The Hidden Challenges of Being Present

In today's fast-paced world, the concept of being present has gained significant attention. Practices like meditation, mindfulness, and spending time in nature are often touted as keys to living a more fulfilling life. While these practices are undoubtedly beneficial, they are merely tools designed to help us reconnect with ourselves. The real key to experiencing presence, and consequently a fulfilled life, goes much deeper.

In this blog, we will dive into the profound idea that being present is not enough and explore the three essential components necessary for true fulfillment: our body, mind, and emotions. Understanding and integrating these components into our lives can help us break free from the invisible chains holding us back and enable us to live more fully and authentically.

Being present means fully engaging with the current moment, free from distractions about the past or future. Despite our best efforts, we often find ourselves emotionally or mentally disengaged. What causes this disconnect?

1. The Body: The Foundation of Presence

Our bodies are the vessels through which we experience the world. If we are not physically comfortable, pain and discomfort can become significant distractions, pulling us away from the present moment. This is why it is crucial to prioritize physical well-being.

Imagine having a toothache; the pain in your body would be so distracting that it would be nearly impossible to remain present. This sounds like common sense, but it is often not common practice. Prioritizing physical health through regular exercise, a balanced diet, and adequate rest ensures that our bodies are functioning optimally, allowing us to focus on the present moment without being hindered by discomfort.

2. The Mind: Shaping Our Reality

Our minds are powerful tools that shape our reality through the stories we tell ourselves. To experience true presence, we must train our minds to stay with us in the moment, rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. The mind can be an incredible distractor, often pulling our attention away from the present without us even realizing it.

Mindfulness practices, such as meditation, help us observe our thoughts without getting caught up in them, training our minds to focus on the present moment. By cultivating positive thinking and reframing negative thoughts, we can create a more supportive inner dialogue that enhances our ability to stay present and engaged with our current experiences.

3. Human Emotions: The Biggest Inhibitor

Emotions are a powerful aspect of our human experience. If we cannot regulate our emotions, they can easily pull us away from the present moment. Understanding and processing our emotions is crucial for achieving true peace and presence.

For example, imagine sitting serenely on your patio, enjoying the sound of birds chirping and the wind rustling in the trees. Suddenly, you see your neighbor's dog digging in your garden. Anger immediately erupts, disrupting your entire mood. Recognizing that emotion is simply a chemical reaction and understanding that you can control your response can transform this experience. Instead of letting anger take over, you can choose to respond calmly and maintain your sense of peace.

Integrating the Components for True Presence

As a high-performance coach, I have seen firsthand the transformative power of addressing these three components—body, mind, and emotions. My clients experience significant success when we work on these areas because they can finally break free from the invisible chains holding them back. Healing past traumas and reshaping the stories we carry allow us to live more freely and authentically.

Incorporating these practices into our daily lives may seem daunting at first, but the rewards are well worth the effort. Here are some practical steps to get started:

1.  Create a Routine: Establish a daily routine that includes physical exercise, mindfulness practices, and time for emotional reflection.
2.  Seek Support: Consider working with a coach or therapist to guide you through the process of healing and growth.
3.  Be Patient: Change takes time. Be patient with yourself and celebrate small victories along the way.

While being present is an essential part of living a fulfilled life, it is not enough on its own. By focusing on our physical well-being, training our minds, and understanding and regulating our emotions, we can experience true presence and live more fulfilling lives. This holistic approach not only enhances our ability to be present but also empowers us to live more fully and authentically.

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TRANSCRIPTION

And today's session is a lot about that. A lot of people think that they need to be present in their life. And and I want to define presence. Presence is when we're engaged, we're fully there, we're not lost in our mind in the future or in the past. For example, if you're spending time with your loved ones, you're fully there, engaged with them, you can see them, you can see their expressions.

You can, you can feel like you're there versus somebody saying something and you completely tuned out or you're in your work. You're kind of an automatic mode and you're not fully feeling your work. You're like, I got to do this thing. You're not fully engaged. You're not fully present. Or when you're alone, let's say, um, if you're driving or have you ever driven and you don't even know how you got home.

Because, like, how did I get here? You were lost in your own thoughts and, and you were not there. You weren't feeling your life and nothing wrong with that, but presence is being fully engaged with your life now. The topic today is being present doesn't work.

And of course, I'm kind of playing around with this. Of course, being present works. We need to be present in our lives. But the way we do what the way we try to be present doesn't always work. And this comes from somebody who actually teaches a lot of practices for people to do meditation or set intention, all that stuff.

