Mindfulness teachers and programs often refer to what John Kabat Jinn calls the nine attitudes of mindfulness. Qualities like non-judgment, patience, novice mind, trust, non-attack, acceptance, letting go, gratitude, generosity.
Although incredibly convenient, these attitudes were never meant as commandments. They were intended as reminders and useful reference points to support mindful awareness and compassionate lives. But something was lost in translation as mindfulness is repackaged in workplaces, apps and secular programs.
Instead of flexible guidance, nine attitudes of mindfulness have become a strict ideal for many. What starts with an invitation to live a more mindful life can ultimately distort practice, causing confusion, passivity, and even harm.
The difficult truth is: Misunderstanding or overapplying nine attitudes can cause real problems.
I’ve seen it happen directly. Mindful Leader teaches these attitudes in MBSR and Certified Workplace Mindfulness Facilitator (CWMF) programs. Still, here is a difficult truth. Misunderstanding them or overapplying them can lead to real problems.
Towards a balanced application of nine attitudes of mindfulness
When I first encountered nine attitudes, they made perfect sense on paper. But their survival and guiding bound me to the knot. Should I always be patient, even when urgency is important? Even if you need to judge, should you never judge? What helps me navigate my life has begun to do the opposite.
That experience helped shape Open MBSR, a framework I developed to rethink real-life mindfulness education. One important shift is not only to understand its intentions, but also to recognize its limitations and natural offsets, but to learn to retain each mindfulness attitude dialectically.
Before we explain what it actually looks like, let’s take a closer look at where these attitudes are wrong and how we approach them differently.
If good intentions are not sufficient: misinterpret 9 attitudes
Non-judgment
Intent: Observe thoughts and experiences without thinking or bad labeling. Misuse: Dismiss critical thinking. Accept harmful behavior without healthy self-protection. For example, excuses for repeated disrespect in a relationship under the guise of “not reviewing.”
Patience
Intent: Recognize that it unfolds in your own time. Misuse: Misleading patience for an infinite wait. For example: Believing that “patience” will fix things, you can stay in toxic jobs and relationships much longer than your health.
Beginner’s mind
Intent: Fill each moment with open curiosity. Misuse: To work hard to ignore life experiences. For example: throw away valuable skills in the name of a “fresh perspective” and make things more difficult than necessary.
trust
Intent: Trust your intuition and emotions. Misuse: blind trust in immediate feelings without identification. For example, “feeling right” makes impulsive life decisions, leading to regret.
Non-attack
Intent: Let go of sticking to the outcome. Misuse: Abdicate ambitions and directions entirely. Example: ignore education or career planning and mistake indifference for peace.
accept
Intent: Accepting reality as is. Misuse: resignation or passivity. Example: Ignore serious health issues because I say, “I should accept that.”
Let go
Intent: Attachment release. Misuse: Avoid the emotional work you need. Example: Instead of dealing with it, suppress anger.
Thanks
Intent: Develop gratitude. Misuse: Disables true pain. Example: Focus on “small joys” while ignoring the dissatisfaction of big life.
Generosity
Intent: Give from a place of kindness. Misuse: Gives without boundaries and leads to burnout. Example: Always put others first until your individual’s health and stability decreases.
New Approach: Dialectical Thinking and the Balance of Opposite
In open MBSR, you use a dialectical approach to hold two seemingly opposite ideas at once to find a more balanced, practical, balanced path.
This is clearly manifested in Taoist philosophy through the concept of yin and yang. Yin and Yang represent tranquility and activity, acceptance and initiative. Opposition does not cancel each other, support them, and rely on each other.
Mindfulness works the same way. Each attitude needs to be addressed to maintain balance.
What does it actually look like?
Perseverance in non-judgment and critical engagement and positive change in the minds of beginners and leverage experiences, acceptance and advocacy of unreliability and goal orientation.
When these attitudes are held dialectically, mindfulness becomes something that we can actually live… not just what we play in the meditation room.
What to do when teaching itself is a problem?
When I first shared these observations, I came across a pushback. One response stuck to me. These problems are suggestions that stem from people simply not understanding the concept correctly. If people figure out what these attitudes really mean, then misuse wouldn’t happen.
When education is consistently misunderstood, when practitioners from different backgrounds fall into the same predictable trap, it may be time to look into how we teach rather than blaming students.
This bothered me. When education is consistently misunderstood, when practitioners from different backgrounds fall into the same predictable trap, it may be time to look into how we teach rather than blaming students.
The patterns investigated were not random. When “non-judgment” is consistently interpreted as abandoning critical thinking, when “acceptance” repeatedly becomes a passive resignation and “letting go” turns into an expected emotional avoidance, these are issues of systemic education rather than obstacles to individual understanding.
We have presented these nine mindfulness attitudes on their own, stripped away from the original Buddhist context that provides natural balance and guidance. Extracting these powerful concepts without an equivalent framework creates conditions in which practitioners swing towards anticipated, useless extremes.
Reviving how we think and teach about nine attitudes
It’s time to take ownership. Something is broken about how we teach these attitudes and we have the opportunity to fix it.
That’s why I rethink the future of Open MBSR: Mindfulness. It’s not just about modifying how we teach nine attitudes. By redesigning the entire system, it is open, practical and built for today’s world.
This is not a small adjustment to an existing program. That’s a fundamental change. The nine attitudes can be harmful when applied incorrectly, but with the addition of dialectical thinking they become truly transformative, authentic and practical.
This version of the article was first published on March 5th, 2024
