Return to Mindfulness
Disrupting Default Habits for Personal Fulfillment, Effective Leadership, and Global Impact
Once or twice in a lifetime, you may come across a book that can change you in a most positive way. Return has this magic and more.
—Ron Hill, Ph.D
. Dean’s Professor of Marketing and Public Policy
It is full of practical, playful steps to systematically integrate mindfulness into your daily life, ways that Shalini herself has learned while practicing mindfulness as teacher and governmental leader.
—Mirabai Bush
Author and Co-creator of Search Inside Yourself
The key to being mindful in the real world is not more meditation but rather fostering skills to disrupt default habits that get in the way of clarity and purposeful action in our daily lives.
About The Book
Mindfulness is our innate capacity to know what it means to be present, to see clearly, and to connect with ourselves and each other so that we can make fulfilling choices. The act of returning to mindfulness should be effortless, but persistent default habits can and do get in our way.
Many people successfully practice mindfulness through meditation for stress reduction but once back into daily life, the same people quickly lose momentum. The brief moments of calm just don’t last or manifest themselves in changes at personal or collective levels.
Shalini Bahl wants to change all that.
Why choose this book?
01.
Take the free mindfulness assessment.
02.
Try the mindfulness cards to practice in the real world after reading the book.
03.
Guided meditations for each skill
Author Thoughts
Dr. Bahl proposes that the way to be mindful in the real world beyond meditation is to foster eight mindfulness skills that disrupt habits that have been shaped by evolution and our environment. These default habits are what keep us rushing and reacting instead of seeing clearly and acting intentionally.
Return to Mindfulness offers a systematic yet playful plan for taking simple steps to return to mindfulness in the middle of everyday life, especially when it matters most: for real-world change. Each chapter is dedicated to one mindfulness habit/skill and includes six exercises to practice and play with during the day so we can replace default habits with mindful habits.
A common definition of mindfulness is the non-judging awareness that arises when we pay attention with purpose. However, when leaders have to make decisions, non-judging awareness can be confusing. Breaking down mindfulness into the eight skills allows leaders to overcome their biases and expand their perspective to include causes and conditions underlying their situations, their assumptions, others’ perspectives, their intentions, creative possibilities, and consequences of their choices in the long run.
Bahl’s eight mindfulness skills empower leaders to bring real-world change without burning out or burning bridges and they empower the rest of us to live, love, and work with clarity and care.