Though I look at those as much as they can work intentionally, they can become a part of your habits. I look at those practices as a bandaid. Which means that it will help you for now until you figure out how to be present in your life. So what, what can, so once you actually go through this process, and this is a coaching process, discovery process, once you figure out the things that I'm going to talk about, what will happen is you will naturally be engaged in your life.

Sometimes your own mind will take you to the future and past, but those are very temporary. Temporary short term and I'll share with you this. So a couple of nights ago, we had um, I was at a we did a barbecue with a couple of our friends, my wife and I, and we did a fire afterwards. We were sitting there, uh, enjoying the fire.

I was actually very quiet and I was in that state where I was quiet, but I was fully there. I wasn't in my own world and I was listening to everybody. My wife gets a little bit annoyed when I'm very quiet. She gets anxious. She's like, why are you so quiet? I need to talk. I'm like, I'm not a radio. If you want to listen to me, listen to my podcast.

So I'm just, and I love fire. I'm sitting in front of it. And I usually go into those States. And, um, as I was in, uh, there was a point where one of our friends, she looked at him, she's like, where are you as like, are you here? She was kind of checking. I'm like, I'm actually fully here. And then I think my wife asked, what are you thinking?

I'm like, I'm actually not thinking anything. I'm fully here with you guys. There, there are no thoughts in my head. I'm just actually fully feeling the, that we had some music playing in the background, we had fire. We were just interacting with each other. It was, I felt really engaged in that space. That was presence, not because I forced myself to or anything like that, but I feel like I've gotten more and more engaged in my life as I've done some work.

Sometimes I do need to force myself to be present, but those are times, and I'll talk about that, why that happens. And what you can expect out of it. So as a starting point, you know, it's great to have you here, Rochelle, we're just starting out this, how do we create more presence? Not just because based on like practices such as meditation and intention, all that stuff, which, which can be really good things, but how can we create it in a way that's more sustainable?

And that's part of the work that I do with you guys. And I'll go into that. The first piece is actually your body and this is important for you to think about it And I actually have that problem right now. I have I went to the dentist I got a couple of fillings and I had some pain and I went I asked them they said it's normal because it was a deeper filling and I had to take the Tylenol because I couldn't focus because of the pain Uh, and if you've had tooth pain, you know that it takes a lot of energy to contain it, uh, to actually be, you can't focus it.

A lot of sounds can get annoying. It's very close, uh, to that kind of pain. So when I took Tylenol, I was able to be present. Now, what am I trying to communicate here? If you have a lot of challenges in your body, you have pains and aches, your body doesn't have the energy. It's very hard to be present. It's incredibly difficult to be present.

So if you're not Uh, sleeping well, if you're not eating well, generally, I'm not saying be perfect in these areas. I'm not perfect. I try to have a regular routine around to be intentional about the things that I eat, um, especially when we're at home. Uh, my sleep pattern, movement, exercise, fresh air, uh, sunshine, sunlight.

Um, all that stuff makes a big difference in the way that your body is in the optimal situation to be present. Um, and specifically, uh, when you have your body's operating optimally, you have the energy to be present because a lot of times what ends up happening when you're in your environment, the people around you, you're interacting with your business partners, life partners, anybody else.

Um, It actually requires, and this is the part, it requires a lot of energy to just actually pay attention to them sometimes. Sometimes we can be in that flow state where we can, but a lot of times to be patient, to be present with your kids, with your life partner, with your business partners, think about it requires a lot of energy.

And how, how do you know this? Well, think about a time where you're drained at the end of the day and your, and your wife or husband is trying to talk and you can't, you can't pay attention to save your life. Like, and I get to that, those points that I'd be like, can we talk about this tomorrow? Because I want to be there and I want to listen to you, but my mind is just going off.

Uh, I can't, I can't know. And that's a communication thing. But some, some people are so drained internally in their energy that they can't pay attention. They can't be patient. They can't be there fully. And the same thing goes, uh, think of it another way when people come home And there's we have these phrases like they veg out or they will grab their phone and do this That's actually your body giving up in a sense your mind giving up You don't have enough energy to use your mind.

So you want to do something automatically again I don't have any judgments around this stuff. Sometimes i'll watch tv or I will go on there if I'm, if I don't need to do anything important. That's okay. But remember that in those states, you actually don't have the energy to be present in your life. So you will do something that's kind of mindless and automatic.

