What is Presence?
Presence is a state of mind where you are focussed on the now, the current moment, rather than thinking about the past or future.
Why would you want to be present?
When you are present you experience the world much more deeply and you become free of the ‘clutter’ of your mind and the negativity that it brings. Eckhart Tolle estimates that 80-90% of thoughts that go on in your head are not only useless, but harmful to you. When you are in the present you achieve complete focus on what is in front of you – enriching your experience of the world, eliminating ego and creating a high level of performance.
How do you know when you are present?
The moment you check to see if you are present, you become present. Your mind is no longer thinking about how you badly you performed in a football game earlier or playing a mental movie of how you ‘d like to perform in a presentation later. When you check to see if you are present, you give yourself the chance to return focus to what’s in front of you.
Isn’t it normal to spend time thinking about the past and the future?
It’s productive to spend time planning what you’re going to do in the future (referred to as ‘clock time’), but it’s not productive for your mind to spend time anticipating or predicting what’s going to happen in the future (referred to as ‘psychological time’). If you predict the future to be great it only serves to disappoint if it isn’t, if you predict the future to be bad then it causes anxiety.
All of this lack of presence only clutters up your mind and prevents you from fully experiencing what’s right in front of you, right at this moment.
My experience with mindfulness
When I first learned to meditate I gained the ability to watch my mind thinking. I was amazed at the amount of useless stuff my mind thought about and how I not only accepted it but identified with it, thinking that my mind’s constant clutter was part of me.
Particularly in tough times I’d spend a lot of time ‘inside of my head’, anxious about things that could happen in the future or being worried about the consequences of not being able to carry out a tough task at hand. Downswings in poker and deadlines at work specifically come to mind but it applies to a lot of other areas too. I was never able to realize my true potential due to the background noise of this thinking.
All thoughts and the direction of your focus are completely under your own control if you train yourself. Now that I’m more mindful I’m able to catch my mind thinking and return it to the present. My time spent in the present is still incredibly short but even at this novice stage I’m experiencing life way deeper than before. My effectiveness and enjoyment of life has improved dramatically. The broadness of areas presence can improve is amazing, here are a couple of examples…
Mindful conversation
Having a conversation with someone who is present is fantastic. If you are present and the other person is talking then you are listening, you’re not inside your head thinking about what you’re going to say next, planning the conversation and (to quote Fight Club) “waiting for your turn to speak”. Instead, you are listening to what the other person is saying and identifying with it. This way you can reply authentically giving your conversation great flow rather than planning what to say next and often coming out with something against the flow of conversation.
Next time you’re in a conversation observe your mind and see if it takes you away from the other persons voice, missing some things they were saying. If you find it doing that softly acknowledge that your mind drifted to some thought and return it to focussing on what the other person is saying.
Mindful reading
I’ve never been a very good reader, I’m pretty slow. A lot of that is down to the fact that I can often read a page, get to the end of it and realize that I can’t actually remember what happened on that page. This is because my mind been somewhere else while I’ve been reading and my brain hasn’t actually been processing the information. When my mind is present I take in everything that’s on the page fully and deeply.
Now consider what this can do for other areas of your life, some areas in particular I’m blown away by (thanks boywonder).
How do I increase my overall level of presence and become more mindful?
Practise. The more time you spend in the present the more you train your brain to live in the present. It can be thought of as exercising your brain.. you have to keep your brain in shape by training it regularly.
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Tagged: Buddhism, Meditation, Mindfulness, Presence
4 Comments
Nice read. Good work. If you make it to SF let me know.
Great article Baz, really enjoyed it. On the practical side of this. Have you checked out David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Idea behind it is that you download everything in your mind that you need to do, so that it is out of your mind and you can concentrate on the current task. IM me on Skype if you want me to ship you some resources.
Cheers guys. Noel, I’ll give you a shout if I’m over that way for sure.
Alex, I really liked GTD too. The idea of getting everything that needs to be done out of your head is key and really ties into the concept of presence. I use a modified version of his system with ActionOutline to plan and iPhone Notes along with pen/paper as my collection buckets. Works really well – I’ll do a few articles related to this in future.
I have been using Pocket Informant, linked to my Thunderbird mail. New site looks great. Looking forward to all your awesome articles.