Being more Present

PRACTICE GUIDE – Presencing

What is Presence?

Life can only be experienced in the present moment, yet we consider stories brought from the past and what we want our story to be in the future. It’s in the present that we make the assessments that shape our experience. This is determined by our capacity to make new distinctions and interpret what they might mean for the actions we choose.

Our chosen actions are limited to what we can observe in ourselves and in our environment. What we see depends on our Way of Being, our language, emotional and somatic skills. It is these skills that we can use to create a new future from what we choose to do in the present. They take the form of declarations that serve as intentions to guide our choices. It is this capacity to perceive time, born from the language we use to interpret our experience lies at the heart of the human condition. But our impact comes from an air of security, well-being, and resilience. It is the source of our clarity and innate wisdom.

“We convince by our presence” – Walt Whitman

We need to use language to make distinctions between past and future assessments when we can only think in the present. The past no longer exists and the future never happens. So the way we interpret our experience depends on thoughts and distinctions we make with our thinking. New thinking is needed for new action to happen. An insight is a thought.

So what does this mean?

We may bring thoughts from the past and thoughts about our preferred future, but can only assess them from thoughts we generate in the present. When we make these assessments we can be blind to the way our culture and personal history has shaped the way we think. Because we have experienced the past we trust it as being true for us. But we produced these thoughts with only partial recollection and others that are largely transparent to us. We just don’t see our thinking until we pause to observe it.

When we have all this thinking going on, it is difficult to find the clarity we need to make sense of what we are experiencing in the present or to get clarity into what we should do in the present to generate a better future. In this video, Jamie Smart explains the value of clarity as a state of mind when making important decisions. We are often trapped in the feeling of our thinking because we do not understand how to use our emotions to get clarity so our emotions use us.

What stops us being more present is not seeing how we associate feelings with our thoughts.bout our thinking is coming from outside-in influences such as other people, social media, books, etc and not from our own wisdom that we generate from the inside-out. Even the worries and concerns we experience can come from thoughts from our past, or in our imaginings about the future.

When you show up with a quiet mind you go with your deepest intentions, not what you are thinking you ought to do. When you watch a master at work they make what they do look effortless. They are totally “in the moment”. When you watch Roger Federer, he only has eyes for the tennis ball. Everything else is in “Open Focus” which is taken in and processed without thinking. Compare his performance to Andy Murray who gets distracted by the emotions in his thoughts and his concentration dips. Thought creates our reality, but we don’t notice it happening until we are prompted to observe it.

Now What?

When the flow of daily life gets disrupted it’s because a positive or negative thought has got stuck in our mind and we cannot shake it off. Usually, thoughts and feeling just come and go, but some thoughts resonate and we cannot let them go. We are stuck in a mood of joy or depression, but when we have calmed and settled our thoughts we fall back into the “normal” flow of life.

News, be it good or bad, is just words. We give them emotional power and specific meaning with our thoughts. We suffer a fundamental misunderstanding when we treat our thoughts as if they are real. They are our creation and so we can change them at will. For example, if you view envy as a “bad” emotion you will think that you shouldn’t express it. But, if you see it as something you want in your life that someone else has in theirs, then your thinking changes and the emotions with it.

Practices

1. Next time you observe yourself experiencing an emotion, name it and identify the thought that triggered it. Do this a few times each day and you will notice what situations, activities or people generate the thoughts that induce the same emotional reaction. Look for patterns. Do it when driving to work, observing other people’s behaviour on the train or noticing relationships in the workplace.

2. Imagine you wake up one morning and a miracle has happened. The world is working just the way you want it to. What are you seeing, doing and feeling? How are people relating to you? What is making you feel happy, peaceful and secure?

This is your life movie, your preferred future that you have produced in your mind from thought. Do you think the “real world” you are actually living in is also thought created? If it is then you can change it one thought and small change at a time.

“Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made or witness.” – Richard Dawkins

References

Clarity by Jamie Smart. Capstone 2013
Inside-Out by Michael Neill. Hay House 2013
One Thought Changes Everything by Mara Gleason. CreateSpace 2017

Thinking Tools

THE HUMAN OBSERVER
– Noticing what’s happening and sensing what could be hidden from you.
THE CDE MODEL
– Identifying the conditions and rules that produce different patterns of interaction
THE OAR MODEL
– Improving your observation skills to choose actions to will deliver what you care about.
THE SCARF MODEL
– Identifying the core concerns that shape your emotional responses
ONTOLOGICAL LEARNING
– Understanding how to change your Way of Being
THE PSYCHIC SYSTEM
– Knowing how to change your Way of Being to fit the prevailing context
ONTOLOGICAL BREAKDOWNS
– Dealing with disruptions in the flow of your life
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
– How you give meaning to to your experience of internal senses and external events.
QUADRANTS OF CHANGE
– Achieving a more holistic and balanced response to complex situations.
ACTION LOGICS
– Assessing leadership behaviour and effectiveness in different contexts
THE U PROCESS
– Using your senses to improve your effectiveness now to shape your future.
SPIRAL DYNAMICS
– Explaining the growth of human capacity and values
THE HEROES JOURNEY
– Finding a bigger purpose and passion to lead your life from.
ACTIVE LISTENING
– Knowing how to actively listen for understanding and empathy
REFRAMING
– Looking for possibilities to question and reshape perspectives.
THE OODA LOOP
– Achieving a bigger impact when working with other people
ADAPTIVE ACTION
– Examining the dynamic patterns of thought involved in decision making
THE LENS OF INQUIRY
Using the power of questions to get breakthrough results.
THE NINE PANES MODEL
– Discovering new perspecives when dealing with breakdowns in the flow of life.
THE JOHARI WINDOW
– Identifying alternatives to unseen or disruptive behaviour
THE FOUR TRUTHS
– Recognising and considering alternative perspectives in any situation
THE CIRCLE OF CONTROL, INFLUENCE & CONCERN
– Clarifying how you interpret what you see, hear and feel.
THE MIRACLE QUESTION
– In your ideal world, what do you want to be feeligs, thinking and doing?
A “BOTH/AND” PERSPECTIVE
– Dealing with paradox and ambiguity.
THE ADAPTIVE CYCLES
– Resisting breakdown and maintaining your viability for a breakthrough.
CREATING A WELL-FORMED OUTCOME
– Reducing the chance of facing unintended consequences.
WAY OF BEING
– Connecting words, emotions and body presence to be more effective.
CYNEFIN
– A sensemaking framework to help you crack different types of problems.
YOUR INNATE WISDOM
– Knowing what makes you who you are and using it to lead a more fulfilling life.
A SOLUTION FOCUS
– Finding out what works and doing more of it.