Presence (Talk) - Lucas G Irwin - Miami 2021

So we'll start here.

There's things in our life that we can almost draw a line in the sand of before this moment and after this moment.

Before this moment I used to think about this a lot,

Or before this moment I hardly thought of this topic at all,

And then after it I thought about it all the time.

Some of these things,

The more common ones,

Would be something like time.

You know when we're young and we're running around and we're enjoying life and we almost move through life with zero idea about thinking about time as a commodity or as something that we need to value.

And then what happens?

We get jobs and we start families and we add obligations to our list and all of a sudden time becomes this really valuable fleeting thing that we just want more of.

Okay health would be another one of those things.

You know many of us are fortunate enough to not have to give too much attention to health for a good portion of our life.

And then sometimes there's a moment where we get a piece of news or an injury or something happens where our health now becomes something that we think a lot about.

You know we start to prioritize,

We start to engage with it because it's becoming limiting and it's changing the way that we interface with our lives,

Our friendship.

You know how many of us have had people in our lives that maybe we didn't appreciate or value as much as we should have until all of a sudden they weren't here.

Whether that's because of distance or move or life changes or other.

And for me one of these things,

This big shift in like I don't think about this and now I do was presence.

Presence was not a word or a concept that I gave much thought to probably for 70% of my life.

And there was a very distinct moment where that completely shifted,

Where that completely changed.

And that was with the birth of my first daughter.

And I had this moment where I'm sitting here and I mean maybe two weeks after she was born and like I'm looking at her and here's the most important thing in my life right in front of me.

And yeah I found it difficult to be there because my mind wanted to think about marketing meetings and planning and you know what do I got to do this weekend and how am I gonna pay this bill.

And my mind was everywhere other than where I wanted it to be.

And here was this thing I wanted my whole life right in front of me.

I could touch it.

I could be with her but my mind just couldn't be there.

And it was terrifying.

It was that moment of like okay if it continues to feel like this she's gonna turn 18 and I'm gonna miss the whole thing.

I'm gonna feel like it just happened.

I could already get a sense of that.

And for the first time in my life presence wasn't just a word or an idea but it became something that almost felt tangible.

It was like oh I can feel what presence feels like now because I can feel when I don't have it.

Because I can feel the opposite.

I can feel the mindlessness on the other side of presence.

And I wanted it more than anything and I said I got I need to do something about this.

And so I took steps to do that.

I was fortunate enough that I knew it's something that can be built and developed and worked on and we can we can change that.

So I did and primarily through things like meditation and formal practices and just bringing in an attention to wanting to be better at being present.

And over time I got better.

And over time I did see a difference.

And over time it did make improvements in my life.

But I learned so much through that journey of trying to be present.

And the first thing that I learned is how damn hard it is to be present.

You know how difficult it is to be where we are.

And it it sounds almost silly when you say it that way but that's what we're trying to do.

When we talk about being present,

When we talk about being here,

We're just asking ourselves to be where we already are.

And we learn quickly.

It's very difficult.

It's a simple idea but it's not easy.

And the more I worked out it the more I could see the improvement.

But I learned something really valuable over the course of years of working with present moment awareness.

And what I learned and this has really been a shift for me is the way that I viewed the act of trying to be here.

For a long time it was two things.

It was a two-part formula.

There was trying not to be somewhere else,

Trying not to be in the future,

Trying not to be in the past,

Trying not to worry or stress or be anxious.

And then on the other side it was trying to be here,

Trying to connect to what's here.

And the more I began to work with it,

The more I began to see it's not two things.

It's only one thing.

I don't actually have to try to figure out how to be here.

All I have to do is notice what I'm not.

And the default of that is presence.

So I think to some of the other things I coach people with,

Or if we can think back to anything that we've done that's that's difficult or strenuous or takes a lot of concentration,

What do we do?

There's this tendency to hold our breath,

Right?

You know,

We hold our breath and we get super focused and you know we get really engaged.

