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" Blog post courtesy of Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project.   As preparation for my Happiness Project, I did a lot of self-examination to figure out what goals to work toward. I knew that one quality I needed to cultivate was mindfulness \u2013 that is, my open, conscious awareness in the present.   And I have been trying to be more mindful.   But it wasn&amp;#039;t until just yesterday, when I read this questionnaire, that I realized just how mindless I was.   This questionnaire, the &amp;quot;Mindful Attention Awareness Scale,&amp;quot; appears in an interesting paper by Kirk Warren Brown and Richard M. Ryan, The Benefits of Being Present: Mindfulness and its Role in Psychological Well-Being.   I can absent-mindedly report that I answered &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot; to every single question, except #13.   Zoikes!   The more often you answer &amp;quot; no,&amp;quot; more mindfully you live. How do you score?   1. I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later.   2. I break or spill things because of carelessness, not paying attention, or thinking of something else.   3. I find it difficult to stay focused on what&amp;#039;s happening in the present.   4. I tend to walk quickly to get where I&amp;#039;m going without paying attention to what I experience along the way.   5. I tend not to notice feelings of physical tension or discomfort until they really grab my attention.   6. I forget a person&amp;#039;s name almost as soon as I&amp;#039;ve been told it for the first time.   7. It seems I am &amp;quot;running on automatic&amp;quot; without much awareness of what I&amp;#039;m doing.   8. I rush through activities without being really attentive to them.   9. I get so focused on the goal I want to achieve that I lose touch with what I am doing right now to get there.   10. I do jobs or tasks automatically, without being aware of what I&amp;#039;m doing.   11. I find myself listening to someone with one ear, doing something else at the same time.   12. I drive places on &amp;quot;automatic pilot&amp;quot; and then wonder why I went there.   13. I find myself preoccupied with the future or the past.   14. I find myself doing things without paying attention.   15. I snack without being aware that I&amp;#039;m eating.   Mindfulness can bring many benefits. It brings clarity and vividness to present experience. It may help people end unhealthy habits and patterns. It can enhance a sense of well-being and calm troubled spirits.   This questionnaire is also useful because its questions suggest specific areas for improvement. I&amp;#039;m going to try to walk more mindfully; eat more mindfully; listen more single-mindedly; and not multi-task.   My Resolutions Chart will need an update!   I was looking for a particular Louis Armstrong quotation about jazz, and I found this terrific site, Out of the Way, dedicated to jazz quotations. I spent a blissful twenty minutes mindfully enjoying it.   For more on the WD Happiness Project, check out WomansDay.com/Happiness. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/a4985/how-mindful-are-you-107076/>