Mindful: In your TED talk you say that your grandfather introduced you to a mindful and positive approach to life. I’m curious, did he call that approach “mindfulness” or was that a word that you learned later?
Adam Avin: No, he didn’t actually use the word mindfulness specifically, but we like to say he was a yogi at heart. He had a yogi mindset, and he had his positive mantras: “Think well to be well,” “Smile and the world will smile with you,” “Smile and say thank you.” So I kind of had those messages in my head from a very young age. My mom also had a yoga teacher, Erika, who was a big part of our lives for a long time. She did yoga and meditation with my mom, so when I was little, I would pop into the sessions when I was home, for some reason.
“Think well to be well,” “Smile and the world will smile with you,” “Smile and say thank you.”
And so all these things were kind of around the house, but it wasn’t until I got older that I learned the vocabulary—that it was actually mindfulness. My grandpa never…
