Presence Not Perfection: Getting Out of Your Head and Into The Present Moment

In this episode of Empathetic Presence, I explore something that's helped my anxiety - how to find the present moment and return to it when we inevitably get lost in thought again.

It's particularly challenging to be present right now. With the constant news cycle and daily overwhelm many of us experience, it's natural to slip into hyper-vigilance. Focusing on presence rather than perfection has been transformative for my confidence and reducing anxiety.

I share my personal journey from being trapped in an endless cycle of anxiety to finding liberation through presence. For years, I experienced debilitating panic attacks that would send me to the emergency room convinced I was having heart attacks. Over a decade ago, I made a commitment to address my anxiety holistically, which became the foundation for the work I do today.

In this episode, I discuss:

• How I define presence as "getting out of my head and into my body"
• The scientific connection between the vagus nerve and our "gut brain"
• Practical techniques I use daily to return to the present moment
• A guided practice for anchoring to sound that we can experience together
• The importance of self-compassion when practicing presence

I would love to hear what helps you find presence and what presence means in your life. Please share your thoughts at Lee@presentvoices.com.

If you'd like to practice presence with me directly, I host a complimentary live workshop via Zoom where we work on these techniques together. You can register at presentvoices.com/collective.

Wishing you presence, not perfection. 

00:00 Introduction to Empathetic Presence

00:53 The Struggle with Anxiety and the Journey to Presence

03:04 Understanding and Practicing Presence

04:04 The Role of the Vagus Nerve and Gut Brain

06:02 Practical Tools for Finding the Present Moment

08:17 The Importance of Being Over Doing

08:41 Guided Practice: Anchoring to Sound

10:01 Managing Expectations and Using Tools to Stay Present

13:38 Conclusion and Invitation to Connect

Transcript

Lee: 0:05

Welcome back to Empathetic Presence, a podcast to liberate our voices. I'm your host, Lee Bonvissuto, and today I want to talk about presence, how to actually find the present moment and to get back there when we inevitably get lost in thought again. It is really hard to be present right now. I know with so much in the news and so much daily overwhelm and onslaught, it is natural to go to hyper vigilance, to planning ahead and to getting lost in thought. And the key for me has been to focus on presence and not perfection. The answer to my anxiety is always in the present moment and the next present moment, and the next present moment. I say this because years ago before I started doing this work, I was in a constant loop of anxiety, an endless loop of thinking and thinking and thinking, and I found that I was trying to think my way out of the anxiety. If I could just breathe deeper or think more deeply or get a better tool, maybe I would be able to get out of the cycle. But the problem is that that cycle continually kept me in the before and after in the, oh no, what's about to happen? And the, what did I just say? So the idea of returning to the present moment as a practice became my salvation. Before I started doing this work, I struggled quite a bit. I had endless panic attacks. I would continually check myself into the emergency room certain I was having a heart attack. Over a decade ago, I made a choice that I wanted to deal with my anxiety once and for all. It was before I became a parent, and I didn't want to be in this endless cycle anymore. It was debilitating, destabilizing, and destroying my life. And so I read all the books and I listened to all the podcasts, and I started therapy. I even read a book called The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. This book was all about that voice in your head and how you could choose to not listen to it, how it was often inaccurate, and the idea that I could even untether from my racing thoughts was scary. I didn't know what was underneath my racing thoughts because it had been my only experience. I didn't think that I could be present. I grew up with a father who was a meditator. My dad would meditate for 30 minutes every day. I would watch him from afar. And when I tried meditating in college, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't get my thoughts to stop, and I thought that that's what meditation was. I know more now, I know that meditation is around returning to the present moment and doing so with really tangible tools. To make this even more tangible and specific, I define presence as getting out of my head and into my body. And what I mean by that is actually being embodied in my thinking. So many of us are struggling with splintered attention right now. We want to be present and fully connected, but we are subconsciously lost in thought, overthinking, wondering how we're being perceived if we're being clear. What am I going to say next? Thinking ahead. And this disrupts our natural ability to think on our feet. When we are up in our head, we are more likely to feel anxious. We are more likely to get lost in fight or flight, but that's not how we communicate when we feel most comfortable and confident. When we feel comfortable, we are fully embodied. Our thinking is not in our heads, it's in our gut. It's in our gut brain actually. The gut brain is controlled by the vagus nerve, the largest nerve in our body that connects the brain through the heart, all the way to the gut The vagus nerve, also known as rest and digest, the parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for really important functions like breathing, circulation, cognition, thinking on our feet, being able to feel relaxed. Those things go away when we get caught up in fight or flight, and our vagus nerve shuts down. And so being present is being embodied, being able to activate the gut brain. So that's what I mean when I talk about presence. I'm not talking about executive presence. We all know that doesn't work anyway. I'm talking about actually feeling more present, being able to be relaxed in the present moment, to get out of our brains and into our bodies. Now that I can find the present moment, it is a joy and a relief. It's not that I don't go back to anxiety. It's there for all of us. How could it not be, especially in this moment. One of my clients used an analogy of an attic. He said that before he started doing this work, it was like he was always in a dark attic with the lights off, and once he started doing this work, it's like he could go into the rest of the house with the lights on. And I really resonate with this, and I too end up back in the attic sometimes. We all do. How could we not in this moment, but knowing that I have the tools to get the lights back on has been life