Um, everything that you do in your business that's useful, that it requires thinking, it requires intentionality. Everything you do in your life requires intentionality, planning. It requires you to think. Think about what's happening in your day to day. It requires you to think about your week. It requires you to think about long term.

So if you don't have your body is not optimally functioning, you will always struggle with being present. That's it sounds like common sense, but it's not common practice. We can all do better in this area. That's the first point. If that's not in place, a lot of the other things don't work. The other one is not so clear for a lot of people.

And that's your mind. And, and this is the part that will kind of, it's kind of, so, what the hell is mind? So of course our brain is connected to our body, and we don't actually know what mind is. I, I look at mind as an energetic component of your body. We don't nobody can explain it very clearly. Why?

Because we don't actually fully understand what the difference between brain and mind is. Sometimes we use it interchangeably. But for the sake of our conversation here is how do you how does your mind think? How does your mind operate your thinking process and your emotional process? Now, some people might argue is emotions have a lot to do with body than mind.

It might be true, uh, but just for the sake of us understanding this, because emotions are just, um, uh, just a product of a biochemical reaction that you have. Even thinking is that, but because we don't fully understand, and even if you ask a neuroscientist to explain this, they will explain it in the form of a synaptic activity in your brain that creates certain thoughts, and you can measure that.

They can say that, but also, but in the meantime, they can't. Proofs are some of the pieces of it. And I won't go too deep into that. That's something to be explored, but for the sake of utility in our day to day life and the function of this, I want you to think about it this way. So what happens with your thoughts and with your emotions?

And your day to day life. And, and why do we not stay present? Part of it is, like we said, it's related to your body's not functioning optimally. But now you have a mind that takes you towards the future, takes you towards the path, past, usually if it takes you to towards the past. In past, we have a story associated with our past.

We all, we all have a structure in our mind. We all have a story. And our story goes like this. I was a child. I was born within this family or within this environment. And if I have some cultural context, I'm part of this lineage of these people that I was born with. And I did some things, my parents treated me this way or that way.

I grew up in this environment. I did. I formed a personality based on that personality. I did a few things and then I came to a point where, oh, okay, great. I am. I'm calling myself this person based on that story. Now, within that story, there's a lot of complexity. There are a lot of things that people don't know what actually happened.

So when you don't know what happened and here's what I mean, if let's say and I'll talk about the extremes and simple things to the extreme of that story might be is that somebody has gone through a very traumatic experience. that could be physical or mental or emotional abuse. That could be, let's say I come from a war torn country.

I have a lot, I have, I have trauma in my family's lineage at this point for a couple of generations. Uh, and you can feel the trauma when you're around us. If you're, if you're, if you, if you know, if you're attuned to these things, you will notice that we're If I observe my family members, they're in survival mode a lot of times because their story comes from that.

Now that doesn't mean they have to be like that, but those extreme traumas can affect the way we function positively or negatively. So my trauma has allowed me to help a lot of people, but in the meantime, it can disable me a lot of times. It's very, it's a lot of these things are very contradictory. My trauma can be very helpful, but it can be very destructive for me and those around me.

It has given me a lot of rage and anger problems that I've had to deal with. But in the meantime, it's helped me be very driven in life. So how do you process it? And this is the part that a lot of people don't understand. For you to be present right now in your life, if you have not made sense of your story from the past, the story that your mind remembers, for example, if you were born in a family, what does that mean to you?

Why did you grow up to be the kind of person that you are? And how did you feel growing up? And the way I do this with my clients, especially as I work with them one on one or even in group context that we're doing, we're getting you to explore some of the pieces of your past. Who was your influence in your life?

Uh, who were the influences in your life? How did you grow up? What did you make certain things mean from your past? If you went through trauma, what did that mean? Did that make you helpless or did that give you a gift to grow up? Or did that give you a new unique take on life that makes a difference in how you engage in the present moment?

So the point is if you have not made sense of the complexity of your own story Usually your mind will pull you to the past You and it shows up like this You'll be sitting there with people and you will get affected emotionally by something. Somebody will say something and you don't know why If sometimes that's emotional in nature, they said something and you get angry.

You have no idea. You don't know what to connect that to. It catches you off guard. You got angry or you got sad or you got upset or you got affected emotionally in some way. Guess what? If you don't know what that is, it's connected to your story. Sometimes you even know you will say that, oh, this is why I'm affected this way because my dad used to treat me like this and this person talked to me like this.

