Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence Collection (4 Books) (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)

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Mindfulness for People Who Are Too Busy to Meditate

By Maria Gonzalez

Mindfulness has become almost a buzzword. But what is it, really? Quite simply, mindfulness is being present and aware, moment by moment, regardless of circumstances.

For instance, researchers have found that practicing mindfulness can reprogram the brain to be more rational and less emotional. When faced with a decision, meditators who practiced mindfulness showed increased activity in the posterior insula of the brain, an area linked to rational decision making. This allowed them to make decisions based more on fact than emotion. This is good news since other research has found that reasoning is actually suffused with emotion—the two are inseparable. What’s more, our