Mindfulness Is Not the Problem. The Packaging Is.

First Posted on LinkedIn October 23, 2025

What do you think of when you hear someone talking about mindfulness meditation? No doubt you conjure up an idyllic location with someone sitting in the lotus position, eyes closed, looking the picture of serenity. You are immediately thinking "well that's not for me". – Cue vinyl record scratching.

I get annoyed that this is how mindfulness meditation is commonly portrayed, but I understand why. If you do an image search for mindfulness meditation on the internet, that is what you are presented with. Unfortunately, that portrayal has zero relevance to those with familial, financial, or professional responsibilities all vying for time and attention. How could that traditional portrayal resonate with someone who has spent the past 30 minutes in traffic and has barely moved 1 kilometre closer to finishing their long commute? Or how could it resonate with the employee moving from one meeting to the next with barely enough time to think? Someone who's stressed attention is still on their previous meeting and the actions added to an already overburdened to-do list? Or the stressed parent who didn't get much sleep because they were up most of the night comforting their child who is the victim of online bullying? Viewed through their perspectives, mindfulness meditation is as relevant and useful as a chocolate teapot.

That being said, we have rarely needed the qualities mindfulness develops more than we do today. The world is quite a very different place today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. The pace of change has accelerated exponentially, powered by advancements in technology. Though the mobile world has delivered so many advancements and joy with one swipe, it has simultaneously eroded our quality of life with another. Modern life and all its 'tech' stealthily inhibit our ability as a species to be more self-aware, to sustain attention, to remember, or to emotionally regulate.

Now, I am not ironically suggesting that all the ills of the modern world are due to the internet and social media. Nor am I suggesting that mindfulness meditation is the panacea to those same ills. What I am suggesting is that we need to redress the imbalance, and that mindfulness meditation is one way personally do that.

I have had a long-held desire to see mindfulness meditation sit comfortably within a business context. That office quiet rooms would be used equally for meditation as they would conference calls. Wouldn't it be wonderful to walk down a workplace corridor, gaze into a glass walled pod and see a colleague meditating without any judgement? Knowing that they are taking that time-out to create a little space in an overwhelming day and knowing that the 10-15 mins they spend sitting and mindfully meditating would benefit them hugely.

Know your audience. Mindfulness meditation will never be embraced by would-be participants or openly accepted in the workplace until the way mindfulness meditation is portrayed, perceived and taught gets a reboot! The core messages and values are still very relevant, but how they are positioned and delivered has not kept pace with the changing world.

Meditation needs to be positioned and taught with relevance to practitioners living in the 21st century. All belief systems organically change, incorporate, and adapt to new conditions. Meditation should be no different. Meditation needs to be pared back to its core messages and practices without the trappings of religion, spiritualism or ceremony. Its benefits need to speak in terms that can be grounded in everyday life. Seeking to cultivate qualities such as self-awareness, attention, focus, recollection and emotional regulation is worthwhile. But unless those qualities can be reflected through real-life examples, they will remain abstract and unattainable.

Before the charges of reductionism are raised by the purists, let me expand. When I started my meditation journey over 15 years ago it was one filled with incense, preconceived ideas of spiritualism, hopes of enlightenment and gravitas. Why and how I practise today is very different. Today I seek to cultivate attention to remain focused on the work task at hand, or to remain present in a meeting I'm attending. I am regularly reminded by a more keen-eyed self-awareness when my attention drifts. I find myself less emotionally reactive to the scything email. Instead, I actively choose the calm response of a calendar invite to discuss. Now don't misunderstand me; I am no Mother Teresa. There are days when I slip, when my focus drifts or my blood boils. But that's all part of being the imperfect human being that I am, and I am becoming more comfortable with that too.

So, if I was to say that for as little as five minutes a day you could begin to notice your habits of attention, your reactivity to life's pressures, and your ability to respond more deliberately, would it be worth trying?

Mindfulness is not about becoming calm, spiritual or perfect.

It is about becoming more aware.

And awareness creates choice.

Mind yourself

Mike ..