Meet Caroline Welch, and read an excerpt from "The Gift of Presence: A Mindfulness Guide for Women"
Interviewed by Ari Saperstein
Editor’s note
Caroline Welch is an author, attorney, and CEO and Co- founder with Dr. Dan Siegel of the Mindsight Institute in Santa Monica, California. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School with a master's degree from the University of Southern California, she started her career in law as a corporate litigator. Caroline began her mindfulness practice forty years ago while working in Japan. We talked with Caroline about her first book, The Gift of Presence: A Mindfulness Guide for Women, finding purpose and what growing up on a dairy farm taught her about mindfulness:
Q) Hi Caroline! I want to start off by talking about your unique life journey. You’ve been a bank teller, waitress, English teacher in Japan, corporate litigator, court-appointed mediator, in-house counsel, among other things. What’s something you’ve learned outside of the field of mindfulness that you’ve brought to your mindfulness practice?
Yes. I’ve only recently realized that my first lessons in mindfulness were learned while growing up on my family’s dairy farm in Wisconsin. Life on the farm keeps everyone in the moment--whether it’s rushing to finish baling the hay before the rain, corralling runaway cows, or trying to locate a newborn calf in the woods. My early mindful awareness practices included smelling the freshly cut hay in the fields, feeling a hen’s warm, newly laid, egg in my hand, and noticing the lightning in the distance. These early experiences gave me an appreciation which I still carry today of how important our informal mindfulness practices are – as important as our formal practices.
Q) I’m sure that the process of putting a book together involves at least some frustration, stress and other hard emotions. How did you utilize mindfulness techniques in writing the book? Or, in the words of the book, write this guide “without getting carried away by judgment”?
As a perfectionist, there was plenty of frustration. I tried as best I could to not engage in what I call “thought safaris” around fears such as, “I will never be able to finish this book,” “This manuscript is not good enough,” or “I feel so behind and disorganized.” One small, simple thing that made a huge difference in meeting these fears was a post-it hanging on my office wall with these words: “I am exactly where I should be.” Whenever I found myself feeling overwhelmed or lamenting my lack of progress, I slowly took in those words. That post-it made a huge difference for me as I always felt calmer after reading it--and often, re-reading it.
Additionally, my daily practices of mindfulness were especially helpful while writing this book. For example, each morning I meditate for 20 minutes, and while riding my bike to work, I pay attention to the smells in the air, the cool wind on my face and the feeling of my hands on the handlebars. Without these formal and informal practices, you wouldn’t be holding The Gift of Presence right now as I would still be ruminating and writing.
Q) The excerpt from your book below breaks down the ideas of “Presence” and “Purpose”. What do you believe your Purpose is? And at what point in your life started to feel more aware of the Presence of Purpose?
We have a different Purpose for our various roles. For example, my Purpose professionally is to be a lifelong learner and make the practices of mindfulness, both formal and informal, known and as accessible to as many people as possible for their enhanced well-being. My Purpose in my role as mom of two adult children, is to be a respectful, caring, available parent.
I first became aware of my Purpose in life while a high school exchange student in Shiraz, Iran. That experience stood in stark contrast to the life I knew in rural Wisconsin and expanded my awareness of the wide world we live in, instilling my appreciation for lifelong learning.
Q) When did you first get the idea for The Gift of Presence? Did you always from the outset know that you wanted to write it as a guide on mindfulness for women?
About seven years ago, I attended a conference in Efteling, the “Disneyland” of the Netherlands, and found the science presented there on the benefits of mindfulness to be so compelling and exciting, that I decided to write a book. A couple of years later, as I reflected upon how mindfulness had supported me as a corporate litigator and working parent, I decided to focus on how mindfulness unfolds in women’s lives.
Anyone can benefit from the concepts and practices in my book, but I wrote with women in mind –and interviewed a diverse group of over 100 women worldwide on the role of mindfulness in their lives --because we face certain challenges in the workplace and larger society due to gendered assumptions and societal expectations. In other words, there’s not a “special brand” of mindfulness for women, but rather there are aspects of its application and benefits in the lives of busy, multitasking women that I want to make available and accessible.
Q) In the excerpt, you describe some common misconceptions, or “myths”, people have around Purpose. Is there one, in particular, that you've found women frequently face?
One of the myths prevalent among the one hundred women whom I interviewed, is that Purpose is “one and done.” That is, we just figure out our one Purpose in life and don’t need to revisit it as we grow and develop. Our Purpose in life can in fact change, as we do. As women we play multiple roles, so we may have a different Purpose for each of these roles. As we add a new role, whether personally or professionally, we can easily overlook taking the time to identify what our Purpose will be with respect to the new role.
Q) Finally: There’s an anecdote in the excerpt about a time when you returned home from a multi-day business trip and wanted to take a walk with you son, only to find that he wanted to stay home and draw instead; this story is remarkably similar to one that our last interviewee, Shauna Shapiro, included in her book, as well. Have you talked with other mothers who’ve experienced this kind of moment? If so, what does it tell you that this has been a key moment in the lives of yourself, Shauna and others?
Yes, every mother I know has experienced these “being in the moment” experiences. These stories are examples of parental presence, whether it’s adjusting what our “imagined quality time together” with our child looks like upon returning after a business trip or a day’s work, or beginning to help them tie their shoes and becoming aware that as of yesterday they can tie their own shoes. Only when we are present for our children, can we catch these “aha” moments. Being present as a parent is the key to our children having a secure attachment to us—which, in turn, is the bedrock of their developing resilience and well-being.
