How to be more present – Spend your attention wisely.
I often get requests from clients on what books I recommend for mindfulness. If someone wanted to begin using mindfulness I wouldn’t recommend sitting down and reading a whole book. The ability to be present is something we have dearly lost and I feel for the generations that have never known the freedom of not owning a mobile phone. Let me explain.
I trained in Reiki and Meditation back in 2000, both are time honoured techniques, teaching us mindfulness and how to stay present. I was born in 1970, so I feel in a good space to share the changes that I have seen over the last 55 years. When I work with clients who arrive with anxiety, depression and burnout, I ask them how much time they spend using technology. They look at me with curiosity and then I share the following observations.
Our attention has now become currency, big corporations, tech companies, algorithms, social media, click bait and on-line shopping are all vying for our attention. Once we realise this then we should be less willing to give it away because we are inundated with the equivalent of 34 gigabytes of information per day, enough to crash a laptop in a week.
We are scared to be bored. Next time you are anywhere where humans are queuing or waiting, notice how many people get their phone out. We are living through an epidemic of distraction and addiction.
So who has forced us or robbed us of being so distracted or trapped to sit quiet or still with ourselves? If I were to stick my neck out, I would ask readers to consider something on a much broader scale called Capitalism. Capitalism needs us to stay pre-occupied with ourselves and behave like competing consumers of cheap addictive, instant gratification, becoming addicted to more and more hits of dopamine.
Wow, that is a lot to consider! Mindfulness and meditation teach us to stay with things longer – sit with the discomfort, sit with where you are rather than where you wish to be. If you are a parent overusing your phone while with your kids, this is interrupting an ancient emotional cueing system, social skills, developmental and moral frame-working. Last year I was sat behind a young mum and her 4 year old daughter in A & E for over two hours. During those two hours, the mum rarely looked up from her phone to tend to her little girl who was so well behaved, but clearly in pain.
The overwhelming amount of information that heads our way is developing a ‘non-thinking’ society. It takes a lot of hard work to change, so lots of us just prefer to zone out and spend hours scrolling.
So when people ask me about how to be more present I suggest “do what you are not doing. “
Being Present in Nature
While we are out in nature we don’t consume, we don’t use our phone.
The rhythm of walking is the same as theta brainwaves (meditation) that run intuition and our ‘gut instinct’ and good for spatial positioning, problem solving and slowing down thought.
Spiritual Traditions
These remind us or tap into the force greater than our individualistic needs. Lots of us are spiritually bankrupt. Our souls are homesick. So try yoga, Qi gong, Shinto or Tai Chi.
Meditation
Here is a perfect example of being present. It can be a physical discomfort, it can seem boring, a waste of time, you have to cope with failure (as we think we aren’t doing it right) and brings us all sorts of mental discomfort. It means when we get back to life we are better at sitting with the crappy discomfort, entitlement and shitty days. I became a meditation teacher in 2018, please feel free to hop over to my website to try any of the free relaxations (www.gaildonna.com).
Read
Read anything you can get your hands on by Socrates, Albert Camus, Bertrand Russell, Marcus Aurelius, Vicktor Frankl, Anna Mathur, Sarah Wilson, Matt Haig, Jack Kornfield, Eckhart Tolle, James Hollins, the teachings of Buddha or Jesus, poetry and my favourite Rumi. I would be silly not to promote my own books on the very subject -Gail Donnan – The Gateway – Re-claim your power from stress and anxiety and Gail Donnan – The Gateway Juniors.
Addiction
Buy less, don’t give your attention away – switch phones off or on airplane mode at certain times of the day, remove social media from your phone – do a dopamine fast, don’t buy anything apart from food/drink for a week and limit your social media time.
Reflection Points
Start connecting with humans in person, delay gratification – wait for something. Ask yourself what is the relationship I have with myself? How can I start where I am being more present? Who are my tribe? Ask yourself if this choice diminishes me or enlarges me?
So, if you are curious about mindfulness and being more present, I hope this has given you some food for thought!
Inspired by reading ‘This One Wild and Precious Life’ by Sarah Wilson and a lot of the above authors and poets.