The Difficulty of Being in the Present Moment and Strategies to Overcome it

Premise:

Earlier today, I came across a blog post on The School of Life blog about the difficulty of being in the present. You can read the entire post here. It so happens that I’ve been having a conversation with my wife and son recently about the same topic (which is a slightly better way of saying that both of them don’t think I am being present in the moment when I am with them).

I do accept this as a fact as I am mostly in the midst of either looking at my past or looking forward to my future (meeting that I am to attend, the money that I need to be making this year, a movie that I am looking forward to watch or if nothing else, worry about not being present in the moment when I am with my wife or son, the irony of which is not lost on me).

The Struggle:

So, just today morning, I committed to my wife that I will figure out a way for me to be able to do just that. So, here I was thinking about some strategies that I can employ to be present in the moment and the blog post pops up in my feed.

So, I was super excited to read the post and was totally disappointed at what I read. It seems that our body, mind and the entire physiology works towards keeping us away from the present and either in the past or the future.

After doing a bit more research and going down my memory lane to think about everything that I learnt while researching for my book Thrive, I realized that this is a mechanism that was required for us to survive in the evolutionary past. This still is a survival mechanism for us today.

We need to think about what happened in the past so that we can learn from that and hopefully use that learning to survive in the future.

We need to think about the future (meeting with your boss or customer, a difficult conversation with your wife or son or daughter, etc) in order to be prepared with strategy and information to deal with this. This might not be a life-threatening need but nevertheless our physiology gives it the same kind of importance to this (out of habit).

So, the question that I started out to answer still remains open. What strategies can I use to be fully present in the moment? Here are some that I have figured out so far that I intend to put into practice and see which one’s work and which one’s don’t.

Strategy 1: Movie of my life, in real-time:

When I think of moments in life when I am fully present, consistently, is when I am watching a gripping movie. I am fully immersed in the story and enjoy the movie by fully engaging with the story, which means that I don’t lack the ability to be fully present. I just need the right environment and the attitude to be able to do so.

So, strategy 1 that I am going to try is the following:

• Every time I want to be fully present in the moment, I will physically take my glasses out, clean them up, put them on and get ready to watch the movie of my life, playing in real-time. Just like a typical movie is between 90 mins to 150 minutes long, I am going to be fully present and engaged for the next 90-150 minutes in the movie.

Strategy 2: Play a game of Improv:

There are times when we know that there is clear time limit to the time you have with your son or wife or anyone else. For example, I know that my son has to leave for his school in 15 mins or that I need to leave for office in the next 30 mins.

In scenarios like this, when I don’t need to spend a long time being fully present in the moment and just need to do so for a short period of time, I will tell myself and thereby to my mind that I am playing a game of improv, which requires complete immersion in the moment so that I can respond to whatever stimuli I get in that moment. I will use the principles of improvisational theatre to help me be fully present in those moments that I have with my family (or for that matter, my customers, partners or colleagues).

Strategy 3: All is well

In the movie, 3 Idiots, the protagonist character shares a story, which I remember very vividly. The story goes something like this:

In a small society, there was a watchman who was hired to guard the society. Every night, he would walk all around the society and keep calling out “All Is Well” loudly. This used to give a lot of confidence of safety and security to the people living in the society and they would sleep in peace knowing fully well that they are being protected by the security guard. The loud chanting of “All is Well” helped them with their peace of mind. Then one day, there was a theft in the society. When they started making enquiries about the thief and spoke to the security guard, they found out that he was night blind and could not see a soul in the evening. He survived and allowed everyone to be at peace by his chant of “All is well”.

Moral of the story is that our mind is a very complicated thing and can get easily distracted and typically fears for the worst, in any given scenario (in general). So, in order to stay happy and at peace, we need to calm this thing by continuously telling it that “All is Well”.

We need to trick our mind in thinking that all is well, rather than reason with it. And it turns out that it is easy to trick our minds, easier than tricking anyone else. This exact strategy can also be used to trick our minds in being fully present in the moment.

At a regular interval, keep telling ourselves – “All is Well”

Strategy 4: Checking in with my Talisman

I really believe that our ancestors were way smarter than we are when it comes to life wisdom. They thought about life, living and dying well much more deeply than we ever do. So, I thought I can borrow one of the strategies from that our ancestors used to deploy a lot, that we discount quickly as nothing but a form of superstition.

I am talking about having my very personal talisman which will help me stay in the present moment. All the three strategies that I have listed above quickly help me root myself in the present moment but are not really great at keeping me rooted in the present. This is where my talisman comes into picture.

The key here is to fully believe that the talisman will give me the power to stay rooted in the moment. The power of the talisman is equal to the strength of my belief in the talisman. This is another way for us to hack our physiology to allow us to by-pass all the challenges that it throws our way to distract us from being present in the moment. The other thing that is critical here is to create a habit of checking in with my talisman on a regular basis throughout the day.

Just like you need to have dug a well much before you need drinking water, you need to have practiced with your talisman much before you really need it to work. So, I am planning to set up an alarm on my laptop or phone to ping me once every 90 minutes. Every time the alarm goes off, I will check-in with my talisman and ground myself to the present moment.

This is a five-step process:

• Step 1: Touch and feel the presence of the talisman
• Step 2: Take 5 deep breaths
• Step 3: Name the feeling you are feeling (Happy, frustrated, sad, energetic, etc)
• Step 4: Take 3 more deep breaths
• Step 5: Ask the talisman to help you come back to the present moment

I know that this sounds extremely stupid thing to do, but I also believe that this is a good way to build the habit and trick my physiology at the same time.

The beauty is when I am with my family and my mind starts to get distracted, all I need to do is to touch and feel my talisman and the entire habit will kick off and I can come back to the present moment (assuming that I have built up this habit successfully).

In conclusion:

In all my research, I have found that the biggest enemy in our being fully present in the moment is US and our physiology. We are not built to be fully present in the moment. So, in order for us to fully experience the present moment, we need to find a practice that can help us circumvent our physiology first. The four strategies that I have listed here are my way of trying to do this.

I am going to try them starting today. I will report back on this same post in a month from now with the progress that I make and if the strategies work the way I think they will work or not and we will then continue to tweak this until I get this one right.

Your Turn:

Do you agree with my strategies? Do you have any strategy that you think works really well for you? Please do share them here so that I can learn you’re your experience and experiment those strategies as well. After all, this has been the biggest differentiator between us humans and all the other species around us. So, let’s put that to use.