely you will find that you are paying attention to the running dialogue of thoughts inside of your head.

• Shift your attention outward. Once you understand where your attention is focused you can begin the process of shifting your focus outward. To do this, first pause your internal dialogue by taking a few slow and even breaths. This pause will help you refocus your attention to take-in your environment and consider others.

• Consider others’ thoughts, feelings, motivations, and intentions. The shift to this type of focus requires us to engage three types of empathy: cognitive, emotional, and compassionate empathy.

  • Cognitive empathy is sometimes called perspective-taking which refers to our ability to identify and understand other people’s emotions and what they might be thinking.

  • Emotional empathy refers to the ability to express an appropriate emotional response to the experiences of another person so that the other person feels supported and accepted.

  • Compassionate empathy goes beyond understanding what others’ might be thinking or feeling. It moves us to take action or make decisions with consideration for others.

• Avoid judgment. To put others first requires us to accept people as they are and to not judge others’ thoughts, feelings, and motivation. To be non-judgmental requires us to have the ability to be aware of more than one perspective to a situation, not just our own. In other words, we have to accept the assumption that other people’s needs and motivations are equally as valid as our own, even if we disagree with them.

• Make a decision. As you consider your options, being socially mindful means that you consider how your actions may or may not limit the other person’s choices. Just as in the cookie example, there are many daily situations where our behavior limits other people’s choices.

We all like to have autonomy in our decisions. However, we need to be aware that the decisions we make today impact others more than ever before.