Mindfulness is the quality of paying attention to the present moment with openness and acceptance, instead of running on autopilot or being swept up in judgement and reaction. Rather than a single on-or-off trait, research treats it as a profile of five distinct, separately measured facets, captured by the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (Baer and colleagues, 2006): observing the stream of sensations, thoughts and feelings; describing inner experience in words; acting with awareness rather than on autopilot; holding your thoughts and feelings without judging them; and staying non-reactive, letting difficult experiences come and go. This maps where you sit on each facet, every one rated on its own continuum, so two people who both feel 'mindful' can have very different shapes — keenly tuned to the senses, say, yet quick to judge their own reactions. The facets describe tendencies, not a verdict, and mindfulness is widely held to be a skill that practice and training can develop.
Mindfulness is a well-studied psychological construct with roots in contemplative traditions, brought into modern clinical and wellbeing research by Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness-based programmes. Brown and Ryan (2003) introduced the widely used Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, framing dispositional mindfulness as present-moment attention and awareness. Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer and Toney (2006) factor-analysed several existing mindfulness questionnaires and identified five facets — observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judging of inner experience and non-reactivity to inner experience — now measured by the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ); Baer and colleagues (2008) confirmed this structure in meditating and non-meditating samples. The facets are measured independently and describe tendencies rather than a diagnosis, and mindfulness is generally regarded as a skill that practice can strengthen. (Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (Baer et al., 2006))