And in those moments,

You know,

Whether I'm working with someone and coaching them,

I don't,

All I need to do is remind them to stop holding their breath.

And the moment I teach them to stop holding their breath,

I don't need to teach them to breathe.

I don't need to then remind them how to breathe.

Once you're reminded that you're holding your breath,

Breathing is the natural flip side.

Okay,

If we think about the flip side,

It's a beautiful day,

We go stand under the tree.

If I can show you the way to walk out of the shadow,

I don't then need to teach you how to stand in the light.

It's the natural other side.

Okay,

And the more I began to work with this,

The easier it actually became for me to be present.

Because I didn't have to focus on this constant battle of how do I be here,

How can I be here.

I just needed to focus on let me just notice when I'm not here.

Because the beautiful thing about this process is the exact moment that you acknowledge my mind is not here,

My mind is not where I want it to be.

In that exact moment you've become present.

You're now here because you're tuning into and acknowledging the experience of right now.

Now there's lots of things that we can do to help reinforce being present after we're here.

I'll mention a little bit of at the end things we can help to do to help stabilize that,

To maintain present moment awareness.

Because we know,

As anybody here who's ever meditated or put any attempt into this,

We can bring ourselves to the moment and then how quickly does it drift somewhere else.

And there's things that we can do to help stabilize that.

But what's really important and kind of the emphasis of today is why I think it's so important that we prioritize being present.

It's because if we think of the present moment almost as this land,

This place that we can go,

Within this land there's massive amounts of opportunity that just exist here.

And we don't even have to look for them.

We just stumble across it.

And for me and in my kind of journey through this,

The amount of lessons that I learned,

The amount of the opportunities and in a lot of ways the gifts that were presented to me simply by being present,

Those were really the things that began to change my life.

Sure being present helps us feel good and it's nice but it's really the opportunities that exist within the present moment that make the biggest difference.

And you know we could spend weeks in classes going over what all of these different things are.

But for the sake of today and time I'll talk briefly about the two that I feel like made the biggest difference for me.

And they're often the two that I emphasize with the people that I work with to say,

You know,

These are things that when applied today,

When we pay attention to today,

Can change things immediately.

And the first one is actually this thing that we stumble across,

That moment that we say okay I notice my mind is not here.

And then we come to the present moment and then what we have in that exact moment is choice.

We're presented with choice.

And choice may be one of the most powerful things that exists within the present moment.

Because in that moment we can choose,

Do I want to take steps towards being more present,

More connected to the moment I'm in,

Or do I want to allow myself to continue doing whatever it was that I was doing mentally?

Worrying,

Stressing,

You know,

Problem-solving,

Whatever it might have been,

This place that we were that we didn't want to be,

We can now choose to come back.

And choice is everything.

And every choice that you've ever made in your entire life,

And every choice you will ever make in your future,

They occur in the present moment.

You cannot make a future choice,

You cannot make a past choice,

You can only make choices in the moment that you're in right now.

And what we begin to see is that in every moment there's almost always an infinite number of directions that we can go if we're actually there at the moment that we choose.

And when we're not connected,

When our mind is wandering and we're elsewhere and we're caught up in the momentum of our lives,

We don't make choices.

What we do is we rely upon the momentum and the habits of the past to tell us where to go.

That feeling that we get where things just feel like they're moving too fast,

It's like this and then this and then this,

And time's going by so quickly and then a week goes by and a month goes by and then it's New Year's again.

It's because we're living through momentum,

We're living through the energy of what's happened to determine what's going to happen.

And we can apply this to every facet of our life.

We can apply it to the big things,

The directions we're moving,

Which way do I want to take my career and my family and and my intention.

But we can apply it to little things as well.

Okay,

I just ate one cookie.

Do I want to eat three more?

Okay,

You know all these little mindless acts that we go through that we don't even realize until it's after it's done that,

Man I didn't want to do that.

You know,

The differentiation between reaction and response.

Reaction being what happens when we're mindless,

The things that just go,

Oh shit I ate four cookies,

I shouldn't have done that.