What these key moments highlight is how essential parental presence is for this secure attachment with our children. The ability to see our children and their interests at a given moment, to understand their developmental stage, combined with the awareness of our Purpose as parents (e.g., to be a loving and available parent), can support us in being the type of parent we want to be. Parental presence is a great example of mindfulness in action -- one of the most important, informal presence practices on the planet.
excerpt from The Gift of Presence: A Mindfulness Guide for Women
What Is Purpose?
Let’s start with the definition that is commonly used in the psy- chology literature: “Purpose is a central, self-organizing life aim that organizes and stimulates goals, manages behaviors, and provides a sense of meaning.” I know. That’s how researchers talk. Let’s break it down. Think of the first feature, a “life aim,” as an ultimate concern or general intention. It’s the answer to questions such as “What matters most to you, and why?” and “What gets you out of bed in the morning?”
The second feature, “organizes and stimulates goals,” refers to how having Purpose provides goals for us. I’m not referring to just any goals, but to our broad, valued, noble, or higher-order goals that are central to our identity and infused with personal meaning that energizes us. A valued goal need not be grand or global in order to increase our well-being; however, it does motivate us to do some- thing that will have a consequence beyond ourselves. Damon explains that our Purpose need not be heroic, requiring life-endangering adventures, but may “be found in the day-to-day fabric of ordinary existence.” Examples of Purpose would include a mother caring for her child, a citizen campaigning for a candidate for the sake of im- proving the community, and a teacher instructing students. Dedi- cating time, care, and effort to charity, friends, family, communities, and our workplaces are other examples. Our valued goals are dif- ferent than the specific goals that provide a way to pursue our Purpose, such as getting the education we need or setting up a recy- cling program in our neighborhood.
The third feature, “manages behaviors,” means that Purpose provides a life’s direction toward our valued goals, which in turn guides our daily efforts. This requires wisely allocating our finite personal resources (think time and attention).
Finally, the fourth feature of Purpose, a “sense of meaning,” refers to a life worth living. We all likely know examples of people who have dropped out of business, law, medicine, the military, and other seemingly “solid careers”—they hadn’t failed in the eyes of the world, but they felt they were failing themselves miserably. Why? They never had the sense that they were doing something that really mattered to them or the world. As Damon puts it, “Often it is the people who seem to be most on track who express the most severe misgivings.” Damon’s definition of purpose makes clear the impor- tance of having a Purpose that reaches out to the world beyond ourselves, implying a desire to make a difference in the world: “Purpose is a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at the same time meaningful to the self and consequential for the world beyond the self.”
Shirley was enjoying her life as a dancer and singer when at age nineteen she received a diagnosis of osteogenic sarcoma and was told that she had three to six months to live. She ultimately had to have her leg amputated. Shirley said that for years she would fill up her pant leg with stuffed pantyhose and put a shoe on it, until she joined a meditation group at her local church and was finally able, after five years, to come to terms with what had happened. During her hospi- talization she had observed that some nurses weren’t very caring and didn’t want to talk to patients with terminal illnesses, and even placed them farthest from the nursing stations. This motivated Shirley to become a nurse and she found her Purpose in caring for her patients in the way that she wished she had been cared for. To this day, thirty years later, Shirley has a meditation practice and does yoga.
Purpose can center us, provide direction, energize and motivate us—all of which provide meaning to our daily lives. Purpose also gives us satisfaction when we accomplish our goals, and persistence when we run into obstacles. If your life is like mine, at the end of a hectic day full of surprises, setbacks, and putting out fires, as my former litigation colleagues would say, it’s not unusual to focus most on what didn’t get done. Having a Purpose focuses us on what matters most and keeps us moving toward accomplishing our Purpose so that we can feel fulfilled by our lives rather than defeated and drained, especially when we face setbacks and challenges.
You may be wondering if there’s a difference between meaning and Purpose. The concepts of meaning and Purpose are intertwined and often used interchangeably. However, in the psychology literature they are separate constructs. Purpose refers to having direction and is more goal oriented, although what’s personally meaningful drives our Purpose. Meaning in life, on the other hand, is often considered to have three facets: one’s life having value or significance, having Purpose in life, and one’s life being coherent as in “making sense.” It’s very hard for me as a perfectionist to write on any topic without getting completely carried away, but suffice it to say that Purpose provides meaning and direction for our lives, and what is personally meaningful to us informs our life’s Purpose.
Living with awareness of our Purpose in life is living with Presence. It’s the opposite of living on autopilot. Researchers Frank Martela and Michael Steger describe it this way: “The effectiveness of a given purpose relies upon its scope, its strength, and its presence in peo- ple’s awareness.” It’s not uncommon to live on autopilot for years, perhaps in pursuit of goals that once made sense for us but no longer do. Presence is key to getting in touch with what’s meaningful to us right now.
Presence and Purpose can center us when our expectations aren’t met or when some other challenge arises. Here’s an example from my own life. A few years ago, I was returning from a business trip after several days and was looking forward to going for a walk with our son, Alex, as soon as I got home. But when I arrived, he didn’t want to go out for a walk; he preferred to draw on his news- print pad. I had an image of the imagined future that was not to be, so fortunately I took a moment to get back in touch with the present—and with my larger Purpose. Once I took another moment to reconnect to my Purpose—to be an engaged and loving parent— I could feel more at ease. After a few minutes, I felt much calmer and we both enjoyed drawing and hanging out together at home.