That, that's, that's a trauma that you've assigned a meaning to, but it's still not helping you because now you're not taking responsibility as an adult for it. So what does that mean? If you have not processed the past, if you have not made sense of it, if you haven't created a structure that is in your control versus random things that your mind has fed you, Or worse, other people have told you who you are based on the experiences you've gone through.

That's going to break down your ability to be present. So you're with people that you're hanging out with all of a sudden, and somebody says something that has nothing to do with you all of a sudden, you take that personally, because it's connected to something in your past that you can either make sense of, or you can't even remember, that will pull keep pulling you in the past.

Or you have a story around your culture. For example, you might do something in your life where you feel you would feel guilty because you didn't do it because you're supposed to do that in your culture or in your, uh, in your religion or in your family. And that story is not even in your story. It's related to your family.

You haven't made sense of it. Give me, let me give you an example. So in the past, Whenever I used to, my wife and I, whenever we used to do something for us, like we would go away for like a weekend. And we're a very collectivistic type of culture. Both of us come from there. And if we don't do something with the rest of our family, we would have this guilt.

We're not doing anything wrong. We're just having a good time, but we couldn't do it. We physically could not, like, if we wouldn't, we would have such a high level of guilt that we, we would do it once in a while, we would feel guilty and come back. Now, look at the effect of that on the quality of our life.

We couldn't do that for years in our relationship. We got more and more disconnected because we couldn't spend time alone. Every time we had time off, we would spend it with, uh, others around us. 'cause we had a sense of guilt. It wasn't because of other people, but because we could, we, we hadn't processed the things that we were taught.

Uh, as as Children. So we were still carrying it with us. And I just want to drive this and this doesn't just show up in my culture. A lot of people carry identity challenges with them. They can't do certain things because they were taught or it was part of their story and they haven't processed it. Now we can't go too deep what that is.

But my here's my tip for you is You can do this on your own, but this is more effective with a therapist or a coach that's more effective where they can explore your story and find out what are your emotions that you haven't processed around this and what are the meanings that you haven't assigned or assigned to it.

And sometimes. We don't even remember the memories because it happened at a time where we didn't even develop that part of our brain that had recalled memory. In those cases, you can actually just process it without even understanding it. But the point that I'm trying to drive home here is that unless you've dealt with your story, Um, you don't know who you are and your mind will keep pulling you back into the past, into guilt, into fear, into shame, all sorts of feelings like that.

And you would think that that's just how you are. It's not. You just haven't processed it. By the way, there's a collective version of this. The collective version of it is your our history. And there's a term that we say is we, um, we history repeats itself. Well, unprocessed history repeats itself because we didn't learn from our past collectively.

Human beings. History is their story as a human beings or groups of people we haven't healed. Think about your culture, your country. A lot of people don't have a lot of healing that's happening because they haven't learned collectively in their group history. We're still learning about this. If you look at the human history, we don't know much about human history.

We might be, uh, human beings might be, might have been around for millions of years on earth, but we only know a few thousand years. So we don't know where we come from, why we come from. These are questions we ask. There's a reason why these questions are in our consciousness, because we need to answer them to heal as a species and move forward.

Not, it's not compulsory, but it's an important piece of healing. story. It's the same thing happens in your individual life. Most people don't think about it. They think that, oh, they don't need to worry about that. They just need to be focused positively on the present and future. And I promote that too.

But with the caution that if you have not made sense of your past, your mind doesn't know how to operate in the present. The only caveat is unless you've been trained as a monk. On top of a mountain, you've spent decades trying to process all your stuff. But even as a monk, you will sit down and actually face your emotions.

You'll face your demons. You'll face a lot of spiritual traditions, they have that. You don't have time for that, unless you're willing to sit on top of a mountain. And one day you will. But right now you need to make sense of it. So the best way is to either go through some kind of coaching program or a therapy program or a mix of those.

Work on this yourself. Start to make sense of your story. By the way, this is also a good thing to, uh, with the people that you trust that are closest to you. Start sharing parts of your story because the people around you will help you make sense of it better to you, like your life partner, your business partners, your close friends.

A lot of people don't share because they have a lot of pain. They don't know how to share it. I didn't know how to share that. I was physically abused as a child. I didn't know how to share that. I went through something and I feel shame and guilt around it. I, I, it started with sharing with coaches and mentors and therapists, but then I slowly started becoming vulnerable with those around me.

