Mindfulness is the intentional, accepting and non-judgemental focus of one’s attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment. It is becoming “all the rage” amongst business leaders as a way of focusing on success and shutting out irrelevant and distracting thoughts and considerations. To what extent can this practice be used in mediation? In my view, the two techniques are compatible. The problem with litigation is that it can distort a person’s sense of perspective and can become very wasteful of psychological energy and be negative, backward and inward looking. With mediation it is possible to take a step back and remove the ego from the process, gain an insight into others’ perspective and focus on finding a solution to the problem. Recognising and accepting one’s anger and disappointment about the problem is an unavoidable part of the process and its existence needs to be accepted before it can be vanquished. Through mindfulness, the emotional blockages to settlement can be separated out, examined objectively and dealt with. This is not to say that it is easy to divorce oneself from one’s emotions about a personal dispute. It could be said that mindfulness and mediation are compatible and that mindfulness is a useful technique to use when trying to resolve a dispute.
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