May 19, 2011
The Gap Between Impulse and Action
The Gap Between Impulse and Action
It’s extremely important to widen the gap between impulse and action; and that’s exactly what mindfulness does. This is one of the big advantages of mindfulness practice: it gives us a moment or two, hopefully, where we can change our relationship to our experience, not be caught in it and swept away by impulse, but rather to see that there’s an opportunity to make a different, better choice. I think that understanding the basic neural mechanisms involved is an aid to mindfulness because it tells us we don’t have to get swept away.
Daniel Goleman, “The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: An Interview with Daniel Goleman”
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