This response,

Which is always that thing that we think of ten minutes later,

Ten days later,

This would have been the better choice.

Should have done it this way.

I shouldn't have said that thing to that person,

Or I should have spoken up when I had the opportunity.

Okay,

But being present allows us to be more responsive in the moment as it's happening,

To make the choices that we know are better for us,

That are better for our well-being,

That are better for the people around us,

And to not constantly be dictated by just habit,

By momentum.

Okay,

And the other big thing,

You know,

That I like to emphasize that exists in the present moment is perspective.

You know,

We're blessed with the opportunity in the moment that we're in to actually be able to look at which lens am I viewing my current experience through.

Every moment of our life is negotiable.

Every emotion you've ever had is negotiable.

The way that you feel right now is negotiable.

It's not fixed,

It's not set in stone.

So often we move through life as if the experience that we're having and the way that we feel is the given byproduct of everything that's happening around us,

And that's just not true.

You know,

We could take any two people in here and put them in the exact same situation and you're gonna end up with two people with two very different experiences.

That's why two people in the exact same scenario can say,

This was one of the best things I've ever done and this was awful.

This was pleasant,

This was unpleasant.

This was funny,

This was boring.

Okay,

It has nothing to do with the environment,

It has everything to do with the way we relate to it and the perspective through which we view it.

And in the present moment we get the opportunity to work with that.

Perspective by definition requires two points.

It requires us to view something from somewhere.

And very often we never really think about being able to move either one of those two points.

Well one of those points is almost always fixed.

One of those points is the way things are.

This is how things are happening,

This is what the environment,

The world around me has given to me.

And we spend a lot of time thinking about that one.

We spend a lot of time fixated on,

You know,

How comes and what ifs and you know if only they had done it this way and this is unfair.

And we don't spend enough time thinking about the part that we can change.

Which perspective am I viewing this from?

You know,

It's our experiences to be able to label anything always require a point of reference.

Nothing is just good unless it's compared to something that's less good.

Nothing is bad or unpleasant or difficult unless it's compared to something that feels less bad,

Less unpleasant.

And we have all these moments in our life if we take any given day and say okay today,

You know,

Today's a good day.

Well today is a good day because we're thinking about it in reference to maybe what yesterday was.

And maybe yesterday was really difficult.

A day at the hospital visiting somebody,

A day where things just didn't seem to work out,

A day where we didn't feel too good.

So today feels pretty good.

Or we say today is bad.

Today is not so good.

Well maybe it's because the day before was great.

We got time with friends.

We got good news.

And in both situations today isn't any different.

It's the exact same day.

Okay.

So by noticing that we're granted the opportunity to say okay I feel a particular way today.

I don't feel good today.

Particularly with negative emotion.

To be able to pause and to say okay so why do I feel this way?

What is it that I'm comparing it to?

What is my reference point?

And now we have the opportunity to make a choice to change,

To shift,

To try to remind ourselves that there's a different way to look at this.

And those things,

Even if just done infrequently,

Can make a huge difference in the rest of our life.

A couple small choices here and there can change everything.

All of us can probably think of a moment somewhere in our past where if we hadn't said the thing that we said we might still have a better relationship with somebody.

Or if we had spoken up and said the thing that we wish we had said we would have put ourselves in a better position.

The choices that we make,

Even though the seemingly small ones,

They dictate everything that happens from that moment forward.

So to be here to prioritize being present gives us both of those opportunities.

To make better choices for ourselves and to be careful and to notice the perspective through which we're viewing our current experience.

And there's a real cost if we look at kind of those as benefits of being present,

There's real costs to not being present.

And one of the biggest costs of not being present is the fact that we're sacrificing in terms of time a huge portion of our life.

So when we break it down,

The big moments in our life,

The big exciting things that get lots of attention from us,

They make up a very small percentage of our life.

The things and the nights out with friends and the job promotion and you know the new house purchase and all of these things,

If we look at it purely as time,

We're talking about less than five percent of our life.

What makes up the other 95%?