changing. But in this moment, our overthinking is oppressive. For the past few years we have been in this constant multitasking, and it can feel nearly impossible to find the present moment, let alone stay in it. And for me, I make this very simple. I find the present moment by refocusing on any sense outside of the thinking mind. I might bring my attention to touch and feel my back against the chair or my feet on the floor, or my foot in my slipper. It's really tangible and within a few moments, I'm going to return to racing thoughts. That's natural. I'm a human being, and when I realize it, I refocus on the sensory sensation of touch. Or I work a lot with the anchor of sound, and so I might anchor to the sounds around me and anchoring to sounds is a passive practice. I can't be actively overthinking while I'm listening. It doesn't work. So when I'm anchoring to sound, there's a release, there's a letting go, and that muscle of practicing being is what I am returning to when I inevitably get lost back in thought. So that is how I find the present moment by refocusing on any sensation outside of the thinking mind. I often will have a candle lit at my desk and I might refocus on the smell. Or I keep a picture of my kiddo right here on my desk so that I can use focal focus to refocus and get me outside of deep thinking when I need it. And if you've meditated in the past, this is probably familiar. For me, I believe that meditation and communication are the same thing, but one happens on our own and one happens with others. But just like in meditation, when I realize I'm lost in thought, I'm going to refocus my attention on a sense, on a sensation, on touch or sight or sound or smell, something that will get me outside of thinking, and within just a few moments, I will be lost back in thought. We are human beings. We have to expect that. And when I realize it, I bring myself back to the present moment by refocusing on one of these sensations. For me, this is about the practice of being versus doing. I am a doer. It's what comes naturally to me, and becomes the default in our capitalistic society. And so for me, the muscle to strengthen is being, allowing, letting go. These things do not come natural to me. I want us to practice right here, finding the present moment, We can anchor to sound. Let's do it. I'm going to first of all, let the chair really hold my body. I'm going to release any physical effort. I'm going to unclench my belly, unclench my jaw, and I'm going to simply let the sounds in. That means that I'm going to listen to the sounds around me. I might hear the birds chirping. I might hear my refrigerator buzz or a truck drive by, and I am not going to think about those things. I'm simply going to let them come and go. And if I get lost in thought, I'm going to bring my attention back to the sounds around me, letting the sounds in. So let's practice this together and I'll practice it with you. What was it like? Could you find the present moment even for a moment? And I wanna talk about expectations here. Human beings on average have anywhere from 10,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day. Scientists have found that 80% of those thoughts on average are negative, and 90% of those thoughts on average are identical to thoughts we had yesterday. So if that's the case. We are going to have disruptions of thought quite often. If you meditate or not, it is likely that you'll be disrupted by thinking every few moments. Let's expect that we are human beings. We think a lot, especially in moments of trauma and terror that we're witnessing right now. It is natural for us to go back to thinking quite often. So instead of beating ourselves up, can you return to the present moment and can you use one of these tools to do so? This is similar to how this work works, just like when we're meditating on our own and we are able to isolate our attention and refocus on senses to get us out of the thinking mind. When I'm communicating, I want to be using these senses to keep me present, and I have tools that help us find embodied presence. These tools are backed by science and proven to regulate your nervous system and promote presence, not perfection. And these tools are necessary because most of us have splintered attention right now. We have splintered self-expression. We want to be present and connected, but a part of our brain is thinking and overthinking. How am I being perceived? Do I sound clear? Am I making sense? And all of this is splintering our ability to find focus in the present moment. And so these tools all work in the same way. I want the tool to replace the part of your brain that wants to race and run ahead. We wanna give that part of your brain a job. We want to fully engage as much of the attention as we possibly can so that there's less room for overthinking and extraneous thinking. And these tools can be anything. They can be physical. They can be leaning back against your chair and refocusing on that tactile sensation. They can be using focal focus in order to focus your eyesight, which helps focus your thinking. They can even be formulas or frameworks, content tools that help you have more clarity around what you want to say. Any tool works, any focus works. It's just that the ones that I recommend happen to improve your hormonal confidence. And what I mean by that is improving your ability to actually feel more confident. When we are connected, when we can get out of our heads and into our bodies, we have more access to hormonal confidence, dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, feel good hormones that help us think on our feet and be more present under pressure. All of these tools are designed to help you make the unconscious conscious to get us out of the habitual behavior and give us the ability to make choices in the moment, something that anxiety takes away, but you will return to the habits, you will return to unconscious thinking. I want you to expect that and when you realize it, the key is to refocus, reset, and restart without beating yourself up. So stop beating yourself up if you have normal habitual behaviors. If you say, um, if you look up a lot, if you find that you're overthinking or over prioritizing how you're being perceived, the only thing that matters is presence because the answer to my anxiety is always in the present moment. So I wanna know what helps you get present and what prevents you from being present? What does presence even mean to you? Email me to let me know Lee@presentvoices.com. And please if you like the podcast, subscribe, leave a review and share with a friend, and I'd love for you to practice empathetic presence with me. I host a live free workshop on Zoom where we can practice presence, not perfection, and learn tools to express yourself everywhere. Sign up at presentvoices.com/collective. Looking forward to seeing you next time and wishing you presence until then.