And then this is why we do this work. And this is still connected to your mind, but now it's future oriented, future vision, vision plus planning and both the past and future. Uh, think of your mind as an organ, a physical organ that energetically creates a structure. What does that mean? That means that your mind doesn't work randomly.

it needs some kind of direction and guidance. So if you don't give a direction and guidance, it picks up whatever other people talk about. And teach about and so this is why when we do the vision exercise we create a strategic process moving forward We have intentions. We have a calendar. We know what we're doing.

You're giving your mind a structure Uh, so for example, and when I was at the pay it forward event One of the persons and she's like, how do you how do you like? My checklist is never done and i'm struggling to always complete that and I said it this way and it sounds like a contradiction to a lot of these things and i'm like You Listen, if you can get through your checklist by the end of the week and you're a business owner and an entrepreneur and somebody who's trying to create a life by design, you're not doing enough.

I have never in the past 10 years, I've never been able to finish anything because I'm always in creation mode. I'm always doing things to build and create. And my goal is to build enough of a structure to bring in people and systems so it can be delegated. So I'm not completing it. And there is no completion because it's an ongoing process.

But the point that I was trying to drive with this person was that you're spending a lot of time trying to do checklists of things that might not actually move you forward because you've been trained to think like that, but you haven't spent a lot of enough time thinking about your own vision, your own future and built a strategic process where you don't have to finish everything.

Now you have a process by which you're going to finish every a lot of these things in the next 10 to 20 years. This is why the most successful and high performing people, you think they think in decades, they don't think in months and, and, and things because they build a structure. Now, why am I sharing this?

Have a couple of more minutes and then we'll get some, uh, perspective on this. For you to be present, part of it is have practices to be present. Some of those practices are well being stuff, like you're taking care of your physical body, meditating, and those things. I think that's a part of, should be part of your process, but if you haven't taken care of your own story from the past, you haven't processed it, you haven't built a structure for the future, your mind will constantly pull you this way or that way.

And coming back to that story that I shared when I was sitting in front of the podium, Fire with my wife and friends when I was looking at that, the reason why I was not thinking about even though I have a lot of things, I have two businesses. I have a lot of responsibilities. I have kids. My mom is going through a lot of stuff.

I have processed that stuff. And when I'm sitting there, I don't need to process that stuff right now that at that time, I'm fully engaged. So my mind doesn't take me towards the past or future or anywhere because they're there. I have my checklist set up already. I have my calendar. I know when I get back to work, I'm going to take care of it.

My mind knows that, so it doesn't bother me. Your mind is like a monkey. It will keep bugging you if you don't tell it what it needs, give it what it needs. And what it needs is a structure most of the time. And so for you to be more present, you need to build, and it doesn't have to be a rigid structure.

It can be flexible structure based on how your mind works. And this is why I say experiment. But at the baseline, if you don't process the things from the past or you're not in that journey, not everything, but you're not in that journey of processing it and you're not building a structure for the future long term and short term, your mind will constantly bug you.

I don't care how many practices you have for meditation or whatever. It will not let you be. And by the way, the whole point of meditation, this whole process that I just described, that's also meditation. The whole point of it is to to process and make sense of all the things that are internal to you.

And what does this do? This will allow you to be fully present with those around you. your kids, your family members. This will allow you to be focused and do deep work in your business. This will allow you to be strategic in how you think about your life in business. This will allow you to improve the quality of your own experience.

You can sit there. I had a client who came to me who hired me a few years ago. He's like, if you can just help me get 15 minutes of peace. I'll, I'll pay a lot of money for that. It's like, I've spent the past decade trying to find that. I cannot find it. And I remember six months later, I asked him that question.

I'm like, so do you feel like you've gone 15 minutes of peace? Uh, he's like, you know, I feel like I stopped thinking about it because I feel peaceful a lot of times now. I'm like, well, why is that? It's like, because my identity has shifted. How I think about my life has shifted. How I feel about my life has shifted.

He needed to process a bunch of stuff. He needed to build a structure. He needed to work through a lot of things. In another great analogy, think about this. Our mind has a lot of it. Think of an email that has 10, 000 emails that have not been opened. You have 10, 000 emails. That is your mind. You haven't opened them and work through them.

And so you, every time you look at it, you get overwhelmed. So you run away from it or it's too much to work through it. And it's, and now you add to it human emotions. It's too painful to work through it because a lot of things have been buffering for a long time. And another analogy is if imagine a computer that's overloaded and it's going so slow.

And a lot of times when you process all that stuff, give it space, it resets, it's very fast. But most people are going operating at about 10, 15 percent of their efficiency because they haven't processed this stuff.