Well the other 95% is mostly made up of the repetitive,

Everyday,

Habitual,

Familiar parts of our life.

Our morning routines,

Our drives to work,

The things that we do at work,

The getting the kids ready for bed,

You know the nighttime routine,

The showers,

The eating meals.

Those are 95% of our time of our life and unfortunately they're the easiest and most likely for us to disengage from.

Those are the moments that we're most likely to let our mind go somewhere else other than where we actually are.

And the thing about those is,

Those are often times the moments that when we don't have them anymore we wish we could go back to them.

There's this great story that this woman shared in a class one time about,

She had four kids I think,

All relatively close to the same age and she used to talk about how she would get home from work and the whole evening was just about like pushing through to like dinners,

Baths,

Homework,

Get them to bed so that I could get to bed and just get to sleep so I could start over again the next day.

And she did this for 16,

17 years.

The nighttime was just this thing that she just needed to get through until the last kid left for college and she came home and now the house was quiet and then it was quiet again the next night and then there was all this space and this time and the more she began to think back on it she said,

Oh I would give anything to have those evenings back again.

To not just come home and not have that.

And I would give anything to go back and actually be there for it this time.

To not treat it as this part of my life that I just needed to rush through and get it over with.

And our life is filled with those things.

It's filled with these things that we take for granted until we don't have them anymore.

And those are the moments that we're most likely going to disengage and not be present for.

So by this willingness to prioritize presence,

To make a real effort to be here more frequently,

What we're really doing is saying I want to be engaged and experience more of my life as it's actually happening.

Because once that moment's gone,

That's it.

There is no other opportunity to be there for it again.

So it works both of those things at the same time and that's why being present has such these powerful correlations with us just feeling better.

And there's tons of research to support this.

How strongly correlated present moment awareness is with a sense of well-being and happiness.

We can be happier being present with something difficult than we can by being mindless with something that we should be enjoying.

And part of the reason for that is,

Is when we're with what's happening now,

No matter what it is,

Washing the dishes,

Taking out the garbage,

Tying your shoe,

Watching the wind blow the leaves outside of your window,

If you're actually there for it,

In that moment you are not with all the things that tend to cause us worry and stress and anxiety.

Because 99% of the time the things that are bothering us the most,

They're not actually where we are.

They're not actually here with us in the moment that we're in.

We bring them into the moment by thinking about them,

Worrying about them.

And in that moment even if it's brief,

That we're just sitting with what's here even for a few seconds feeling the warmth of your cup of coffee and the smell of it and watching the steam and the weird design that the barista made in it for you.

Okay.

In that moment if you can be with that,

You've freed yourself from all the things that aren't here that are consuming you.

And you've given yourself a moment of freedom from all of that.

And that's why we can feel so at peace with that.

I mean think about the things that are the most engaging to you,

Whether it's art or music or writing or you know riding your bike or exercising or yoga whatever it might be.

In those moments that that's all that exists,

Those are the moments that we feel the most at ease.

So by prioritizing being present,

We're moving in both directions at the same time.

We're deepening our connection with the life that we're actually living while disengaging from the components of it that are adding the most difficulty for us.

It's kind of a two-for-one.

Okay.

And there's a lot that we can do to help reinforce this being present.

Okay.

So once we've noticed that we're not here,

We've brought ourselves into the present moment.

Some of the words that come to mind in terms of reinforcing this is curiosity.

Be curious about what's around you.

Investigate.

Really look around.

Okay.

It's amazing that if you pause and you really start looking around as if like if I told you okay look around for three minutes and then you're gonna look down at a piece of paper you're gonna try to list everything that you could see.

It's amazing how much more attention you would pay in those three minutes than you've paid the whole time that you've been here.

You know we've been here for over an hour.

You know how much could we describe about what the decorations are on the wall?

You know where the sign is or you know how many rugs are on the floor?

You know we we move through our environments very passively and disengaged.

You know when I went to I think it was with Google.

There was I asked the group in the room what color were the flowers in the in the pots when you walk into the main entrance.

