Is Mindfulness The New Black?

Last Friday April  25th I was fortunate to attend Ariana Huffington’s Thrive Conference in Midtown NYC with United Women in Business (UWIB). The day hosted a packed program geared towards women seeking new ways to align with something called the “third metric.” This metric is a play on words wherein the first two metrics are what we, particularly in American culture, traditionally use to measure success: money and power. The third metric measures balance, happiness, health and fulfillment and is a mainstay topic throughout HuffPo’s women’s health blog.

I don’t know about you but I’m no stranger to striving for new ways to balance priorities and take better care of myself. New York City of all places has really schooled me in the importance of seemingly simple concepts like sleep, eating right and nurturing healthy relationships. Living here has also taught me what feels like a lifetime’s worth of lessons, the most important being that the amount of money I have does not at all equate to my true level of happiness.

The conference mantra centered on “Thrive” and all the ways various ways guests and participants find they can best tune into their true passions and find value in doing what they love. Finding small ways to give back, connecting with community and with yourself through meditation were discussion focal points. It’s interesting to see how mindfulness and spirituality are cracking into the mainstream at this very moment. Some conference attendees seemed to be absorbing these concepts for the first time although the practices shared derive from philosophies much older than any of us can imagine.

Blame it on amnesia or my all too overly exercised ADD. My memory is short and my attention span really stays in the day and little elsewhere. Funny how mindfulness and meditation seek to remedy exactly these attention deficit related issues, definitely felt by many but particularly stunted within my namesake demographic: #millenials. I think I speak for many when I say I am too comfortable with multi-tasking and being overstimulated to the max. Mindfulness is a nice compliment to my extraordinarily sped up style, and it might just be the key to slowing down and connecting with what it means to truly thrive.