Mindfulness without the Bells and Beads

Chapter 2Why Mindfulness Now?

Every year, I teach mindfulness to thousands of corporate workers, senior executives, business owners, and government officials who, by any measure on this planet, are extremely successful people. Most of them have gotten to where they are in their professional lives without a daily mindfulness practice. It's just as likely that you, too, dear reader, have gotten to wherever you are in your life without practicing mindfulness. Why would successful leaders in business or government want to change their approach now, after it's been so fruitful? Why should you? What's different? Why add another thing to what is likely an already overwhelming to-do list?

I think there is value in stepping into the world of business transformation for a moment and seeing what companies are doing today as a way to draw some parallels to our individual situations. According to Marketsandmarkets.com, a business-to-business research and market intelligence firm, the digital transformation market was expected to grow from $290 billion in 2018 to $665 billion by 2023.¹ Why would companies spend such massive amounts of money transforming their business models? In a word, disruption.

It's not lost on company leaders that corporate survivability, a phrase describing the ability of a company to withstand disruption, crisis, or other factors negatively affecting the business, is declining. An Innosight.com executive briefing titled “Corporate Longevity: Turbulence Ahead for ...