Being present in the moment: Event-level relationships between mindfulness and stress, positivity, and importance

•For two weeks, people described how mindful they were during daily events.•We defined mindfulness as being “present in the moment”.•At the event-level, mindfulness was positively related to stress, importance, and positivity.•Trait mindfulness was positively related to mean importance and positivity of events.•In contrast, trait mindfulness was negatively related to mean stress of events.

Each day for two weeks, participants (psychologically healthy adults residing in the community) described the events that happened to them. These descriptions included how attentive to the present moment they were during the event, and how stressful, positive, and important the event was. Three-level MLM analyses (events nested within days, days nested within persons) found that dispositional (trait) mindfulness was positively related to event-level mindfulness (presence), positivity, and importance, and was negatively related to event-level stress. At the event-level, presence was positively related to how positive and important events were and was positively related to how stressful events were. Moreover, these event-level relationships did not vary as a function of trait mindfulness. These results suggest that although more mindful people may experience less stress, when stress occurs, people tend to become more mindful.