The main entrance that they walk into every single day.

And out of a hundred and twenty people in the room nobody could tell me.

Most people didn't believe me that there was actually flowers in front of the door.

And we had to show them a picture to prove it.

You know but the thing is we have this tendency to disengage when things are familiar where they feel unimportant.

But reminding ourselves that those are actually the moments that are probably the most important.

So tapping into our senses allowing sight and smell and feel and curiosity and engagement and allow yourself maybe even to be fascinated by what you see.

Just to pause and think for a minute about you know how is this place not collapsing on us right now.

You know but we can do that in any moment and it's it's it sounds almost sometimes so elementary and so so unimportant but it's not.

It's really not just to pause for a moment and say what's here now and to be able to do it more frequently and to do it more frequently.

And then little by little what we begin to notice is the more we're willing to try to be here the more organic and natural it will become.

And then this beautiful things happen where we begin to feel like our life has more substance because we only remember the things that we pay attention to.

So it's no wonder we get to you know this time of year.

Hey how are you?

Haven't seen you.

How was your year?

Oh it was good you know I you know I moved offices and then got a new dog.

Oh so-and-so got married and I had another birthday and boom it's New Year's again.

And it's like shit you just summarized whole year in 45 seconds.

You know you basically have the book but you ripped out the table of contents and that's what you remember.

But what about all the words in between?

That's the majority of your life.

Jack Kornfield has this great kind of analogy that he uses about you know we live life if you think about it as a fish as the bones you know.

We just pay attention to the big moments the things that we keep looking forward to.

So we end up at the end of every year with just a skeleton and no meat.

So of course we get to the end of the year and sometimes it feels less fulfilled than we wanted to.

It feels like we did less than we wanted to.

But the more we begin to pay attention the more we begin to absorb and connect with all those little moments in between the more substance we begin to add to our life.

And a lot of those are the things you don't have them anymore.

We're gonna be glad that we actually connected with them while we did because we don't know when we're not gonna have them anymore.

So is it just this invitation to prioritize presence to prioritize trying to be here because every goal that you have every change that you want to make every you know path that you want to follow everything that you aspire to it first requires you to be present and that's the step that a lot of people try to skip.

Because all of the choices and the actions that you're gonna take in order to move in that direction occur here.

And we can't just keep thinking about them as these future things that we're gonna get to and do someday.

They happen in the moment that we're in right now.

And you can simplify this by just noticing when you're not here and keep it as simple as that.

Because if we think about if I put a coin in your hand with the heads up and I told you make this coin not heads anymore so you take the coin and you flip it.

Well I didn't have to teach you how to make it tails I only have to teach you how to not make it heads.

And it's the same with being present.

We only need to notice when we're not here.

And by doing that we've immediately brought ourselves into the moment that we're in.

And whether it's choice or perspective or the infinite other opportunities that exist in this allow yourself to see what's here for you.

Whatever that might be.

Better connection with our partner,

Less reactivity,

Better communication.

It's endless.

Go into it with a curious mind and just see what exists here for you.

Okay so we have a couple minutes.

I can't see the light I'm sure a couple people probably snoozed off so you guys had a late night last night.

But we're gonna do just like a brief meditation before we move forward.

So for those of you who are still awake but feel like you're drifting in that direction maybe just bring yourself up and away from your the back of your chair a little bit.

It's okay you know meditation isn't necessarily about relaxing okay there's a lot of these misconceptions about it's it's relaxing and decompressing and all of that it's not about anything other than being with what's actually here.

Okay but when we feel ourselves really kind of falling into more of a relaxation than we might want it can help to not set yourself up for it.

Okay so just let your hands rest wherever it feels comfortable and if you'd like to you can go ahead and close your eyes.

Closing your eyes is not necessary.

It helps because it eliminates all the visual distractions that might be around us.

But if for you closing your eyes feels uncomfortable and feel uneasy when your eyes are closed especially around other people just find a spot on the floor that stands out let that be your point of focus visually.

And just before we do anything notice where your attention is.

