In our natural habitat, we humans breathe fresh air, connect with others, consciously take in our surroundings, and inhabit our bodies. .The  more fascinating technology gets, the more we tend to disconnect from our bodies and not be present with our surroundings. Now if your eyes already hurt from staring at screens all day, turn off your device and go outdoors. Connect with loved onea by gazing into the eyes. Minimize digital distraction and start engaging with your reality.

What Is Presence? Presence is deep, real-time awareness. It is having enough free attention to truly be in the moment with another person.  It is the state of being undistracted. It is giving yourself in an undivided manner. It is total focus, with a sense of ease.  When someone is listening to you without a hint of distraction, they are being present with you.

Benefits Of Cultivating Presence

Perhaps you are already well acquainted with the downside of lacking presence sin your life.

Some benefits of having more presence include:

• Enjoying ore deep, nourishing, connected relationships (friendships, intimate partnerships, interactions with recent acquaintances)
• More acceptance of the people, events, emotions, and circumstances in your life
• Less mental and physical stress and tension
• Experiencing more happiness, ease, and increased emotional intelligence
• Developing greater resilience to stress, illness, and the ego noise that life can toss at us
• When you increase mindful presence, you simply let go of  trying to control life, as you drop into to the natural flow of how things truly are.

How To Be More Present

1. Re-establish your core values.  It’s easier to be present when you don’t have a lot of things clamouring for your attention. And the best way to minimize the number of things trying to get your attention is to get back in touch with your life’s core values.

When you know what does and doesn’t fit with your life, it’s far easier to say no to unaligned things.

2. Declutter your calendar.  If you always run around like a chicken with its head cut off from meeting to meeting, then you won’t have much of a chance to be present.

• Strive to schedule a maximum of two things in your calendar per day of leaving room for spaciousness beyond those two commitments.
• Clear your calendar of noise and distraction by saying no to all of the wrong things, and saying yes to all of the right things.
• Get in touch with your own BOUNDARIES!

3. Fill your life with reciprocal systems.  A reciprocal system benefits both parties.

• Spending time with a trusted friend is engaging in a reciprocal system.
• Holding a job that you enjoy is a reciprocal system.
• Playing music with your band is a reciprocal system.
• Make sure you’re engaging in win-win situations across your entire life, and, with your integrity fully in tact, you’ll be much more present across the board.

4. Cultivate rituals.  By cultivating rituals, you won’t use up excess mental bandwidth on making thousands of low leverage decisions each day.

• Consciously create a simplified wardrobe of outfits that you llove.
• Have a weekly phone-free dinner with your best friends on the same night of the week so as to keep abreast of each other’s dynamic lives.
• Eat the same thing that you like for breakfast every day.
• Figure out what makes you happy, make it a habit, and then stick to it. Voila! Increased presence.

5. Reclaim your attention from technology.  In many ways modern technology really does make life easier; however, it is also contributes to our inability to focus on our own lives and meaningful relationships.

• Implement the following strategies and watch your presence quickly skyrocket
• Unfollow everyone on Instagram that doesn’t inspire you or make you feel better in some way
•  Kill your Facebook news feed entirely with this app
• Get comfortable saying no to people’s requests for your time
• Mass-unsubscribe from email lists that you no longer receive value from.
• Say no to watching most TV shows (especially if they have a ton of seasons for you to catch up on). .
• Stop watching porn; it messes up a man’s sex life and his ability to maintain erections.
• As a default, and as often as you can, leave your cell phone on airplane mode. You may you own a cell phone but it should not own you.
• Batch check your emails. Once in the morning, once at night. Maximum. Once a day, only on week days, if you can.  Or hire a personal assistant to manage your overflowing email inbox.

6. Create space by feeling through your emotional clutter. As Curl Jung once said, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”Many people struggle to be present in life as they have yet to grapple with their internal emotional clutter.

• Feel your sadness. Your anger. Your hurt.  Let all your emotions move through you.

7. Practice single tasking and deep work. 

• Don’t take pride in being a proficient multi-tasker.  The energetic cost of task-switching is more expensive than most people will readily admit.
• Focus on one thing at a time, always. First things first, second things never.

8. Listen to your body.  Your mind will always beckon you away from being present and in the moment. Conversely, your body brings you back into the here and now.

In order to cultivate more presence in your life, listen to your body. And if you want to more readily access your body, let your breath be the bridge that you take.

9. Make spaciousness your default. 

• Don’t pack another five things into your day-planner.
• Don’t say yes to an added social event or obligation when you prefer to say ‘No.’
• Don’t maintain a calendar that makes your mind race with anxiety whenever you look at it.
• Make spaciousness your life’s default and presence will be the natural consequence.
• Your our mind  is only as cluttered as your life.   Once you cecultter you life an it will be that much easier to physically and mentally drop into the moment.
• Basically, you relinquish your presence is by getting mentally caught up in your monkey mind…anxiety-provoking incessant worry and other head-noise.

Drop back into the sensual realm of your body and acknowledge that you are more than a walking brain whose sole task is to accomplish or achieve things. Instead, you are a human being who is having a real existence right now.  Now take a deep, full, exhilarating breath..ahhh!

Suggested Books On Presence

The Five Minute Journal

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results 

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less

The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art Of Decluttering And Organizing