Mindful habits help you to stay calm. Bring you back to reality when you feel confused. Fantastic now, crucial in old age. Listen if you might be old one day!

Welcome back to Learning How To Be Old, with me, Rachel McAlpine.

I’m 85, and with hindsight comes this insight. All our lives we’re accumulating habits that are going to have an impact on our future old age. Mindful habits will be exceptionally useful: the tiny habit of taking a moment to be mindful. They’ll help you every day. Especially if you’re always searching for your phone or compulsively checking things or getting anxious.

Today my guest is Kerene Strochnetter, a workplace mindfulness consultant based in Wellington. She works with leaders and leadership teams, "helping them ditch the corporate mask and lead with heart (without losing their edge)." And you know what? What’s good for the CEO (mindful habits) is also good for you and me, at any age — even more so in old age. And even CEOs will be old one day, if they’re lucky.

In this episode you’ll get the gist of mindfulness not as an airy-fairy theory but as a practice, a daily routine, a set of simple habits of your own choice. Things you can do in half a minute, any time, on the spot. (Expect some odd anecdotes and noises in the mix. Some are intentional.)