Varieties of Mindfulness for Creative Operational Research (OR) Practice. Operational Research Society UK Annual Conference, University of Loughborough, UK, September 2017

Dealing with messy situations requires to some appreciating the full picture of what is going on and with awareness of problem structuring methods (PSM) participants' 'whole' experiences in practices including modelling or debating. With this in mind, this paper two varieties of mindfulness 1) cognitive mindfulness (CM) as the opposite of mindlesness requires full attention to how we think about or frame situations as well as what and how we think about ourselves. In this type of mindfulness, thinking that revisits cognitive categories is used with a view to redefine the latter or reframe the situation(Langer, 2014); and 2) a more observing and non-judgmental therapeutic type of mindfulness (Kabat-Zinn, 2001) or TM. Both takes of mindfulness could yield different types of insights to foster our awareness, understanding and creativity. Two practical exercises which aim to reflect the systemic features of each take on mindfulness will help facilitate the session