An Interview with Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. on Mindfulness Work

Dr. Goldstein, a clinical psychologist and regular contributor to Mental Help Net, is on his second career, his first having been sales. He talks about how he came to a realization that his efforts to secure financial success were ultimately seen to be unfullilling as he considered them from an end-of-life perspective. This realization pushed him to change careers go back to school and become a psychologist, and to focus on mindfulness, which, hot topic that it has become, is also an expression of and a set of techniques for achieving a balancing, clarifying and meaningfully-present perspective on life. Drs. Goldstein and Van Nuys talk about how the pressure of mondern life pushes people to become less present and mindful, and how it takes deliberate practice to push back against this tide. Time management is less important than attention management, Dr. Goldstein contends. It is all to easy to react to seemingly urgent needs or to engage in escapist distraction. Harder to accomplish but ultimately better for you is to create a space where you can be thoughtfully proactive so as to plan for how to make your life better. Mindfullness practice helps people create and maintain this proactive space, which is part of why many businesses and business people are now pursuing mindfulness practices in the workplace. As the interview winds down, Dr. Goldstein describes some of the formal mindfulness practices and how they help people recognize and overcome common mental traps (also known as cognitive distortions) such as catastrophization.