Are we thinking about something in particular?

Remembering something from last night?

Thinking about what's coming up next?

And then just notice the sounds that exist around you.

Use one of our senses just to better connect with the moment that we're in.

And notice the rising and the falling of new sounds.

Notice that we may be recognizing sounds that have probably been here the whole time we've been sitting here.

Yet until we actually gave it our attention we didn't notice them.

And there's this tendency for us particularly with sound to want to label it or to judge it.

Pleasant or unpleasant,

Soothing or annoying.

But remembering none of those sounds organically have any of those qualities.

Those come from us and because they come from us they're negotiable.

We can work with them.

We can change them.

And maybe the only label we need today for sound is here.

That sound is just here.

And now the best we can we're gonna bring that attention to the act of breathing.

And there should be no judgments about whether I'm doing a good job or a bad job.

Whether I'm doing well with meditation.

We want to judge it so often based on you know how little we can make our mind race,

How present we can feel.

And there is no good or bad.

And particularly today the moment that matters the most are the moments when you recognize that your mind is somewhere else.

The moments that you can say I want to be here but I'm over there.

And whether you do that five times or five hundred times every one of them is so valuable because in that moment you've given yourself the choice to come back to the moment that you're actually in.

To come back to here.

So bringing some of that investigative quality to the breath let's first notice where the breath actually begins.

Sometimes I like to envision like a light bulb that starts off as off and turns on the moment the inhale begins.

And that willingness to keep fine-tuning zero in on the exact fraction of a second where we know that we're now breathing in.

And now following the breath down into the body.

And I want to see if just for a moment you can forget about everything you know about the way that we breathe.

Forget that you know that it's the lungs.

Forget that you know where the lungs are.

And armed only with what you can feel and experience right now.

Where would you think the breath was going?

Where do we actually experience the inhale?

And then moving with the breath as it comes up through the body for the exhale.

Noticing where the breath leaves the body.

And then now on the tail end can we find the exact moment where the breath ends?

Where the light turns off?

And now here's the real value.

Can we start again with every breath?

Can we be with each breath with the same intention and curiosity that we started with?

Because our mind goes into that tendency to say this breath feels very familiar.

This breath feels indistinguishable from the previous one.

And it begins to tune out.

It begins to go elsewhere.

And the truth of it is this breath may feel almost completely indistinguishable from the prior breaths.

But it's not the same breath.

This breath is its own unique one-time experience that once it's gone,

It's gone forever.

And to work at being with each one of these breaths is to work at being with each one of the moments throughout our days and our lives that feel repetitive,

That feel familiar,

That we begin to take for granted and we disengage.

We tune out.

So notice when the mind goes elsewhere.

And then be with this breath right here.

And then just taking a couple deep breaths.

So breathing deep in through the nostrils and pushing the breath way down into the bottom of the belly.

Really allow yourself to expand the belly,

Feel your belly button moving away from your spine.

And then allow your exhales to just fall away.

There's no need to push it.

There's no need to force it.

The exhale can just happen on its own.

And then maybe bringing a little movement back just to your fingers and your toes.

And take another breath to open up at your own pace,

Slowly reopening the eyes,

Reconnecting with the group in the space that we're in.

So just this invitation,

Not just for today,

But starting with today,

To bring extra attention to noticing when you're not here and allowing that to be the catalyst to being more present more frequently.

Just simply notice,

Here I am but my mind is over there.

And then watch over time if we prioritize this being present more frequently,

What kind of opportunities open up to us,

What kind of choices can we begin to make for ourselves,

What different lenses and shifts in perspective can we begin to apply.

Allow it to be an experiment for yourself.

See where it takes you to see if it makes a difference and if it's for you anything like it was for me,

It'll completely change the way the rest of your life unfolds.

Not because I changed anything about the world around me,

But because being present allowed me to change my relationship to the world around me.

Thank you for your attention,

Thank you for your presence,

And then for some of you I look forward to speaking with you in the smaller groups later today.

So thank you everybody.