Return to Mindfulness

Disrupting Default Habits for Personal Fulfillment, Effective Leadership, and Global Impact

Shalini Bahl, Ph.D.

Trying to Stay Mindful in a World Full of Disruptions?

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.

The Missing Piece: Why "Non-Judging Awareness" Isn't Enough

Mindfulness is commonly described as non-judging awareness, but when tough decisions arise, suspending judgment can confuse more than clarify. Dr. Bahl proposes that the way to be mindful in the real world beyond meditation and non-judging awareness is to foster eight mindfulness skills that disrupt habits that have been shaped by evolution and our environment. These default habits keep us rushing and reacting instead of seeing clearly and acting intentionally.

A Systematic and Playful Blueprint for Real-World Mindfulness

Dr. Bahl doesn’t just invite us to be more mindful, she shows us how. She offers a systematic yet playful blueprint for integrating mindfulness into our daily routine. Each chapter is dedicated to one mindfulness skill and includes six exercises to practice and play with during the day so we can replace default habits with mindful habits.

Eight Powerful Skills

Her groundbreaking methods help dissolve the gap between meditation and real-world mindfulness through the following eight skills—

• Awareness when we find ourselves automatically reacting.

• Compassion when we’re feeling judgmental.

• Curiosity when we’re stuck in an echo chamber.

• Mindful energy when it’s uncomfortable to change old ways of thinking and acting.

• Appreciative joy when negativity bias distorts our understanding of people and situations.

• Inner calm when attachments get in the way of seeing clearly.

• Focus when we’re feeling distracted and overwhelmed.

• Equanimity when impulsivity pushes us out of balance.

Dr. Bahl’s eight interconnected skills empower leaders to drive change without burnout or backlash, while inviting the rest of us to live, love and work with greater care.

Make Mindfulness Your New Normal

Make these skills your new normal in a world full of disruptions. Read this book and replace reactionary habits with responsive awareness starting now.

Shalini Bahl, Ph.D., is a mindfulness consultant, an award-winning researcher, and certified mindfulness teacher. She has dedicated over 15 years researching and developing cross-disciplinary solutions to help businesses, educators, and political clients build essential mindfulness skills. Her mission is to empower individuals to disrupt default thinking and live with empowered choice for personal and collective fulfillment, creating a better world for all.

Certified at the Center for Mindfulness, UMass Medical School, and the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute that originated at Google, Dr. Bahl is the Founder of Know Your Mind LLC, a social business committed to making evidence-based mindfulness skills widely accessible. Her teachings are rooted in time-tested principles of mindfulness, backed by insights from neuroscience, psychology, and a human-centered approach.

As a former successful entrepreneur and business professor who has lived and worked in three countries—India, Kuwait, and the USA—Dr. Bahl has a deep appreciation of each client’s unique journey and meets them where they are. She works with diverse audiences including CEOs and executives at Fortune 500 companies, educators, and students.

Beyond her professional achievements, Dr. Bahl is a TEDx speaker and has real-world experience of practicing mindfulness not only as a teacher but also as an elected municipal leader and academic.

Her pioneering work in this field has been published in premier marketing and public policy journals. One of the papers, a collaboration with other researchers, won the Best Research Paper Award from The American Marketing Association in 2019. Dr. Bahl's guided meditations and programs have had over 250,000 plays on the Insight Timer and Simple Habit app, making her resources accessible to all who seek them.

When she’s not researching or teaching mindfulness, she loves to cook tasty and healthy vegetarian food, dance and make music, hike in nature with family and friends, and all kinds of creative projects. Her love for life and mindfulness is contagious, and she brings this infectious energy to every aspect of her work.