We’ve all been there—a moment of high stress calls for mindfulness, but meditation alone doesn’t seem to cut it. While formal meditation practice is an incredibly valuable practice, everyday mindfulness demands a broader set of skills.
Taking my own journey into everyday mindfulness, and being lead researcher on studies examining the relationship between mindful mindsets and skills, inspired me to develop an eight-skill framework. The mindfulness mindset helps us discern and overcome the challenges to returning to our inherent clarity and intentions when it matters most.
From Mindfulness Teacher to City Council: My Wake-up Call
Picture this: I’m standing onstage at my first-ever political debate. Heart pounding, self-doubt floods my mind, and I desperately grasp for the familiar comfort of my meditation practice. While the breath offers some calm, a nagging worry lingers. I feel disconnected from the audience and, even worse, from myself.
This isn’t a hypothetical situation. Standing before 100 Amherst residents waiting to hear from me and five other candidates for the first town council, this is exactly how I felt. This pivotal moment forced me to confront a crucial truth: mindfulness is not just about those quiet, solitary moments of meditation. While meditation is a valuable practice, it alone is not enough to be truly mindful in the real world.
While meditation is a valuable practice, it alone is not enough to be truly mindful in the real world.
No doubt, I had experienced profound benefits from mindfulness. It had made me realize how disconnected I had been from my inner world. Mindfulness practices helped me regain clarity and confidence, especially while meditating or being in nature. In fact, mindfulness research and teaching was my full-time career. Yet, I struggled with being mindful in crucial moments, whether in the middle of difficult conversations, making complex decisions, or starting new habits.
This struggle became more apparent when I entered the world of politics as an elected city councilor. I discovered that my meditation self could handle anything, but my politician self was easily hijacked by self-doubt and fear. When I got hijacked, I’d make myself small and invisible—a defense mechanism I’d mastered, which neither felt good nor led to fulfilling outcomes.
As someone who’d been studying mindfulness personally and professionally, I found myself wanting something more—a reliable path to return to mindfulness in the midst of everyday life. It turned out many of my clients were seeking the same thing. So began my journey to answer the question—how can we practice mindfulness for real-world impact?
Key Insights for Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Over the next five years, I devoted thousands of hours to reading, studying, and meditating on the original mindfulness discourse and examined ancient texts through the lens of science and their relevance in the modern world.
With practice (and play), we can replace our default habits with mindfulness skills that empower us to live and lead with clarity that will benefit us and others.
During this time, two insights profoundly shifted my practice of mindfulness as a seeker, mother, daughter, wife, politician, researcher, and mindfulness teacher. (These insights later became the bedrock of my book, Return to Mindfulness.) First, we have an incredible capacity within ourselves to move through the world with clarity and grace, but we let our default habits and biases get in the way, especially when we’re triggered. And second, with practice (and play), we can replace our default habits with mindfulness skills that empower us to live and lead with clarity that will benefit us and oth