Monthly Archives: June 2008

Being Present

It’s 4:45 PM and your 15 minutes from the commute at 5. You can’t wait to get home because you leave for Hawaii tomorrow morning and it’s been two weeks since you’ve seen the sun. To add intensity to the next quarter hour, you can only take 30 more minutes of your boss before you receive 10 years to life for a passionate dispatching of an undeserving middle manager.

You hit the freeway onramp at 5:02 PM with a vigor known only on the oval track at Daytona and by 5:10 PM you’re off the freeway and minutes from mentally ending your workweek and commencing bliss surrounded by white sandy beaches, sunshine from morning until dusk and a low temperature 30 degrees higher than at noon day where you live.

You hit the garage door going a mile a minute and the phone rings. It’s your friend who wants to come over and talk. She really needs some help and you promised. “Thank you soooooo much. I’ll be there in an hour,” she says as she hangs up.

An hour, you think, that’s a lot of time, I can get most of my stuff done by then. About 10 minutes later the door bell rings and your friend gives you a big hug and thanks you for taking out some time for her in your busy schedule. She apologizes for being a few minutes late and commences her tale of sorrow. ‘What happened,’ you silently wonder as her words fly by you like freeway signs on the autobahn. Where did my hour go? For the next 90 minutes you sit in a daze wondering how you’re going to get ready by morning and daydreaming of what will be tomorrow. Your friend continues her story and you settle into your patented ‘uh huh’ mode of paying attention. ‘She just needs a sounding board,’ you rationalize, and that’s exactly what I am, bored.

Now let’s pull out of our Hawaii trip and picture the last time you were in an automobile accident or any accident for that matter. Can you remember what happened? Think for a minute, how fast did time go during the crises? If you’re like most people, (actually every person I’ve ever asked) you will respond that time went very slow, in fact, you can remember almost every detail.

What’s the difference between the first scenario and the last scenario? The answer rests in what the mind was doing during both experiences. In the first experience, your mind was multi-tasking at warp speed. You were thinking about Hawaii, packing, sunshine, your jerk boss, your friend taking up so much time, sun tan lotion, body surfing, the dog, the mail, and hundreds of other thoughts.

During the accident, you had only one thought, getting in a wreck and all you said was “Ohhhhh myyyyyy gaaaaawsh!” or something akin to that, perhaps with a little more flavor and gusto.

This is the concept of “Being Present!” Being present means you are 100% focused on the task at hand. Your mind, body and heart is riveted on the same target. This application of energy can mean the difference between understanding and not understanding, between life and death, between success and failure, between 1% or 2% milk, a white board for your son’s report on the Trojan horse or a box of condoms.

If you have children, think of the last conversation you had with your little crumb cruncher. How present were you? Did the ‘Uh huh’ mode of listening surface? In today’s fast paced world, wearing so many hats, in other words, constantly multi-tasking is a sure way to wear down your immune system. You will also guarantee a host of misunderstandings and a slew of potential offenses to those with whom you come in contact.

It’s easy to sluff such behavior off with a cursory, ‘Well, everyone does this.’ And you are correct; almost everyone does do this, so does that make it right? We’ve had a tradition in our home since our oldest turned 12 that we travel back east and spend a week touring Gettysburg and other Civil War sites. The first three trips were very short trips for me because my mind was so ubiquitous.

I remember driving down the freeway and Cheri would instruct me to exit right at the next off ramp and I would drive right by without flinching. I never heard the instructions because my mind had a million other things in the way and her words could not penetrate the massive deluge of work blocking my path to ‘Being Present’ and enjoying the vacation with my wife and my son. It took me a full three days to come out of my fog and this behavior lasted for over 10 years. What a difference spending time with your loved is when you are present. Conversations are deeper, experiences are richer and the ability to accomplish more is increased because when all is said and done, it’s actually not possible to multi-task and be effective.

Statistics are now coming out, for example, a person sending a text message while trying to listen to you is operating as though they have not slept for 36 hours. Another way to look at it, when your teenager is ‘listening’ to you while texting to her girlfriend, her IQ drops at least 10 points. (click here to read more on the impact of multi-tasking:) Be sure to read Part I and Part II.

What is your IQ when in the presence of your family, friends and associates?  Read more... (932 words, 6 images, estimated 3:44 mins reading time)