If you’re a person living in 2026, you probably have an inventory that you’d like to get fixed. Your list might look like: affordable housing, the global economy, the cost of groceries, your headache, your back, an aging body, the cost of gas, the price of groceries, global warming, and maybe something to deal with insecurity or chronic busyness.
And that’s just at the top of the list.
In our collective frustration and longing to find peace or rest in the current environment we find ourselves in, anywhere but “here” feels good, even if only for a moment.
Some of us have turned to spiritual things, looking for answers. Some of us have tried to distract ourselves with tasks and to-do lists. And for some, we’ve delved too deeply into the health fads, supplements, and exercise programs that promise us ways to “live.”
In our collective frustration and longing to find peace or rest in the current environment we find ourselves in, anywhere but “here” feels good, even if only for a moment.
Enter Considerations.
When Practice Becomes Asset
For decades, teachers like Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein helped introduce Insight Meditation (Vipassana) to Western audiences. They make the centuries-old practice of mindfulness more accessible to people seeking a different relationship with stress, suffering, and the mind itself.
Over time, mindfulness moved beyond meditation centers and into schools, workplaces, therapists’ offices, and hospitals—and later, the larger health industry as a whole.
In fact, attention has become the new “superfood”.
However, somewhere along the way, mindfulness became more than a habit. It was the beginning. Today, when we come across words like mindful eating, mindful communication, mindful parenting, mindful productivity—the adjective itself gives an air of credibility to the following.
In fact, attention has become the new “superfood”. The label itself is imbued with authority for what follows, encouraging us to believe that simply adding the word “remember” to an activity somehow makes it the smartest, most educated, or healthiest choice in the room, when the truth is quite different.
Have We Lost Structure?
In my quest for answers, I picked up a copy of Jon Kabat-Zinn Full Crisis Life. Kabat-Zinn is credited with translating mindfulness into the clinical setting known today as MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), where healthcare professionals and hospitals have incorporated these practices.
The title comes off the line at Zorba the Greekwhere “full disaster” refers to the evils of life (stress, work, uncertainty, self-doubt, love, happiness, illness, loss) and all that goes with it. The premise of the book is that we cannot control what happens to us in this life, but we can change our relationship with what happens.
Mindfulness, when used in many situations in life, has a beneficial effect: it helps to control our emotions, cultivate self-awareness, and support our mental well-being.
The issue has never been, Does attention help?—but rather what we now expect it to help.
However, as mindfulness has become more popular, so have our expectations of it. In some cases, the word “mindfulness” has become the language of wellness alone.
Matter never existed, Does mindfulness help?-but rather than what we now expect it to help with.
Labels Come with a Price
Part of the appeal of mindfulness is that it offers something many of us desperately need: a way to experience our lives with more balance, greater awareness, and less reaction.
But since many people have seen this difficult need, and perhaps tried more than a few things that did not work to meet it, mindfulness has begun to take on responsibilities beyond its original scope.
We want a sense of relief more than the ability to feel bad that may not have easy answers.
In some cases, expectations about mindfulness can change to what contemplative teachers would describe as a spiritual transcendence, where, in general, people view the practice itself as a solution rather than part of a larger process that involves our participation. In other words, we want feeling of relief in addition to the ability to grieve may not have easy answers.
Marketing has played a major role in helping many of us become conscious, but what has been the result? We may attend many workshops or participate in the company’s discretionary retreat, but I think we should consider whether we are asking you to be aware of carrying the weight of responsibilities outside the practice.
Consciousness was not intended to fix the “total disaster” of life, but rather to give us the tools to meet ourselves where we are.
Confounding the Local Path
The wellness trap begins when we mistake any one practice or form of healing for the solution itself. Consciousness was not intended to fix the “total disaster” of life, but rather to give us the tools to meet ourselves where we are.
Yes, practicing mindfulness can help improve things like attention, focus, communication—which can have an impact on making workplaces better and more efficient. But when did mindfulness become the responsibility of making workplaces healthy? Or is it more productive? When has there been a responsibility to help us become better leaders or to help us deal with burnout? None of these are inherently rational, of course; but when we attribute the success or failure of such efforts to such a practice as mindfulness, we fail to see the process accurately.
Mindfulness is a tool for cultivation, not a cure in itself. Put another way: attention is one way of relating to information of any kind. This, however, is very different from being a solution to end unwanted experiences.
Back to Basics
So, what does mindfulness really offer? And why do we always expect to be conscious of “fixing” anything that doesn’t feel right in our lives?
Jon Kabat-Zinn has repeatedly emphasized that mindfulness is not just a process but “a way of being in an intelligent relationship to receive information as you receive it.” That distinction is important.
Jon Kabat-Zinn has repeatedly emphasized that mindfulness is not just a process but “a way of being in an intelligent relationship to receive information as you receive it.” That distinction is important.
Most of us avoid unpleasant emotions, conversations, and uncertainty whenever possible. This is a deep human tendency. We fall into the Wellness Trap when we start looking for something or someone to take that unpleasant feeling away from us. We “give away” our company when we share those experiences that don’t need to be handled by our meditation app, retreat, self-help book, or supplement.
We live in a time where so many offers of help are available to us. Our trap is not one to use; it expects whatever we engage with (or arrives) to do our individual work.
When we mistake practice as a “cure-all,” we give up our agency to be part of the solution to what ails us.
Buddhist teachings make the argument that although we are not immune to pain and suffering, we do have some influence over our circumstances. What this means for most of us, as Kabat-Zinn suggests, is that life is a tragedy: happiness, fear, illness, love, uncertainty, everything.
Mindfulness invites us to learn how to live with those experiences. The goal is to help us be present when we are anxious rather than avoid it altogether.
Cultivating a mindfulness practice is not a substitute for health care, community, rest, boundaries, meaningful work, or structural change.
A health trap arises when mindfulness is expected to carry more than it was designed to hold. Cultivating a mindfulness practice is not a substitute for health care, community, rest, boundaries, meaningful work, or structural change. It sheds light on things we need to see clearly, helps us understand where the boundaries are and why they look the way they do.
And hopefully, it helps us see that our stories (as we identify them in our individual lives) are less about our capacity to endure and more about the causes and circumstances of our circumstances than anything else. Perhaps most importantly, mindfulness can help us understand the difference between what requires our empathic acceptance and what requires our empathic acceptance combined with thoughtful action.
