The concept of mindfulness was something that was new to me until recently. Being mindful basically means paying attention to the moment in a nonjudgmental way. However, the concept itself isn’t particularly what was new to me it was the way of living and applying mindfulness to everyday life. Personally I struggle with anxiety and focusing on my current situation because I am always stressing about the future and what I need to be doing next. Practicing mindful techniques would help me a lot in that aspect of my life. Mindfulness can be viewed as a mental training technique and being mindful has been proven to have positive effects on both well-being and empathy. For instance, meditation is just one of the many techniques of practicing mindfulness and has been proven to be one of the most effective ways of achieving happiness.

                  After watching Marc Cohen’s TED talk I felt really inspired to take control of my mind. Marc explained how wellness means being fully present in the moment and that it is easier for humans to be well if the world around us is also well. I thought it was very interesting when he pointed out how the I in illness symbolizes how it is a personal problem while the WE in wellness proves that in order to achieve wellness you can’t rely on one thing. This TED talk was truly eye opening for me because I needed to hear about all of the delusions your brain can make you believe about your environment. Marc Cohen taught me that I need to live a balanced life and listen to my body.

                  I found the article “Mindfulness and Sustainability” to be very informative. Before I read this article I knew little to nothing about the concept of mindfulness. I learned that happier people lived more environmentally conscious and that mindfulness and intrinsic values were associated with higher well-being and ecological behavior. This proved to me that I need to practice meditation and mindful techniques not only for my mental health but for my overall health and well-being because they are all interconnected.

                  Everything I have learned in this class so far has made a huge impact on my mindset for my future career. Since I am becoming more environmentally aware it has made me take a look at how corrupt my career path for the fashion industry is. I chose to explore fast fashion as my problem because it is a large polluter of the world. So far, through my research, I have learned that it is a newly emerged issue and the pollution coming from fast fashion is unmatched from any other industry. 

                  After we tried meditation in class I decided I was going to practice it a lot more. I felt more rested after the meditation experiment which was surprising because I hadn’t had much sleep that day.

                  The same day as the meditation experiment we also completed the Wild Things Activity. I thoroughly enjoyed this activity because it allowed me to share some of the wicked problems I had been researching and to listen and learn about the ones that other people had been looking into.